General Geoff
Well-known member
For anyone wanting a compact lithium-ion jump box, I was recently sent this Suaoki U18 to review by a manufacturer representative. Thought I'd put it through its paces to determine if it's worth the asking price of $90, or about $72 after a 20% off coupon available now on amazon.
It comes in this great little case that also houses the charging and jumper cables.
Reading through the instruction manual, it specifically says that it will provide full power for a car jump for about 30 seconds at a time (after which it will shut off), so you kinda have to plan your procedure before hooking it up to your weak battery before trying to jump it.
The jump leads are pretty short, but they do form a single solid block that connects to the boost box itself, so you can get the alligator clips (which open surprisingly wide) situated before hooking up the jump box. After that's all set, you just peel back a thick rubber boot on the jump box and plug the boost cable connector into it. The green light on the boost cable connector comes on, which means it recognizes a positive voltage above 1V, and it's providing maximum juice. Then you just get in the car and give it a crank.
I did this test with a deep-cycle Optima AGM battery run down to about 11.8 volts at rest, and it did not have enough oomph to crank over the 5.8l V8 in my truck on its own. I hooked up the Suaoki U18 to it, and it brought up resting voltage to about 16V. I also set up my DMM to record min/max voltage while I got in the truck and cranked. Without the boost box, voltage dropped to ~9 volts
With the boost box, it kept cranking voltage at 10.94 under full load. It was plenty to get the engine cranking over quickly, and started the engine within a couple seconds.
They advise in the instruction manual to wait a few minutes between crank attempts with this box, as it does get a bit warm after a few seconds of starter cranking. But it does work pretty well. It also comes with a very handy car charger to recharge the unit after getting your car started:
Aside from that, it will recharge multiple cell phones at a time and also has a flashlight function, though it's not super bright (but will probably run for a day or two between charges if that's all you're using it for). At full charge, the box is rated for 59 W/h, which should be enough to fully charge 6 cell phones.
In summation,it's a great little box to keep in your trunk that doesn't provide amazing power to start a big diesel engine with a completely dead battery, but it should be plenty to assist a weak battery on a cold winter night, without needing to lug around a big, 20 lb JNC660.
The various charging options (between USB-C, an AC wall adapter, and a 12VDC car charger), it should be pretty easy to keep it topped up for use. The manual does recommend not to leave it plugged in and charging for more than 10 hours, so that may be of concern to folks who like to just leave their boost boxes plugged in indefinitely between use. But for its intended role of sitting in the trunk until the need arises, the Suaoki U18 should work great.
It comes in this great little case that also houses the charging and jumper cables.
Reading through the instruction manual, it specifically says that it will provide full power for a car jump for about 30 seconds at a time (after which it will shut off), so you kinda have to plan your procedure before hooking it up to your weak battery before trying to jump it.
The jump leads are pretty short, but they do form a single solid block that connects to the boost box itself, so you can get the alligator clips (which open surprisingly wide) situated before hooking up the jump box. After that's all set, you just peel back a thick rubber boot on the jump box and plug the boost cable connector into it. The green light on the boost cable connector comes on, which means it recognizes a positive voltage above 1V, and it's providing maximum juice. Then you just get in the car and give it a crank.
I did this test with a deep-cycle Optima AGM battery run down to about 11.8 volts at rest, and it did not have enough oomph to crank over the 5.8l V8 in my truck on its own. I hooked up the Suaoki U18 to it, and it brought up resting voltage to about 16V. I also set up my DMM to record min/max voltage while I got in the truck and cranked. Without the boost box, voltage dropped to ~9 volts
With the boost box, it kept cranking voltage at 10.94 under full load. It was plenty to get the engine cranking over quickly, and started the engine within a couple seconds.
They advise in the instruction manual to wait a few minutes between crank attempts with this box, as it does get a bit warm after a few seconds of starter cranking. But it does work pretty well. It also comes with a very handy car charger to recharge the unit after getting your car started:
Aside from that, it will recharge multiple cell phones at a time and also has a flashlight function, though it's not super bright (but will probably run for a day or two between charges if that's all you're using it for). At full charge, the box is rated for 59 W/h, which should be enough to fully charge 6 cell phones.
In summation,it's a great little box to keep in your trunk that doesn't provide amazing power to start a big diesel engine with a completely dead battery, but it should be plenty to assist a weak battery on a cold winter night, without needing to lug around a big, 20 lb JNC660.
The various charging options (between USB-C, an AC wall adapter, and a 12VDC car charger), it should be pretty easy to keep it topped up for use. The manual does recommend not to leave it plugged in and charging for more than 10 hours, so that may be of concern to folks who like to just leave their boost boxes plugged in indefinitely between use. But for its intended role of sitting in the trunk until the need arises, the Suaoki U18 should work great.
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