Customer Reviews

Sunsei 25006 SE-500 7.5-Watt 15-Volt Solar Panel Battery Charger / Maintainer

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I purchased this for trickle charging the battery on my tractor. It tends to sit (covered) in a sunny spot, and, it is an electricity hog when I use the lights on it. It has worked well for about a month maintaining the charge on the battery, making up for the poor output of the old generator on the tractor, and boosting the starting and lighting power.

This unit provides a constance 0.5 amp charge. I have a few concerns. I hooked up a high quality voltmeter to it and the charge read somewhere between 16 volts and 18 volts (off the scale on my volt meter). Under a load (once connected to the battery) it may read a lower voltage but I have not measured it under load.

In any event, it charges the battery over a period of about four days and keeps it charged.

A real plus to this unit is that it is accompanied by an excellent array of leads. It has an extension cord that is about 8 feet long. There are four types of leads enclosed with the package.

The first are bare wires (+ and - (red & black)) that, on the other end, plug into the unit or the extension cord.

The second are a set of alligator clips (+ and - (red & black)) that, on the other end, plug into the unit or the extension cord.

The third is a male cigar lighter adapter that plugs into the unit or the extension cord.

The fourt is a female cigar lighter adapter that plugs into the unit or the extension cord.

All of the connections and leads are of good to high quality.

With these attachments, you have the versatility you need to hook it up to any vehicle or 12v battery.

This is well worth the $100 (approximate cost plus shipping).

In all fairness, I never expected to charge a dead battery with this. I leave my boat parked in the desert and I leave this plugged in. Week after week, I go back to the boat and it the battery is fully charged. I was worried that without a trickle charger that I would be "stuck" constantly looking for a jump or have to carry another jumper battery. With the SE-400, this has not been the case. I did buy the small charge controller (probably not needed) as well as the mounting equipment. The mounting arrangement was overpriced for what it was, but it works very well and is probably the simplest way to go. If you're handy, you could easily make your own. (This should be a separate review.) If you are looking for a trickle charger, I think this is an excellent solution.

The product is very nice and works as advertised. Sunsei did a nice job for the most part. Only issue with its design is the caps that cover the 2 power jacks on it fall off easily and are easily lost.

Other than that, the only problem is upon receiving it, it had two large cracks across the glass. It still works, but is no longer weatherproof. You cannot see these until you open and remove the panel from its blister pack. Mine was shipped from Vermont to Chicago via UPS. Even though the box had "FRAGILE" printed on it, they didn't take good care shipping it. In the future I'll look for this sort of product in an outdoors recreation store in the area.

I purchased this charger to help my tent trailer battery when we are camping without a hookup. It looks like it would be a great choice for the job, I like all the different cables and adapters that come with it.

However, like another reviewer noted, my panel arrived damaged. Not just a couple of cracks, but shattered. The box was marked fragile, but was not packed accordingly. No styrofoam peanuts, no plastic cushion bags, just some wadded up paper to take up the extra space in the shipping box. The shipping box didn't even look very beat up. I called customer service and was very pleased with their prompt replacement. However, the replacement unit arrived in the same shape. Shattered. I returned both of them and got my money refunded. I purchased a similar Sunsei unit at a local store and have been pleased with it.

Amazon, either you have a bunch of broken product on your shelves, or you need to change how you ship fragile items. Or both.

I bought two of these and they work great. They can be "daisy chained" which is ultra nice.

Plus there is a huge amount of extra wiring, plugs, adapters, etc... that comes with the unit.

i had just bought this panel at Bass Pro Shops and i took it out of the box and was satesfied at how such a small device can top off a deep cycle battery. i need this because i use a Deep cycle battery to run a minn kota 30lb thrust trolling motor.
i also like the fact that the charge is very sensitive even in a room with very little light, in other words dosent take no light as being a good answer, i highly recommend it for anyone that loves being outdoors

This is a nice little solar panel and I am not disappointed that I bought it. I would buy another one if I need one. I don't know how waterproof it is as I haven't used it in the rain. If you need a nice little solar panel then I'd suggest that you buy this one as it is a good quality product..Cheers.

I bought the SE-500 about 2 weeks ago and, I loved it, yes loved it. I bought this for charging the battery on my kayak, and it did the job very well. It took a couple of days but it got the job done. Yesterday I was loading my kayak into the back of my truck and I had left the cell on top of my kayak. As I was loading it, my new se-500 slid right off and hit the ground face down. I thought to myself O-SH**! Well since it didn't fall very far I was thinking it was OK but well....not so much......I contacted the company to see if they could help me out. They said, "Unfortunately, our warranty does not cover physical damage. We don't have any service centers to service the unit either." So ok, it was my fault....but no service centers??? I just bought this thing, now it's a piece of junk?!!!

On their website it also says, "Sunsei® is a customer-centric company. From pre-purchase decision making, to technical support, through our warranty guarantees, we are renowned for our commitment to customer satisfaction and expert advice."

Customer satifaction with no Service Centers....Hmmmmm thank god I didn't buy one of their more expensive models. If you buy one of these things they are great, but don't ever damage it, drop it or hit it with a rock, baseball, hail, ice, and you wouldn't want a bunch of kids playing around it either, it gets expensive really fast....with no service centers to repair damage your fault or not....not cool Im not satisfied. I'm giving the se-500 3 stars because it was actually a good product 1 second before it hit the ground, otherwise sunsei customer satifaction 1 or none.