Audew Portable Jump Starter Review
We’ve all had a dead battery in our car before. I’ve accidentally left my headlights on in a parking lot, only to return to a dead battery. Waiting for AAA to come out for something stupid like that is pretty embarrassing. Having a portable jump starter in your trunk alleviates that headache, giving you an option to get your car going on your own. A brand manager for Audew reached out to us a few weeks back to test out some of their automotive gear. They have a number of car accessories, including LED headlight conversion kits, and they are pretty active on Amazon, so I figured they would be a good fit.
The model I’ll be taking a look at is the 500A 13,800 mAH Portable Jump Starter. It works on gas engines up to 5 liters and diesel engines up to 3. Fully charged, the unit is supposed to be able to be used up to 20 times.
The Jump Starter comes in a hard-sided zipper case to hold all the accessories. There’s a small strap on the side which made it easy to pull it out of the box. The who setup is a lot nicer than I was anticipating. Usually with car parts, you get one of those plastic blister packs that you toss after you manage to get it open. Audew gives a good first impression on the product, and I can appreciate that.
On the top portion of the case is a mesh zipper pouch that has the actual jump starter plug, a house and car charger, a male DC jack to cigarette lighter socket, and a multi-port USB charging cable that includes Apple’s Lightning connector, the older Apple 30-pin connector, and a Micro USB port. While I would have liked to see a USB-C port instead of the antiquated 30-pin Apple connector, I wasn’t expecting the multi-port cable to be included anyways.
The lower part is covered by a flap and has the manual, a warranty card, and the unit itself. I was surprised at how compact the device is. It measures 6.5625 x 2.875 x 1.125 inches (16.67 x 7.3 x 2.86 cm). The jump starters I’ve used in the past have been bulky and rudimentary. This jump starter has some great features including a 12V 10A DC output jack, so you can run devices that use a cigarette plug, the standard 3-function emergency flashlight (on, strobing, S.O.S.), and two USB charging ports (2.1A & 1A) for a smartphone and tablet to be charged simultaneously.
My jump starter came charged with 3 out of 4 lights, which is 75% charged. I figured I’d start off by testing the unit at its current charge level, so I drained my car battery by leaving the headlights on overnight, and sure enough it wouldn’t do anything when I turned the key. I hooked the jump starter up to my non-starting Scion XB, pressed the button, and my car started right up. Unfortunately for testing purposes, this is only a 2.4L 4 cylinder engine, so without access to a larger engine, I figured I’d test the battery performance.
Testing the Battery Performance
I started off by charging the device. At 75%, it only took around 40 minutes to fully charge. According to the manual, it takes 3 to 4 hours to fully charge the unit from 0%. I wanted to test out the 12V 10A output, since this is a great feature here in Florida, especially with hurricane season around the corner. I hooked up a portable DC fan that pulls 12V at about half an amp, so 6W. The battery specs say it’s a say it’s 51.06 Wh, so it should stay on for a theoretical maximum of 8.51 hours. I hooked up my multimeter to the output so I could get voltage measurements at regular intervals. The initial voltage was between 12.29 and 12.39V. I came to check on the battery after it was on for 2 hours and the voltage had dipped to 11.51V. Around 2 hours and 20 minutes in, the indicator light showed a 75% charge. So far it’s been in line with the watt-hours the unit specified. At the 4 hour mark, the voltage dropped to 11.25V. Around 5 hours and 30 minutes, the indicator finally showed 50% and was at 10.96V. After 6 hours and 30 minutes, it showed 25% and 10.77V. Finally after 7 hours and change, the unit finally shut off. I couldn’t get a final voltage rating, but I’m almost positive it has a shutoff to prevent the battery from getting too low, so it likely still had juice leftover. Regardless, this still exceeded what I was expecting it to be able to put out. I plugged the jump starter in to let it charge overnight.
Conclusions
After using the Audew Jump Starter for the past few weeks, I can definitely recommend picking one of these up. It is perfect for a car’s emergency kit, but I would also recommend having it in a bug-out bag. The 12V 10A DC jack is the feature I appreciated the most. I was able to get just over 7 hours out of it using my portable fan. This is great to have if you lose power in Florida after a hurricane like we had last year.
