Customer Reviews

Black & Decker VEC1093DBD Smart Battery 40/20/10/4 Amp Battery Charger

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

This battery charger is very versatile and powerful for its size. I am a mechanic and it is nice to have all the features of a full size battery charger in a unit that will fit in my toolbox. Looks big, but is fairly lightweight. Highly recommended.

I bought this charger from Amazon a little over a year ago and use it about once a month. The fan became raspy when starting after about nine months but would sound ok once it it got going. Now it has stopped altogether.

Interestingly, I was Googling this charger and "fan" and this Amazon review site popped up. I see it's happened to others as well. A fan failure after a bit over a year shows very poor quality, especially since mine is not an isolated incident. How many people had this problem but bought them elsewhere or who don't post reviews? And the warranty issues are as I would expect.

While I have the floor, my policy on warranties is: If the item is expensive or I don't trust it, I go to a big-box/any-local store where I can return it for 6 months, no matter what. Other than that, on the internet, there is no warranty. This item is inexpensive; I can try a Schumacher next.
There's no way I'm going to find a box, pack it, trudge to a shipper/P.O., pay to ship it, hope.
Anything I buy on the internet is a done deal.

As an engineer, I'm going to open mine up and see if I can find a similar fan on DigiKey.
If I find one (and think of it), I'll post it here. Be prepared to perform surgery.

I've seen previous posts stating that the fan is only to cool the CPU. I doubt it. As light as this is and the with amps it can deliver, this is obviously using switcher technology which definitely has actual heat sinks or, probably, cooling surfaces (still heat sinks). A transformer-based charger would weigh MUCH more. The CPU would probably be the last thing to fail and the power semiconductors or any copper would be more likely. But, no matter; if anything fails, it's toast.

Also, DO NOT USE THIS CHARGER ON Odyssey batteries. I tested the AGM mode and it does go over 15 volts, which will destroy an Odyssey battery. At hundreds of dollars each, losing an Odyssey hurts. I haven't lost any due to this charger (because I won't use it) but have lost two to solar chargers. The solar chargers will only supply 100mA (.1 amp) but they can reach 20 volts, open circuit, which is enough to ruin an Odyssey. This may also apply to Optima batteries sold in auto stores as they are also made by Hawker. Aside from an "equalizing", which requires a nail in a hole on this charger, I don't think ANY charger should EVER go over 14.5 volts. There's no point.

I concur with other comments about the fact that it won't even try on a completely dead battery. I can see needing SOME voltage to detect a reversed connection, but give a guy a chance. Just say "voltage too low" (or reword the instructions) rather than declaring the battery shot. And provide an override button. There are two ways around this. 1) Charge with a "dumb" charger or a trickle charger for a while or 2)(cumbersome but faster) Use jumper cables to connect a good battery in parallel and start charging immediately. Remove the good battery and recharge it later.

Also, their "recondition" mode (I forget what they call it) does nothing. Plus, it stops after a day or so (I forget that, too). I have two "zappers" (desulfators) that I built and they work very well. But they take a month, or two, or three; no way should a zapper stop after a day or two.
I built my own but Jaycar (Australia) has a very similar kit, with improvements over mine. If the B&D "reconditioner" didn't stop so soon, it might work, who knows? There's no way anything could work in less than a few weeks, other than a very mildly sulfated battery.
Also, I don't know what kind of voltages this charger uses in recondition mode, but mine, at 80-100 volts, can damage your car's radio, engine-computer, etc. To be safe, remove the battery from the car; do not "recondition" an in-vehicle battery.

I'll digress here (if I haven't already) ... desulfating:
Wet-cell batteries (with lead plates/honeycombs) develop a sulfate coating on the plates when left discharged for a period of time. (This is why you should put float chargers on wet-cell batteries, but there's a catch). Constant float charging will dehydrate your battery, no harm done. Just add DISTILLED water and you're back in business. I put mine on a 24-hour timer and run them for 1 hour out of every 24. Back to sulfated batteries: everything is perfect, good lead, good acid but the sulfate coating acts as an insulator that prevents charging/discharging (use). The most obvious indicator is that a very dead battery will reach a full-charge voltage very quickly, too quickly.
Even a trickle-charger will bring it to full voltage is minutes, if not seconds.
The zappers work by pulsing the battery with 80-100 volts for 50 microseconds 1000 times a second (every millisecond). The theory is that this causes the plates to vibrate (somehow, it's a mystery) and break off the sulfate coating. It does work but it's extremely slow. You can't desulfate the battery from your daily driver overnight. You must buy a new one and then desulfate the old one for non-critical use.

So, would I recommend this charger to a friend? No!

1) An early fan failure is not acceptable. This is just trash, considering it's happened to others.
If you don't know to listen for the fan, your unit will eventually emit acrid smoke. Game over.
If you listen and hear no fan, stop - pull the plug. If you can't replace the fan, game over.
If it weren't for the fan failure, I could live with this charger. I am severely peeved.

2) No charger should go over 14.5 volts for reasons noted above. Even Harbor Freight trickle
chargers are set at 13.5 volts. I like them and use them.

