Noco Genius 5 battery charger review

wdn

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This is my experience witht the Noco Genius 5 smart battery charger. I bought this on the Black Friday sale at Amazon for $45.46 which is 50% off the list price. It is a smart charger that outputs up to 5 amps and can charve 12 Volt lead acid batteries, 12V AGM, 12V lithium, and also 6V batteries.

I tested this with four 12 lead acid batteries, all of them greater than four years old and two greater than six years old. Three were removed from service 1-2 years ago and were sitting on my garage floor. The fourth a group 35 battery manufactured 5/16, is currently in service on my Kubota tractor.

I tested the batteries before and after charging, using the Centech digital battery analyzer from Harbor Freight Tools. I double checked voltages with a standalone multimeter. All batteries were removed from the vehicle when charged. All batteries were topped off with distilled water prior to charging. Some of them took quite a bit of water, more than I expected. The after figures in the chart were after charging with the Genius 5 and then letting the battery sit for a day or two.


Costco Interstate 24F 700 CCA mfg 10/2014Costco Interstate 35 640 CCA mfg 10/14Costco Interstate 35 640 CCA mfg mfg 5/16Sears DieHard Gold 27F 825 CCA mfg mfg 10/16
CCA before444399570592
CCA after497566566751
Voltage before12.2812.2612.5312.01
Voltage after12.6712.7412.7912.67
Megohms before5.956.624.644.47
Megohms after5.324.674.673.52
Battery life before65% OK70% OK90% Good80% Good
Battery life after80% Good90% Good90% Good100% Good


The battery on the Kubota tractor, the Genius 5 just charged up. There was not much difference in the before- and after CCA but the Genius 5 did bring it to a high state of charge. The other three batteries though, showed a marked improvement after sitting overnight on the Genius 5. None came all the way back to the original CCA rating on the label they had when new, but again these are 4-6+ year old batteries we are talking about.

The Costco Interstate group 24F that I replaced this summer, increased from 444 CCA to 497 CCA, a healthy gain of 53 CCA. It came out of a Toyota Venza 4 cylinder. Reported battery condition increased from 65% to 80%.

The other Costco Interstate group 35 came out of a Toyota Corolla almost two years ago. It went from 399 CCA to a whopping 566 cold cranking amps, and the condition increased from 70% OK to 90% Good. I would say on this one alone, the Genius 5 more than paid for itself. I did not really have to replace that battery at all.

The Sears DieHard Gold went from 592 CCA to 751 CCA, and increased from 80% Good to 100% Good. I could have saved my money by not replacing that one. After Sears went out of business there was not going to be an pro-rated warranty any more. Still, I would have to say I replaced it prematurely. It had discharged all the way down to 12.01V yet the Genius 5 brought it back to good capacity.

All in all I am impressed with the Noco Genius 5. It really is set it an forget it, you just turn it on and it runs through a variety of charging programs. When the battery is charged it stays in maintainer mode.
 
Thats a nice little charger with some nice features, temp compensation, recovery mode and you can leave it connected to the battery. I have a couple of the NoCo jumper packs that have been reliable.
Thanks for the testing!!
 
The centech battery analyzer isnt exactly perfection/final word.

not knocking it I own one.. but the results can be variable.. its a good tool though.

its all interpreted results from resistance.. which hooking it up a few different times can vary slightly.
 
I bought two of the NOCO Genius 1 on black Friday also. Less than $20/pc. Everything feels very premium, even the packaging! It will work perfectly as a battery maintainer for things stored for the winter.
 
The Noco Genius 5 definitely seems to have restored those three batteries. I can only test them them using the battery analyzer I have, which is the Harbor Freight one. The charger has restored three old batteries that were just gathering dust. Thus far it has exceeded my expectations.
 
I have two NOCO genius 1 and one genius 2. I like that they’re thermally compensated supposedly.

they’re very hands off and simplistic, but that can be good!
 
Haven’t used a Noco. At school we had Snap-on and Viking mostly both worked excellent then the Snap-on got stolen so they bought us another Viking which when I left was still working excellent so I go with Viking for those if I had to get one but right now I’ve got a Diehard one that my dad bought new at Sears in 1983 that’s still working fine so until it stops I won’t be buying one.
 
Does that charger have the "repair" Mode? I have the NOCO genius G3500. Have you tried the repair function on any batteries?
 
I almost bought the noco but I picked up this gooloo on black friday for ~$20. I didn't have a charger and rarely use one but figured it would be worth the risk to have on hand for the price.

 
Does that charger have the "repair" Mode? I have the NOCO genius G3500. Have you tried the repair function on any batteries?

Yes the Noco Genius 5 has repair mode. So does the Genius 10. I used the repair mode on the Costco 24F battery listed above, but not on any of the other batteries I tested. To use repair mode you complete a normal charge cycle first, then turn on repair mode I do not know if it was necessary for me to do that but the 24F was in the poorest shape to start with.
 
I wonder how the Genius5 or Genius10 compares to the Clore PL2320


I have one of those without the power supply mode, and I have some of the small NoCo genius units.

Im a fan of options and data. You get none from NoCo, and you get it all from the Solar.

Similarly, I have a Ctek 25A unit... it like the NoCo, doesn’t tell you much.

So it’s a matter if the info means something to you. To me, being able to set it to AGM setting (NoCo can do this), and watch the voltage is good. But sometimes you just want the simplest, dumbest thing to put some charge back into the battery...
 
All batteries were topped off with distilled water prior to charging. Some of them took quite a bit of water, more than I expected.

Electrolyte / water level drops along with state of charge, adding too much water to a discharged cell can lead to it overflowing as it's charged back up.
 
I have a Noco G7200 which has been an excellent charger.

My only real gripe is that it doesn't show you battery state of charge. It has lights for 25-50-75% and such, but it takes several minutes to register the correct percentage. So it's utterly useless if you need to ascertain state of charge of a battery quickly. Gotta dig out the multi-meter for that.

I can't say it's performed any real miracles on tired old batteries, but I can usually get a couple more months out of a questionable battery by using the repair function.
 
I have a Noco G7200 which has been an excellent charger.

My only real gripe is that it doesn't show you battery state of charge. It has lights for 25-50-75% and such, but it takes several minutes to register the correct percentage. So it's utterly useless if you need to ascertain state of charge of a battery quickly. Gotta dig out the multi-meter for that.

I can't say it's performed any real miracles on tired old batteries, but I can usually get a couple more months out of a questionable battery by using the repair function.

I had the same issue and posted an alternative solution to the multimeter in another thread -

https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/t...harger-maintainer-options.334553/post-5590034
 
Does this unit only come with clamp on leads or does it have a set of bolt on ones too?
Thanks.

Both

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