Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I want to start out by saying that I really love this unit for its jump starting and power source features. The jump starter works exactly as advertised. The 12 volt power source is massive, and lasts forever; I drive a vintage car with a non-operational 12v lighter outlet, and so this thing can sit in there for weeks on end and supply my phone, iPod, or whatever with hardly any drain. I actually bought this because I was going on a four night camping trip to a place without power, and I use a cpap machine when I sleep. If I had bought the dc adapter for my cpap machine, I'm sure that it would have lasted the entire trip. As it was, running on grossly inefficient AC power, it still got me through a couple nights before I had to take it to a place with power to charge up. That brings me to the one and only pitfall of this power source, and it's a big one. The charger that comes with this unit is absolutely pitiful. I was literally speechless when I pulled what looked like a cell phone charger out of the box. At the moment I saw it, I said aloud to no one in particular "I'm supposed to charge this thing up with THAT?" Looking at the power supply, I saw that it was rated with a 700mA power output. For reference, I have a AA battery charger that charges at 700mA, and the charger for my DSLR batteries is rated at an output of 720mA. Both of those chargers take HOURS to charge relatively small batteries. So I think to myself, how long will it take to charge the 20 pound monster battery at the heart of this machine? As it turns out, it takes a VERY long time. According to the manual that comes with this power source, it can take 72 hours (three days!!) to fully charge the power supply. I imagine that were I an executive at Schumacher and some young engineer brought this to me, I'd throw it across the desk at him and tell him to give me something that charges in significantly less than half a week. Indeed, after I ran the batter dead on the second night of my camping trip, it spent the entire day plugged into power at the camp office, and after all that, didn't quite have enough power to get through night three. Night four was worse still, and after about 4 hours I was awake and the power source was dead. Having said all that, I am still very happy with the power source itself, and I decided to keep it. In the future, I will use a dc cable for my cpap machine if I go camping, and I imagine it should work for a far longer duration. As I said, it goes and goes forever powering small 12v applications, and is heavy enough that when I take a tight corner at speed it doesn't flop around. For everything that it does, it does it very well, and I would recommend it for those features. If charge time isn't a big factor in your purchase, I would think you would be very happy owning it. But if you need something that can go from depleted to fully charged in less than a day or two, this might not be the best fit for you. EDIT: Shortly after doing this review I discovered almost by accident that by clamping the jump start cables to a running car you can charge the battery in less than an hour. This is really useful information that I'm surprised was not in my instruction manual. (Someone in the comments said that their copy of the manual talked about a 12v male-to-male lighter cable doing the same thing, but I can't find that in my manual. Besides, You probably charge much faster with the heavier gauge cables on the jump start.) That really does make a difference, and as such I bumped the rating up a star. I'm sure that to some veterans of portable jump start kits this is common knowledge, but as this is my first time with one of these as my own, I sure would have loved reading about this in their manual! In what has been almost a year since buying this, I have used it a number of times for a number of different situations. I drive a classic car that doesn't have a 12v lighter outlet, so this has come along on many trips allowing me to charge my phone or run other portable technology that I would have to be without in my car. I have used it numerous times as a portable AC power source when I didn't have access to AC, such as when I have needed to charge equipment in remote locations. And on a couple occasions I've even used it to jump-start a car. Bottom line: I'm very happy with it. I still don't like that pitiful little AC charger. They would have been better off not including it at all and actually mentioning in the manual that a quick clip to a running car would have you charged in no time. Still, I would definitely recommend this as a good value for the money.