How To Choose The Right Portable Jump Starter

One of the most useful tools for your safety and peace of mind while driving a vehicle is a portable jump starter. It wasn’t that far in the past that if you went to start your car and found the battery dead, you’d have to carry jumper cables and rely on the kindness of others. That, or call for a tow truck and wait until they are able to arrive to help get you going again. This isn’t the case anymore. Now, you can carry a portable jump starter and get yourself back on the road in a matter of minutes. It is something every driver on the road should have handy. The only question is how to choose the right portable jump starter. We’re here to help with that.

Amp Things Up

Let’s start with the basics. You need to pick your jump starter based on your vehicle’s engine size. Most portable jump starters, like the Jump-N-Carry series from Clore Automotive are sized by the amount of amps they produce. Using them as an example, the JNC305 is a 300-amp (1000 peak amp) starter. It is good for most six-cylinder engines up to 6L for gas-powered motors and 3L for diesel engines. Clore’s JNC325 is a 450-amp (2000 peak amp) starter and is good for 8L gas engines and 6L diesel engines. This will cover most common passenger vehicles and trucks. The Clore JNC345 packs a whopping 550 amps (3000 peak amps) of starting power and can jump start up to 10L gas and diesel engines alike. This makes it handy for the jobsite, marine environments where you have multiple or rather large engine platforms, and anywhere else you need serious starting power.

The important takeaway is to know how much power your engine needs for a successful jump. You also need to keep in mind that once you have the right portable jump starter for your engine, that jump starter will have more than enough juice when fully charged to be able to jump-start your engine multiple times. This is important information since you may not know exactly what caused your battery to go dead in the first place. You may need to jump it multiple times just to get back home, or to a repair shop.

Clore JNC units all come equipped with a sweet feature that allows them to jump a totally dead battery. That’s important because your battery may have been taken down to a 0.0 charge. Many jump starters won’t allow the jump starter to take on a fully-dead battery. With the Clore units, you simply push the Override button for a few seconds and it will force the unit to engage the totally dead battery, enabling you to start it.

Safety Concerns

Early lithium jump starters had some safety issues that made using them rather sketchy. Power overloads, extensive heat sensitivity issues and more made them something that many didn’t want to bother with. To help provide some peace of mind, Clore units each carry UL2743 safety certification, which means the units have been tested and certified to meet the safety standards put in place to protect you and your vehicle.

Each Jump-N-Carry unit has built-in protections against reverse polarity, backfeed, over-voltage, overheat, over-crank and short circuiting…and these protections are in place during every use. Period. As an added bonus, this protection is built into each unit. Some competing jump starters have similar protections that are only built into the cables, which doesn’t always work and leaves the possibility of an issue with the unit as a concern.

Cold Weather

It used to be that cold weather concerns were mostly for the northern parts of the continent, but recent weather has proven that it can get cold during winter months just about anywhere. Typically speaking, cold weather can wreak havoc on electrical systems. Lithium Ion batteries can be affected by the cold, but it is less of a concern for LI batteries that have been developed to function in the cold. That is another plus to the Clore JNC jump starters. The lithium-ion battery that is the heart of the JNC has been developed to properly hold a charge and provide extreme jump starting power, even in extended cold weather. This is a big plus for those who left the jump starter in their trunk for extended periods in the winter. You get the same starting best-in-class performance during the colder seasons as you do in the warmer ones, as well as the same level of safety protection.

Warranty Work

Clore stands behind its products with a one-year warranty on all its JNC portable jumps starters, and they have a warranty work portal you can log into to get help if something goes wrong with your unit.

What if something goes wrong after the warranty expires? What if the unit doesn’t function like it should? Maybe the built-in LED flashlight doesn’t work anymore? What if the cable port does properly connect anymore? What if the unit stops taking a charge? While these things likely won’t happen, anything is possible. With Jump-N-Carry, that isn’t much of a concern since each unit includes a repair service coupon that enables the user to get a one-time, fixed-free repair of the unit, capping costs and extending the life of their unit.

All in all, the standards mentioned in this story are there to help you decide which portable jump starter to buy and carry in your vehicle. It is something every vehicle should have, and you shouldn’t leave home without one.

NOTE: This is sponsored content produced in partnership with Clore Automotive