Renogy 10W Solar Trickle Charger Portable Battery Maintainer with Lighter

11 reviews for Renogy 10W Solar Trickle Charger Portable Battery Maintainer with Lighter

1. 

   Gregory Huber – 30 December 2024

   Sun
   Works great for keeping my atv battery charged up. Easy to use . Just think the cord could be little longer

2. 

   Donna – 30 December 2024

   Solar panel
   Use with our camper. Always has a charge. Works great

3. 

   Cray Grey – 30 December 2024

   Solid solar battery maintainer. Provided cabling is sort of rubbish.
   I went through a period this summer where my car wasn’t being driven very often, and while I didn’t run its battery all the way down, it definitely went far lower than I would like. Since we live in an region of abundant sunshine, I figured I’d add a small solar panel to top up and maintain the battery when the car wasn’t being used. We have a Renogy 200W panel for emergencies (intended for charging a Bluetti LiFePo4 box) that we’re happy with, so I figured I’d give one of their little panels a chance.First impressions: the panel itself seems reasonably well built. it’s stitched into a fabric housing with flaps that fold out that have suction cups whichhold it on the inside of the windscreen. The fabric makes handling it much safer than a plastic or metal case as it doesn’t get nearly as hot in direct sunshine and doesn’t transfer heat to your hands nearly as badly.The panel connects to one of a number of cables with a SAE connector. In my opinion, these cables are the weak spot of the whole thing.The main option for a quick connection has something like a 5-foot cable with a pair of alligator clips that you’d clamp on the battery terminals, which is *way* too short to be useful. Given it’s not completely waterproof, it has to be mounted on the inside of the windscreen, and in my car the combined length of the panel’s cable and the extension does *not* reach the battery in the front of the engine bay, meaning either another extension or custom cabling is required in my case.The panel also comes with a SAE to cigarette lighter adapter, which is useless for my car. My outlets are not powered when the ignition is turned off, so this is of no use to me. Finally, it also comes with a short cable with a pair of eyelets that you’d bolt to a battery with side terminals. It’s about 2 feet long, so presumably this is for charging a battery outside of a car.None of these cables are fused in any way; I’d be especially cautious of using the eyelet cable wired permanently to a battery; if something shorts, there’s no way to quickly remove it from the battery the way you would with alligator clips, and there’s no guarantee you’d get the SAE connector apart in a hurry. In my opinion, the hardwire eyelet cable in particular must have an inline fuse right at the battery end of the cable on the positive side, but Renogy cheaped out.I actually ended up using the eyelet cable to make a custom cable. I cut the eyelet off the positive side and stuck the wire on the end of a usual add-a-fuse tap thing that runs to an unused always-hot slot in my inside fuse panel. That allows me to connect the panel up when I need it, but remove it at the SAE connector and tuck the wire away when I’m not without needing to connect and remove the car side wiring.Otherwise, the panel appears to work well enough. Starting from a bit below 12V, it dragged the battery up by a little over a tenth of a volt per day and kept it there when I went back to use the car after a few weeks. You wouldn’t want to use one of these to completely charge a battery from flat; it’s way too low-power for that. However, for this specific application, a larger, higher-output panel is not needed. Again, we get a lot of sun and this was tested at the beginning of summer, so it may not be nearly as effective in more northern locations at other times of the year.

4. 

   Pablo – 30 December 2024

   Keeps car battery charged
   Like it says it won’t charge the battery but as long as you got the solar panel in sunny light it will never let the battery lose charge

5. 

   face but! k – 30 December 2024

   10 Watts doesn’t seem to be enough
   My 4runner battery drains down a little from lack of use so I got this to keep it topped up. I have it on the dash so maybe there are some losses from the glass, plus it only gets sun a few hours a day and right now it is winter sun coming in at a low angle. Knowing that is how I wanted to use it, I got a 10 watt panel thinking that would be plenty considering a lot of maintainers are only a couple watts. But it doesn’t seem to be doing much. I fully charged my battery a couple days ago on my 110 charger and after two days my battery read 12.43 volts. I don’t know if it will keep it there, or if it will keep dropping. I put my multimeter on the panel itself and see 21 volts (optimal volts according to specs is 18V and .56 Amps and short circuit is 23.5V so maybe that is within spec although 21 Volts seems higher than ideal). But for current I am only seeing .12 Amps on a nice sunny Colorado winter day. That is only 2.5 watts total. I moved the panel outside the window to see if that would make a difference and the amps stayed the same so it isn’t window tinting which I don’t think my front winshield has anyway. I am surprised that people with even smaller panels say they keep their batteries topped up but I may have to upgrade this 10 watt panel to something bigger. It wasn’t too expensive so no big deal but still kind of disappointing. If anyone has different feedback on how theirs works, I’d be interested to hear it.The quality looks and feels fine except the suction cups don’t stay put. I tried mounting on the window and both times it fell down. I wouldn’t trust them but you could use wire to secure it or something. This isn’t something you would want to leave outside over the winter so it really isn’t weather proof but I never intended to do that. I trust the Renogy name and figure this had to be as good as the other brands and cheap chinese ones, but still I’m not sure it will work to keep my battery topped up. I have no intention of moving the panel around to get max sun or anything like that. Renogy does say there is backward flow blockage so it should not run down the battery when not in direct sun or at night, but 2.5 watts for a few hours a day may not been enough to help me.

6. 

   Pmflyer – 30 December 2024

   Nice with all the adapters
   Only one thing the surface of the panel seems to scratch easily. Otherwise good product.

7. 

   NFarley – 30 December 2024

   Portable and works as it should. My dad has a forklift that sits outside most of the year and it gets cold and won’t start. Using this solar panel when parked we hook this up and it has started everytime!

8. 

   Amazon Customer – 30 December 2024

   No se requiere conectar el auto para mantener el acumulador cargado

9. 

   Liam Lawlor – 30 December 2024

   I have tried this in many different areas of use. Tested power output to see if it creates power when I need.When I place inside my window of van, it does Not generate any power, tried in in three different vehicles, and it does not work in the vehiclesIt only works when placed outside, in direct sunlight. When the sun did not hit the panels, it produces less that. . 02w of power.So most days when clouds are about it’s pretty much useless. I have another cheaper solar panel that works anywhere all the time, even in heavy shade, and generates power everytime. I don’t recommend this product.It works but only in a very selective way. Not worth the money, better units can be got for cheaper that work all day no problem

10. 

    Mark – 30 December 2024

    Two stars – because it functions.My main concern is for a product designed to be exposed to the sun, it really doesn’t like being exposed to the sun. This unit has been sat on my dash (inside the car not exposed to the external elements) and due to the sun it’s slowly degrading the material on the outside. This doesn’t affect the operation but as you can see from the pictures it leaves a lovely fine black dust everywhere it goes or whenever I touch it. Cheap and nasty.

11. 

    lucid dreamer – 30 December 2024

    Nice to keep the battery topped up were ever the car is parked and not having to start it for weeks or months.