3) Any reconditioning, desulfating, zapping operation should continue until the user terminates it.
A day or two is ludicrous.

Last word: If you're in the 99.9% of users who don't use Odyssey batteries and don't need to
desulfate old batteries, this is a very useable product. UNTIL THE FAN DIES.

Very impressed so far. Used it to recondition 2 batteries and charge up 2 others and it has worked flawlessly. Never impressed with Black and Decker tools but I think they got it right this time. Time will tell and I would have given it 5 stars if it holds up for a few years.

I bought this to trickle charge my car that I rarely drive. This battery has "Float Mode" that is supposed to do this. The instructions say it should go into this mode automatically after fully charging. I waited days but it never switched to Float Mode; meanwhile the built in fan is running 24/7. So I emailed B&D for help. The gal who replied, Barbara Barr, didn't know the product, and on top of it, insisted all new batteries, my Die Hard included, are Gel type. I went back and forth with her for days, telling her that a Sears battery dept head told me they only make Wet type. What's more, I can take the caps off the cells and see the liquid. She insisted it was a Gel type. I gave up on the online support and called the help number on the instructions. Nobody at their call center knew much about this charger. They set up a call back from someone at their headquarters. It took a couple of days to talk due to time differences. This man, Robert, was helpful and knew the product. The instructions should have explained that the charger switches to Float Mode only after the you first fully charged it, then left it hooked up while the battery slowly loses its charge. Once it falls below 12.6v then it should go into Float Mode. In this mode, as its topping up the charge, the fan comes on, but should go off in between. The design flaw is, the built in fan stays on 24/7 until the charge falls below 12.6v even if this takes weeks. The fan is to cool the CPU, but should only need that when the charger is charging and generating heat. It should have been programmed to turn the fan off while its waiting to go into float mode. Or, it should go into float mode immediately after it fully charges. Or, they could give you a manual switch to put it in float mode.
They could of had a good product. Its so close. Yet, its flawed. I'll keep it because there are no good alternatives in the same price range. But you have to tolerate the bad design.

UPDATE - Well, the charger stopped working. The fan never going off was a warning sign. Then, finally, it would show an error message within minutes of hooking it to any battery. I tried it on a new batter too. I had to ship it to Florida to get a replacement. It cost me over $25 from Hawaii, which is about 60% of what I paid for it. The woman I originally spoke to and emailed about it, quit her job. The USPS tracking number I had from Delivery Confirmation showed they got it around June 20th. I didn't hear boo from them so I called and found out it didn't show in their system as returned until July 10th so for 20 days it was in limbo somewhere within their facility. Anyway, it took until October 10th to receive the replacement. Seems to work but I won't leave it hooked up all the time. Oh, and the cable clamps don't have any rubber/vinyl covers to protect you from shock like the original one did.

I BROUGHT THIS BLACK&DECKER CHARGER NEW EIGHT MONTH AGO AND HAVE USED ALL FEATURES. MY MOTORCYCLE BATTERY WAS DEAD FOR SIX MONTHS TOOK IT IN FOR RECHARGE THEY TOLD ME NO GOOD, I PUT IT ON RECONDITION MODE 24 HR LATER LIKE NEW SAVED $125.00 STILL IN USE SIX MO. LATER, MY WIFE LEFT HER LIGHTS ALL NIGHT BATTER TOTALY DRAINED THE BATTERY 6 HRS LATER LIKE NEW.CHEV ASTRO VAN SAT FOR TWO WEEKS BATTERY NO GOOD AGAIN RECODITION MODE 24 HRS LATER LIKE NEW.OUTSTANDING PRODUCT. FOUR YEAR BATTERY IN MY GARAGE FOR 8 MONTHS WOULD NOT TAKE A GHARGE NO PROBLEM RECONDITION MODE 24 HRS LATER WORKS LIKE NEW. NABORS CAR WON`T START SET TO ENGIN START QUICK START SAID HE WAS GOINING DOWN TO GET NEW BATTER I TOLD HIM TO RECONDITION IT FRIST 24 HRS LATER THAT`S RIGHT LIKE NEW STILL 4 MONTH LATER. HAD IT RESTESTED AFTER THEY FRIST TOLD HIM TO GET A NEW ONE THEY SAID IT WAS AS GOOD AS NEW.

I purchased this to charge a pair of very large AGM deep cell batteries I have hooked in series. It took them from near zero to full charge in a bit over 4 hours, topping them off slowly and then automatically shut down... perfect. It's light, easy to use, the cables, clamps and case are robust and should take a lot of use without failure.

One other thing of note, if you plug it into a small gas generator, on 4 amp charge it won't even bring the generator off idle. This allows you to charge batteries, and also run household items off the generator at the same time. Perfect for cabin or RV solar systems on rainy cloudy days when the solar panels won't provide enough and no "plug" is available.

I bought one of these 2 years and 10 days ago. I bought a second unit 1.5 years ago. One goes to the desert and is so smart I use it to replace my on board RV charging system. $[...] for this Smart Charger... or $[...] for a Smart On Board RV Charger... you do the math.

