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I can't keep on troubling friends and family, nor can I ever count on a good samaritan there to help jump start my car. I've had bad experiences with Motormaster's car boosters before, so I was definitely gun shy with NOCO's Boost X GBX75.
I knew I needed something that can go above and beyond, my car battery is often going to be in that state, so I opted to go for the GBX75's 2500A model, it borderlines ridiculous.
The good news is that NOCO's Boost X GBX75 did the job, although I had to activate the override to provide the absurd amount of juice needed to revive my car, but sure enough it did the trick.
So why the 4 star instead of 5? That's because of the accessory that should have been included with the NOCO Boost X GBX75. Something of this price point should have also included the charging adapter.
There's so many chargers out there as well, the lower performing ones that delivers 2.5W charger rating can take as long as 40 hours to recharge from 0 to 100%! 5W decreases the recharging time to 20 hours. 10W drops it to 10 hours. This product is capable of fast charging using the USB PD3.0 protocol, delivering 60W for 1.7 hours of charge time.
Very few people know about what adapters to get. Some people might think they're getting a 60W adapter, but in reality it's a marketing trick where one port delivers 45W while the second delivers the remaining 15W. That's a lot to learn, and honestly I don't think there's enough people out there willing to go through the process of figuring out which charger to get and some that do might still make mistakes. That's a VERY frustrating experience. NOCO shouldn't be nickel and diming its customers like this. Include the power charger adapter in the future, take the guess work and margin of mistakes out of the equation for your customers, please. It's a great product, but it could've been a perfect one.
For other people who might not be car tech savvy. Here's what I learned that I hope I can pass on to you.
When they say that this product will only work on lead acid batteries, don't freak out if your car battery is AGM. AGM is still a lead acid-based battery, it's just the design inside is different that's all, it'll work just fine.
When looking for a charger adapter, pay careful attention to several areas:
- How much watts it is able to put out, and more importantly, can one of the ports be capable of pumping out 60W, or was it a clever marketing gimmick words tricking people when in reality no one port actually delivers 60W, and it's actually two or more ports that totals up to 60W.
- Make sure that your adapter is actually capable of USB certified Power Delivery 3.0. It's often short-formed as PD3.0. The USB-C chargers is in a wild west territory, with some products out there not actually truly certified for PD3.0 standards. They just say they can do it, but they're not certified for it so it might not really be able to do what the manufacturer claims it can.
- I used my Pixel 3a charger adapter to charge this product. It was the only adapter that could supply the highest wattage that I can find in my house. Pay attention to what USB-C adapters you have, the ones that powers your phones, laptop, or tablet just might be able to do the job. You might not need to shell out $40+ for a new adapter if you can tolerate a 10 hour wait.
I'll probably update this review during the winter. I suspect I'll have more dead battery issues by then, and given the colder weather it'll definitely challenge this product even more.
Hopefully this review and the lessons I learned will help guide your own journeys. The product isn't bad, not by a long shot, it just falls short from a perfect package because NOCO decided to cheap out and not include a charging adapter and leaving it to their customers to fumble around finding what works. That's not going to leave a good impression for the customers, and if they screw up and get a cheap adapter that has horrible recharge time then they just might associate that failure with the product. This kind of nickel and diming isn't worth it, NOCO!
