The OPTIMA Digital 1200 Battery Charger- Worth it's weight in lead and then some!

April 25, 2012 at 4:35 AM

by Jim McIlvaine

Unfortunately, the story behind this Group D27M BlueTop is a familiar one.  It's owner contacted us, frustrated with the performance of his battery.  Even though the battery was well outside of warranty coverage, it's owner felt OPTIMA owed him some sort of resolution, because he couldn't get the battery to charge above 12.5 volts.

The best we could offer was to send him another battery that we knew tested good, but also had no warranty, in exchange for his battery.  When his old battery arrived, it sat under a desk for almost a week, before we had a chance to check and charge it. Surprisingly, the battery measured 12.57 volts, even though the owner claimed he couldn't get his charger to charge it up to 12.5 volts.

After measuring the initial voltage, we connected it to the OPTIMA Digital 1200 battery charger. With one touch convenience, the charger went to work, recharging the battery.  A few hours later, the voltage measured a solid 13.02 volts, well within the range of what would be considered acceptable for this battery.  Is the OPTIMA Digital 1200 a miracle worker for batteries?  While it is capable of charging batteries that have been deeply-discharged down to 1.25 volts, it may not have performed any miracles on this battery.

The pre-charge voltage indicated the battery likely had more voltage than the owner realized.  If that is the case, it would be the second time in the last two weeks that we've heard from someone who was getting incorrect voltage readings on their battery.  If it did recover a battery that the original owner couldn't manage to charge properly, then the OPTIMA Digital 1200 battery charger could have already paid for itself with one use, as a new D27M BlueTop will run $254.99 at shop.optimabatteries.com before a $25 mail-in rebate, while the OPTIMA Digital 1200 battery charger is only $199.99.

In hindsight, we wished we had tried to first recharge the battery with a regular battery charger, just to see if the owner was getting incorrect voltage readings.  Either way, it is a good idea to check the voltage before and after charging, to make sure the battery charger is doing it's job and if the voltage readings seem unusual, that the volt meter is doing it's job.