The unit that goes to the desert had a fan failure. I replaced it for $[...]. Good enough for me. The newer unit I rarely use that looks brand new just cooked two batteries. I didn't realize the charger went bad. I thought the batteries were junk cause they are old. But after swapping chargers I find that the newer unit was blowing max amps and boiling the crap out of the batteries... It could have started a fire for sure. Not happy with this.

Amazon has always said 2 year warranty on this unit like many retailers... but the B&D site says 5 years. So I called the service center that confirmed it is 5 Years Home User Warranty. They just happen to be located by my office so I'll drop it off tomorrow to the service center. They DON'T REPAIR them. They said B&D will send me a replacement unit directly within 14 days to my home no charge.

I loved the functionality of these chargers and I'll keep using them. Disappointed with the meltdown and worry about what if I had not been here to find the charger smoking my car. But thrilled with the warranty and service. In the future, I'll be pulling my batteries from my cars and charge them in a safe location. When I ran a shop years ago this was SOP for my guys. No burned down cars because of a bad battery or charger on my watch. I just need to practice what I preach.

And the really nice thing about buying here at Amazon... I don't even need to dig out my original receipt because I can print it from Amazon's records. NICE !

As of 12/9/10, I am downgrading the product to two stars because the warranty services has changed. In the last update, I noted that the Dewalt service center had cheerfully and quickly gotten me a replacement unit. Delightful! So when it broke again in the same way (the cooling fan stopped working again), I drove across the island to the same Dewalt outlet with the thing.

However, this time they told me to go away. In the intervening time, Black & Decker has decided not to support this product with their Dewalt network of service centers - offloading the entire line to "Baccus, Inc" which has only a center in Florida. Any problem with the unit? You have to mail it at your own expense to Florida. Inasmuch as it's pretty heavy, this is quite an expense.

So I'm downrating it to 2 stars. The warranty now isn't worth much to me, since the unit is often discounted to below what the shipping will cost to send it for warranty repair. If you live in Florida near "Baccus", maybe it'd be a better deal.
__________________________________________________________
previous update last year:

I've dramatically uprated this from 1 to 4 stars. Why? Well, you can see my original review below. According to the paperwork packaged with the one I got, the warranty is invalid if you haven't registered it in the first 30 days. HOWever, I decided to take it to the B&D warranty repair center anyhow, a bit of a trip so I waited until I'd be nearby. Well, they couldn't have been nicer. Just took my name, looking at the manufacturing code, and said they'd ship me a new one. Danged if they didn't, too - within a week I had it. My actual experience with Dewalt warranty service was excellent. So now the only reason I didn't give it 5 stars is that it broke in the first place under normal use, and that the weasel-worded warranty paperwork nearly stopped me from trying to get it repaired under warranty. So ignore the warranty paperwork inside and just take it to Dewalt if it breaks.

My original ornery review is below:

__________________________________________________________

I bought this from amazon and put it on the shelf for when I'd need it. Nobody actually needs to recharge their battery and orders one mailorder for a specific job, right?

Well, I opened it and used it about 5 months ago, seemed to work fine for the light duty I put it to. However, today I tried it and it was kaflooey, an error message and no recovery, the little fan doesn't go anymore to cool it, etc. This was just normal usage, no mistaken polarity, just used on a 12v car battery.

When I got it last year, it offered a 5 year warranty, not just the two years the Amazon ad claims now. Well, still, it broke within two years, so no harm, right? I'll just eat the shipping and mail it back for a fix.

WRONG! Reading the fine print, not "registering" it within 30 days of original purchase voids the warranty! Heck, I don't even think I GOT it for two weeks after the purchase date. I was supposed to open it and tear it apart looking for the fine-print warranty card the day it arrived? Didn't say that in the Amazon ad OR the outside of the box.

So it's junk. I got 5 months' use out of it before it failed during light normal use. I'll be checking into state laws RE sleazy warranties, but I thought as a public service I should let you know it's got a sleazy warranty. If you buy this, search the fine print and register it the day you get it, because in my experience it'll break a lot sooner than the warranty expires.

Amazon, if you read these, contact me. Thanks.

This is an excellent product that seems to do exactly what it is supposed to do and it does it well. Sturdy and easy to handle do to the relatively light weight (compare the weight of this charger to ones with the more conventional transformer design). On the 40 Amp setting it rapidly charged my trailer batteries without breaking a sweat and it didn't seem to mind running on generator power (even though there is a microprocessor inside). The User interface may seem a little odd but it's easy to get used to and the digital display is nice. Nice built-in pocket too for storing the power cord and charging "clips". I'm happy I returned the 20 Amp iron-heavy charger I had bought that wasn't doing the job and discovered and bought this one. Shop around, though, the price really varies.

An earlier review by Carolyn incorrectly stated that this device can start your vehicle when stranded on the roadside. It does not. That review was intended for a "jump start" device. This battery charger is to recharge weak batteries with the supplied power cord plugged into a 120 volt outlet. The only normal way this device would be helpful for someone on the road is if a 120 volt gasoline generator was available. Search for a "jumpstart" auxilary battery device if you seek a roadside assistance device to start your stranded vehicle.