Powerstation 1200 Amp

A 20ah gel cell or sealed lead acid battery cannot deliver 1200 amps to the jumper leads, nowhere near it.
It may assist in starting a car with a battery a bit to flat to start itself if a few more amps are available from the unit at the battery clips. 1200 amps? NO.
Because it is a lead acid battery and many times charges are designed to be on 240v all the time because the circuitry monitors the battery condition/voltage.
Unless you need to have it on ALL the time I would not do that, because the battery and charger and box it is in, is a similar price to a small dedicated charger only. Possibly the circuit may turn down the charge rate, but it will be less technical than than purpose built chargers. Therefore trust in the sales pitch has to be strong to leave it on all the time.
After it is charged, why not run it on a timer for a 1 hr a day if need be and it will be ready for use when required.

When you say it was on special, was that a genuine new stock ON SPECIAL or older stock on special to move it out of the store?
A unit which has been on the shelf for a while, ie, many months will mean they haven't charged it and the lead acid battery may be damaged/stuffed because of sitting with low charge for a long time. If damaged internally, ie sulphated, no amount of charge will restore a dud battery.

Yeh . .... a 22AH Sealed Lead Acid is MIGHT, produce 1200 amps short circuit for a very very short time( may be a millisecond), but I ain't going to come anywhere near 1200 cranking amps.

BUT .... they will jump start a small car ..... seen it done ..... but ya only gona get one shot and not much cranking.

Most small car starter motors have a stall current around 100 to 120 amps .... and probably spin the motor at around 50 to 80 amps. ..... within the capability of a healthy fully charged 22AH battery.

As for the charger ...... yeh they are calling it a two stage charger ... it will be a simple voltage regulated, current limited charger ..... perhaps bassed on a common 3 terminal regulator.

That means that it will be regulated at 13.8V or there abouts and current limited at 1.5 amps or something.

In the early stage of charge it current limits ( thus the voltage drops), until the state of charge rises then it will float charge at the nominated voltage.

Nothing special nothing staggering.

But if left uncharged, the battery will self discharge over time.

If you don't want to leave it on charge all the time, put it on charge overnight once a week.

cheers

I have a couple of Supercheap Aust jump packs.
The purple one is supposedly 1900 amps, and has 2 x 18 amp/hr batteries (36 amp/hr).
The yellow pack is 900amps, and has the 1 x 18 amp/hr.

I use them for another work related purpose in general, but the few times in 4 or 5 years I have had to start the Ranger with them, the yellow is virtually useless if only a little assist was needed.
The purple pack is adequate, but (as with leaving a battery hooked up to another vehicles battery while running) I find leaving the pack hooked up to the flat battery for a few minutes before start attempt is helpful in putting a little charge into the main battery.

Interestingly, SCA only sell current jump packs without the amps info on them now, just rated 4 cyl, 6 cyl, 8 cyl, 8 cyl heavy duty.

Two things I've learnt about Chinese products over few decades of buying their stuff (and who hasn't got 2/3rds of their possessions, from clothes to batteries, made in China?).

One - Chinese never fail to overstate the capacity and performance of their products - particularly electrical products.
They live in a society which is one of the most competitive in the world - and they face intense competition throughout the world in every market.

One way of beating that competition is to claim your Chinese product is stronger, lasts longer and produces more power than any other competing product.
No need to fear any regulatory backlash from false claims, it never happens, because once it's in another country, it's in another jurisdiction.

It's not like the ACCC or Consumer Law can impose penalties on any Chinese manufacturer. They are free to make any claims they like, and they do so with impunity.

Two - of the 1.4 billion Chinese, only a tiny fraction speak, write, or understand English - or even understand numbers.

They have 10 different dialects amongst themselves, and quite often, Mandarin speakers from one part of the country, are struggling to make themselves understood, by Mandarin speakers from another part of the country!

98% of the population are still the illiterate peasant class. The Chinese employ the illiterate peasants by the hundreds of millions, to manufacture and assemble the products we buy.

These peasants are instructed to place decals, ID plates, instructions, size measurements, and a host of other information on those products - in a foreign language they don't understand - and usually drawing on various types and numbers of those decals, ID plates, instructions, and sizes, from dozens of containers, holding all those various pieces of information.

Little wonder then, that the peasants care not, whether a decal says 300 amps or 1200 amps - it's all just puzzling Engrish to them!

They grab what they think is the right decal - and unless a supervisor with tight managerial control and good English skills, is actually controlling exactly what they install, it can be a real piece of guesswork for them.

The bottom line is, there are so few of those Chinese supervisors with those kind of skills, you would be lucky to find half a dozen in each factory, where thousands of peasants are employed.
You only have to look at the instructions you get with every Chinese item to realise that their grasp of English - even when they are supposed to be competent in English - is very poor indeed.

You can understand what it would be like, if we were all employed in factories, and asked to put the right labels on the products, in Mandarin!

Cheers, Ron.