Which Portable Jump Starters Brand Wins?
We compared 8 portable jump starters options head to head. Audew came out on top. See the measured results, the runner-up, the budget pick, and a link to the full test video.
Audew
Price shown in test: $70.99
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Topvision
Price shown in test: $89.99
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The measured results
Every number below is read straight from the test. Scroll sideways to see all measurements. Products are listed in the order they finished.
| Product | Room temperature (75F) carbon pile bench test | 0F freezer cold cranking bench test | Real world drained Ford Ranger pickup jump start (2.9L V6) | Real world 1975 Ford 5000 diesel tractor jump start (4.2L, using the tractor's own dead battery, no fuel system) | Repeat 0F cold tractor jump start | Real world drained Ford Ranger pickup jump start | Real world 1975 Ford 5000 diesel tractor jump start |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1Audew$70.99 | peaked at 304 amps around 10 volts, dropping to 200 amps after 4 seconds before the tester shut off; battery dropped from 100% to 84% after the test | first attempt 197 amps at 7 volts for about 2 seconds; improved to 238 amps at 7.3 volts on the second attempt and 284 amps at over 8 volts on the third, coming out on top of the cold bench test overall | spun the engine over very fast, battery pack dropped to 83 percent after a short run | had enough power to spin the engine over on the first attempt, called a pretty legit jumper by the narrator | did pretty good considering the cold, improved further after a couple more attempts as it warmed up | not tested | not tested |
| 2Topvision$89.99 | started at 16.76 volts, delivered 338 amps at 10 volts, described as more than enough to start an engine | third attempt produced 254 amps at 8 volts, just behind the Audew | not tested | not tested | pretty good job | seemed to be the best performer so far in this test, held on for a long time before giving up, battery down to about 88 percent | close second to the Audew per the narrator |
| 3Sanrock$84.99 | started at 16.83 volts, topped out around 344 amps at 10 volts, the highest raw amp reading of the room temperature test though the narrator judged Audew, Topvision, Audew and DB Power all very close with Audew edging it on voltage under load | needed three attempts to warm up, third attempt produced 205 amps at 7 volts | not tested | not tested | took five attempts but eventually spun the engine over fast enough to start it | did a lot better than the Harbor Freight Viking, spun the badly drained engine over fast, called amazing for such a small charger | did better than the Harbor Freight Viking; narrator says the Sanrock and DB Power seem pretty much the same |
| 4DB Power$89.99 | started at 16.53 volts, produced 291 amps around 10 volts for about 6 seconds; described as not quite as good as Audew or Sanrock but much better than the Harbor Freight Viking | needed three attempts, third attempt produced 188 amps at 7 volts | not tested | not tested | took several attempts but succeeded in spinning the engine over enough to get it started | very impressive, got the engine spinning over fast enough to start and held up for quite some time before giving out | seemed pretty much the same as the Sanrock, took several attempts but got the job done |
| 5Duracell$109.99 | started at 13.72 volts, produced 255 amps at 7.4 volts, better than the Noco GB40 and Harbor Freight Viking but not nearly as good as some of the other products | started at 13.32 volts, produced 190 amps at 5.34 volts on the first attempt and did not fade the way the lithium ion units did, narrator ended the test after about 10 seconds | not tested | not tested | not mentioned again in this section of the transcript, appears to have been dropped from the final cold retest round | did not produce enough cranking amps to spin the engine over fast enough, even after 5 minutes of charging time | a little bit better than the Noco GB40 but definitely not enough to get the tractor started |
| 6Autowit$129.99 | started around 15.5 volts, produced 261 amps at around 8 volts, then quickly dropped; the transcript literally reads dropped to under 200 volts and 7 amps, which appears to be a caption swap of amps and volts given every other reading in this video pairs hundreds of amps with single digit voltage, kept verbatim rather than silently corrected | not tested in this round of the video, apparently omitted | not tested | not tested | not tested in this round of the video, apparently omitted | charged itself off the truck's own nearly dead battery over roughly 1 to 10 minutes depending on starting voltage, then did a pretty good job getting the engine to turn over, though it did not last very long | not tested in this round of the video, apparently omitted |
| 7Noco Genius Boost Plus GB40 GB40$99.69 | started at 11.93 volts, produced 243 amps at 7 volts | only 145 amps at 4 volts, slightly better than the Harbor Freight Viking but not nearly as good as the rest of the competition | not tested | not tested | still not able to get the job done after several attempts | did not produce enough voltage to spin the engine over, cables got hot, unit showed an overheat indicator | did not have enough power to get the engine to spin over |
| 8Harbor Freight Viking$74.99 | started at 13.22 volts, produced only 216 amps at 7.7 volts, then stopped powering up entirely shortly after the test | only 113 amps at 3.6 volts, then would not power up at all after one attempt | not tested | not tested | triggered an alarm in the cold and was not going to do the job | was not going to get the job done | not very good, was not going to get the job done |
How it was tested
- room temperature (75F) cranking amps via carbon pile tester
- 0F freezer cold cranking amps via carbon pile tester, multiple attempts allowed to warm up
- real world jump start of a drained Ford Ranger pickup truck (2.9L V6)
- real world jump start of a 1975 Ford 5000 diesel tractor (4.2L) using only the tractor's own dead battery
- repeat real world tractor jump start with the units re-chilled to 0F
“when you consider the price and the performance, in my opinion, the I Due won the showdown”
Data notes and caveats
Eight portable jump starters and jump start technologies compared: seven lithium ion or sealed lead acid units plus one super capacitor unit (Autowit) with a fundamentally different charging mechanism, which is why it is missing from the pure battery freezer test and both fully-drained-battery vehicle tests. The winning brand Audew is captioned as I Due through most of the transcript and once as Imazing near the end; resolved against the description's Products Tested list using its matching $70.99 price and specs. The narrator explicitly ranks Audew first, Topvision second, and Sanrock tied with DB Power for third; the relative order of the bottom four (Duracell, Autowit, Noco Genius GB40, Harbor Freight Viking) is not explicitly ranked by the narrator and was inferred here from the severity of his stated critiques (Harbor Freight Viking called way overpriced and failed nearly every test; Noco GB40 called underpowered for its price; Autowit explicitly not recommended despite interesting technology; Duracell received no explicit negative verdict). One reading for the Autowit's room temperature test appears to have amps and volts swapped in the caption (kept verbatim, flagged rather than corrected). No distinct budget pick is framed separately from the winner, since the winning Audew is also the cheapest of the eight products tested.