Give yourself 1500 amps of jump-start peace of mind for $49 – Roadshow [CNET]

Have you ever had a dead car battery? Unless you have a road service membership, you might be in for an unpleasant and expensive afternoon. Jump-starting your car with jumper cables and another vehicle’s car is awkward, sometimes dangerous, and requires access to that other vehicle. A better option? Carry a jump-start battery around in your own car. It’s the automotive equivalent of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. Good jump starters start around $50 and rocket up through $200, but I’ve got a deal here on a well-reviewed battery that usually lists for $80. Right now, you can get the Gooloo 1500A Jump Starter for $49 when you click the coupon on the product page and apply discount code 5AS6L4JQ at checkout.

Gooloo says the battery can jump-start cars with up to 8-liter gas engines or 6-liter diesels. Using it is easy: Just plug the included jumper cables into a socket on the battery and then clip them to your car battery — red to positive, black to negative — and start the car. After it turns over, disconnect the battery and you’re on your way. The battery should hold its charge in storage for at least three months before you need to top it off again, which you can do with the USB-C quick-charge port.

If you are wary of jump-starting your car, you’ll probably appreciate the various  built-in safety protections, such as from over-current, overload, over-voltage, over-charge and high-temperature — as well as what I consider the single most important feature, reverse polarity protection. That prevents things from going sideways if you connect the clamps to the wrong battery poles. 

While most jump starters are typically just failsafe batteries you leave in the trunk just in case and never think much about, this one doubles as a 15,000-mAh power bank. You’ll find two USB-A ports, which, along with the bi-directional USB-C port, can all be used to charge portable devices. And it has an LED flashlight built in as well. 

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