Today I will be talking about the NOCO Genius GB70, the best portable car battery jump starter.
We’re looking at the NOCO GB70 Boost HD. This is a portable jump starter and the first thing I noticed with this thing is that it is just a monster. When I first picked it up, weight wise, it’s like four and a half pounds. Compared to other jump starters, that are quite a bit lighter and they’re definitely not built as well as this one, some of them don’t even weigh a pound. So this one just surprised me at first how much this actually weighed compared to previous ones that I’ve reviewed.
This has 2,000 Amps. It can jump start both diesel and gas vehicles. Up to eight liters diesel and six liters anything – boats, cars, four-wheelers, anything with a battery you can basically use this to jump start.
They foolproof this too! So when I say foolproof it means that you can touch the red and the black cables together and they won’t spark. You can hook this up to the battery wrong, it won’t blow up! They’ve really took some extra precautions to make sure that this is a safe charger.
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In the specs with this it says that it can jump start a single car up to 40 times off one single charge. It says it will definitely jump start 20 but you can possibly do up to 40.
A perfect application for this is car dealerships, tow trucks, even in the household, this is just perfect to you. If you ever have a dead battery, you can go out and charge it.
It’s just a really nice portable jump starter for several uses.
It also has a 12 volt output. You can charge monitors, battery packs, you can even power small TVs with this thing and it has a USB output too so you can charge your phone or your tablets, cameras. They’re really universal. It’s just not limited to jump starting your car.
One of the neat features about this is that the battery pack itself can be actually dead and within a half an hour of charging it, you can take that out and jump start your car.
To fully charge it, it actually takes three hours but that’s a pretty good time.
Another great feature is it has a 400 lumen flashlight on it. It has eight LEDs, it’s got seven different modes – high, medium, low. It’s actually really bright, which is great if you ever have engine work or if you need an SOS or if you’re broke down or you just need a flashlight.
The GP 70 will stay charged for up to a year but it’s good practice to bring it in every six months and just make sure that it’s topped off and fully charged.
Like I said, it packs 2,000 Amps and it has 15700 joules 3s, so that means 15700 joules per three seconds.
Something I want to point out is it is only to detect batteries once down to 2 volts. If the car battery is below two volts, the Genius Boosts HD will not recognize it. They do that for safety reasons because they’re thinking, it’s not even hooked up to a battery because the battery is just so low, but they do make an override button.
This jump pack is actually meant to supplement one of the big giant jump packs. However, this is considerably lighter jump starter. It’s not only a smaller, more compact setup, it’s actually a lot safer.
This has circuitry built into it to prevent you from doing something really dumb, which we’ll talk about in just a minute.
In the box of the GB70 you get the jump pack, you also get a series of different cables, you get the charge cable, you get a cable to plug the jump pack into your vehicle to charge it as well as a cable to plug other 12-volt accessories to run off of the jump pack. And you get a nice carrying case to put it all in.
This is 2000 Amp lithium ion battery. It’s rated for a gas engine up to eight liters and a diesel engine up to six liters.
On the side there are two separate ports. We have an in and an out. This has a 2.1 Amp USB out as well as a 12 volt 15 Amp out.
We have a 2.1 Amp micro USB in as well as a 12 volt 3 Amp in for a fast charge. This is the one you plug into your vehicle to get a really fast charge.
It also has a 7 mode LED light, which is pretty bright as well as different flashes for SOS and things like that. So a really nice addition to a jump pack. Something again that a big jump box won’t generally have.
It also has a one-year manufacturer’s warranty (click here to get lifetime warranty!).
I’ve had this for a little while and I was waiting to do a review until I could get some time with it. I didn’t want to just basically do a glorified unboxing. I think that would have been a little bit of a disservice to you guys to just show you what’s in the box, say it’s great and move on to the next review.
So before I show you this in action, let’s talk about some of the things I really liked and some of the things that I think can use some improvement.
Some of the things I like is that it’s small. When compared to the other jump starters, you can see how small this is and how lightweight it is compared to that big models.
It also works really well. I was able to jump start about 10 cars on this without having to charge it. In fact there was only one car that I tried to jump start that I couldn’t start with this and the reason I couldn’t start that was because the fuel pump was not plugged in. So I don’t think that’s very fair to this jump pack to say it would not start it because it would have never started anyway.
I love the light on the end. It’s great, imagine being in the dark, in a parking lot or something having to jump start your car. This is going to come in handy big time. One of my favorite things about this though and this is really the reason I think to have something like this over a big jump box is that it’s safe.
I have seen in my career multiple vehicles jump started backwards. The negative was put to the positive terminal of the battery, the positive was put to the negative and bad ensue. In fact, we’ve had a salesman do that twice.
I’ve had technicians do it. I have seen a Phaeton totaled because someone jump-started the convenience battery, which would be the wrong battery, backwards and it melted the harness just in front of the taillight.
Therefore we had one totaled Phaeton due to someone jump starting backwards. In fact, our sales department is going to be buying these so that that kind of thing never happens to them again.
We as technicians sort of take for granted doing this kind of thing and it’s really easy to do. You’re not paying attention or you know your mind wanders, whatever, and I’ve seen a lot of vehicles jump started backwards.
So to have circuitry inside of one of these to prevent that reverse polarity is a huge, huge, huge advantage! This comes in at about $200. Click here to buy!
There’s a few things in a perfect world I would really like to change.
One of those things is that it’s slow to charge on the port when you plug it directly into the wall with the micro USB. The cool thing is that’s the same charger as my old Samsung phone. But it takes a really long time, generally a full day. I don’t have the by-the-book number of how long it took to charge this but I can tell you that it took a really long time. To overcome that you can use the other one and charge it with the 12-volt outlet in your vehicle and it’s supposed to charge it considerably faster.
The other thing that I think would be really beneficial to this jump pack is if the cables were just a little bit longer. I often struggle because these cables are really only about 10 inches and there are some vehicles, especially some Volkswagens, that’s just not enough room to really get on the battery and have this in a good position to monitor it.
The other thing is the clamps are a bit bulky. If you work in really tight locations, you’ll see how big this is. This is a bit bulky in order to really get it down and get it a good connection on the battery, especially like Volkswagen Beetles. On the negative posts, this is a little bit bulky, you can do it and it’ll work, it’s just a little bit tricky to get a good, really solid chomping bite on it in order to make it work.
I will also say that the directions aren’t the greatest. It comes with this little tiny instruction book in a million and a half languages. I think the directions could use a little bit of tuning up. It’s not that big of a deal. It’s a very minor thing. I just wasn’t super impressed with the instructions that it came with.
$200 sounds like a lot of money but those big jump packs are about that price or more. So I don’t really think that the price point of this is really out of the ballpark for what you’re getting. This one will also run 12-volt accessories as well. It’s got the USB plug so if you need to charge your cellphone it’ll charge it like a million and a half times. This is an awful big battery backup for your cell phone.
It does a little bit more than the standard jump pack will. I’ve also tried some other different versions of something similar to this, some branded by big-name tool companies, and they all work okay. I’ve seen the cables on the other ones get hot and the cables actually melt a little bit. This at least, even though they’re short, they are nice heavy-duty cables.
So I’m a fan. It is something that is expensive but if it can save you a tow bill or save you from being stranded, it’s going to be worth it.
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