Cost: £80 (Amazon)
Date of Review: 31/3/2024
The Sales Pitch from NOCO:
5-Amp Battery Charger, Battery Maintainer, and Battery Desulfator
Introducing the all-new GENIUS5, one of our most powerful, highest-performing, energy-efficient, and compact chargers yet. The GENIUS5 is a 6-volt and 12-volt battery charger, battery maintainer, and battery desulfator rated at 5-amps for lead-acid automotive, marine, and deep-cycle batteries, including flooded, gel, AGM, and maintenance-free, plus lithium-ion batteries.
- Meet the GENIUS5 – Similar to our G3500, just better. It’s 34% smaller and delivers 65% more power. And it’s simpler and easier to use than ever before.
- Do more with Genius – Designed for 6-volt and 12-volt lead-acid automotive, marine, and deep-cycle batteries, including flooded, gel, AGM, and maintenance-free, plus lithium-ion batteries.
- Enjoy precision charging – An integrated thermal sensor detects the ambient temperature and alters the charge to eliminate over-charging in hot climates and under-charging in cold climates.
- Charge dead batteries – Charges dead batteries as low as 1-volt. Or use the all-new Force Mode that allows you to take control and manually begin charging dead batteries down to zero volts.
- Simple to set up and use – Plug-in, connect to the battery, select a charge mode, and start charging your battery. A fully-automatic, worry-free battery charger for year-round use.
- Restore your battery – Detects sulfation and acid stratification and restores lost performance for stronger engine starts and extended battery life.
- Compatible with all types of vehicles – Charge and maintain cars, motorcycles, lawnmowers, ATVs, tractors, trucks, SUVs, boats, classic cars, hot rods, and more – you name it.
Source: NOCO – 5-Amp Smart Battery Charger – GENIUS5
What You Get:
A beautifully packaged product, where the unboxing (inside the box) was a real nice experience.
Opening the box is a slide out process and shows the unit in a nice padded encasement.
Lifting the unit out shows the wires and accessories underneath.
Product Description:
A plug and play, non-config required battery tool.
A very compact 6v / 12v battery charger, repairer and maintenance module. This unit will charge a battery from 1v or if there is nothing completely dead, you can ‘Force Mode’ where it will start to charge up on zero volts battery!
The more Amps you have the more power can be pushed into the battery thus charging it quicker. This 5amp version is middle of the road for charging and I didn’t see then need for a much more expensive 10amp model.
Instructions:
I have scanned the instructions below as well as creating a PDF for download.
PDF User Guide – Download
NOCO Genius 5 Data Sheet – Download
Fitting Process :
There is a generous 72″ length of mains cable to the unit. The other side there is a further 56″ of cable to the quick connect fitting. This in turn has an additional 24″ to the battery connection via two clamps. The positive side of the twin cable has a built in fuse with a cap cover. This 24″ gives an adequate length, but not a long as my other unit this replaces, more on this a little lower down.
The clamps are wide opening of 1.25″ which should be more than enough for any battery terminal. The springs are firm with some fairly aggressive copper teeth to hold them in place. The cables are connected to the clamps via two screws through two 6mm eyelet terminals.
There is a plastic wall mounting clamp supplied with two screws and wall plugs for a more permanent fitting should you wish to a wall. The clamp just clips top and bottom of the charging unit with a rather ugly velcro strap to hold it in place. (I only used one screw as I wasn’t sure where I wasn’t sure where final location would be.)
Now I really like the idea of a quick release clamp, but the velcro sjust make it look tacky in my opinion. It seems to ruin the athletics of the neat little unit, and looks like an after thought.
Note: If somebody out there with a 3D printer was to make a wall mounted clip for the unit I think they would sell a few, I would certainly buy one, so give me a shout.
The velcro has to be tucked into a loop on the underside of the bracket which can be a bit fiddly depending where you mount the bracket.
The main issue I have is the length of the terminals is only 24″ which wasn’t enough for me to route the fitting to come out of the grill and be neatly hidden from view once permanently connected to the terminals. The eyelet size of 6mm also needed to be opened out to 8mm for my battery terminal bolts which only a took a few seconds with a Dremel. The black and red cables were wrapped with wire loom tape to make the new wires look stock and can be blended into the main wire loom..
I had to extend the wires by cutting and resoldering the joins back together again to allow enough cable to be feed out the front of the car under the grill to allow connection to the wall unit’s wire.
The main cable and the quick disconnect coupling is a simple click into place and each end has a rubber cap for when not in use. To disconnect just press the orange lever to lift one end and pull apart. I must admit that I miss the LED’s from the other unit I had as they also gave an indication of the battery even when not linked to the charger. It would be nice if NOCO were to add an accessory like that too.
Operating Modes:
There is a simple ‘Mode’ button which cycles through the options: 12v, 12v AGM, 12v Lithum, 6v mode, 12v Repair and Force mode. This will pretty much cover everything you need.
Once the mode has been selected the unit will remember the last setting used when turned back on again.
The top right hand side there are four increasing sized LEDs as below.
After connecting this to my battery and powering up the charger it took about a week for the large green LED to start pulsing. I think I would have preferred to have seen a separate pulse to show the maintenance cycle. You have to stand a look for a few seconds to see the state of the charger, not a big deal but also not a quick glance update.
The thing that made me go for this unit instead of a another unit that I had as a direct replacement and would have been a lot easier, is the over charge function.
This unit senses the temperature surroundings and compares it to what is happening to the battery. This will have an additional safety feature of not overheating the battery while charging compared to the ambient temperature, this is also from the NOCO website.
“Thermal Compensation – More Precise Charging in Any Climate.
The new integrated thermal sensor automatically monitors and adjusts the charging cycle based on fluctuations of ambient temperature, limiting the chance of under-charging or over-charging, providing a more accurate and fully charged battery. Avoids under-charging in cold weather down to -4F and avoids over-charging in hot weather up to 104F.”
Warranty:
The unit comes with a three year warranty which isn’t bad, but less than the other manufacturer I had.
Rating: 10 out 10
The unit is plug and play and works, it does exactly what it says it will do. Although the display is not as fancy as the other manufacturer, it does look a basic in comparison and the velcro strap ruins the look.
There is a lack of accessories for the charger, no LED status lights on the battery connection, no proper wall mount bracket only a rather ugly velcro strap, no storage case, no rubber protection bumper for transportation, the clips cable length of 24″ is a bit short for what I wanted, and the warranty is only two years.
The down side is outweighed by the “Thermal Compensation” function. As long as the unit does what I want, I can look past the aesthetics of the unit and it’s rather poor wall mount idea.
Would I recommend this? Yes.
Would I buy it again? Yes.
Conclusion:
Both the main competitors in this market are very similar, they have almost identical functions connections are similar. For shear variations of options this comes up a little short compared to the other manufacturer. This is a big seller in the USA and well regarded. There isn’t really any difference to be honest when you compare the manual specifications. This unit has a couple of extra little features that appealed to me more so than the pretty display you could have.
I would have bought the the other brand again, but the key for me is the NOCO ambient temperature Thermal Compensation functionality. My garage can get hot sometimes and this was the only factor that made me go with this unit rather than the other manufacturer.
As long as this keep working I see no reason to amend the score. If it does go wrong then I will provide an update.