The Swiss Army Knife of Emergency Batteries
Last year, at ICAST 2015, we met the folks over at Weego for the very first time and were very encouraged by their portable, emergency starter battery technology. All the units were very reasonably sized and priced and seemed like a good way to have an added bit of insurance when out on the road or water - provided you remembered to bring a charged unit with you that is. This year, the company introduced a unit that's more than just an emergency starter battery making it more likely for you to have around when you're in the outdoors.
Weego Jump Starter 44: The Weego Jump Starter 44 is more than just a battery. It comes with two LED lights at the top of the battery that serve as a flashlight providing up to 500 lumens of light for up to fourteen hours on a full charge. The battery function has its own power button and you have the ability to use the lights as an emergency strobe and/or to send out an SOS signal. Take a look at the top of the battery, flip open the water resistant plastic lens that covers the two LED lights and you discover in between those bulbs a series of ports. One of the ports is, of course used to hook the unit's Smarty Clamps to hook up to your battery, but above that port is one 19V power port to charge laptops, one 12v power port to power/charge marine accessories, air compressors, lanterns, etc.. Then, last but not least is a quick-charge USB port for personal devices such as phones, tablets and more! It seems so simple, but this is indeed a full service battery. You can even use it to trickle charge your trolling motor batteries!
The unit comes in its own case that resembles an old school lunch pale. Inside the pale along with the battery is a set of Smarty Clamps. These are aptly named as on one side of these clamps are a set of red and green LED warning lights that light up in different combinations to signal everything from a overheated battery to a cranking time out to surge protection to improper hook up on the batteries. It's a safety device built into your battery cable clamps.
