One of our favourite trickle chargers and brand range topper, the CTEK CS FREE, is currently on sale for November’s Black Friday season. You get a saving of nearly 50% off CTEK’s flagship model.
We’ve tried one for ourselves and found it was a useful device if you live and travel to remote areas. It also doubles as a versatile power bank too.
Grab one now and it’ll cost you a few pence over £166. That’s reduced from the original retail value of £319.99. (That is before extras). Keep reading this review to find out more about this brilliant trickle charger and why it’s now an incredible bargain.
Black Friday deals are available across the web: | Amazon | Argos | John Lewis |
On sale
Rrp: $199.95
Rrp: $199.95
Pros
- Durable build quality
- Can be taken anywhere
Cons
- The solar panel option won't be to everyone's taste
It’s stressful enough when your day grinds to a halt. Plenty of us will have been through this, going to start up our car and being left with a few flickering dash lights instead. The silence is deafening, and that’s if we’re lucky enough to even unlock the car remotely in the first place. You’ll kick yourself for not investing in a top-rated battery charger.
There are ways to minimise that anxiety in the future and opting for a trickle charger is one of them. We’ve been getting to grips with the CTEK CS FREE. It’s a unique portable battery pack that can trickle charge your car battery and also be powerful enough to boost a flat one.
You can also order the CTEK CS Free with the solar panel charge kit. This is for when you’re out and about separately, which we’ve also tested here.
Installation
The CS FREE comes with a USB-C cable, wall plug with adaptors for UK, EU and US sockets, and battery clamps. The solar panel charger comes with a storage bag and charge cable.
The charger looks and feels hefty, made with durable plastic. It’s also fitted with neat rubber grips on the base of each corner to stop it sliding around.
It might feel weighty compared with a power bank for your phone, but this is far beefier than that. It’s not just a lifesaver for your vehicle but multiple electronic devices too, thanks to the additional USB-A and C ports.
The instruction manuals are diagram-heavy, so you do need to spend time deciding what they’re all trying to convey. But it’s otherwise very straightforward and fool-proof to set up and use.
With clearly labelled rubber tabs for the output and input sockets, you won’t attach the cables at the wrong end. That, coupled with the fact the sockets vary significantly.
Setting up the solar panel is just as easy. The storage case doubles up as a stand, and while it can be a little tricky hooking the panel onto it initially, this is as fiddly as it gets.
Usage
We’ll start with getting the CS FREE battery pack charged up.
For us, we went straight for the solar panel as our means of charging to test the worst-case scenario for when a mains power source isn’t available.
The smaller ring of lights surrounding the power button indicates how much battery life you have. Each of the four segments accounting for 25% increments.
On a mostly sunny day with patchy clouds, it took roughly three hours to get a full battery. Even if you needed just enough juice to start the car once, this wouldn’t take much time. It’s not as quick as jump-starting using cables and a donor vehicle, but it’s designed to balance getting your vehicle battery revived soon enough without damaging it in the process. Ideally, if you are camping you could just leave the solar panel out while you were doing something else.
Alternatively, you can charge via a three-pin plug, a 12v socket or even from a service battery, provided you have the correct accessory cable. Predictably, the wall socket is quickest, with charging time claimed to drop to an hour for a 0-80% charge.
The pack will hold charge for up to a year and has a life span of 300 cycles.
Resuscitating
With the CS FREE ready to go, you simply connect it to the vehicle battery using the clamps and switch it on. The charger then automatically assesses what to do, opting to use Adaptive Boost if your battery is that flat.
Starting with a single flashing light under Start means the vehicle battery is flat and the charger will be using the Adaptive Boost function to try to give you enough charge in 15 minutes. For us, it indicated eight hours before it got our vehicle battery up to full health.
Any drawbacks?
The clamps, being small and portable, don’t feel as though they’ll bite onto the battery terminals that tightly. It’s fine for a quick charge, but if you plan to leave them on there for a longer period, you may attach them to a slimmer section. The pack is smart enough to protect against reverse polarity, though. It prevents damage when the clamps are attached to the wrong terminals. The clamps themselves are also spark-free.
It’s quite an expensive thing too. In terms of versatility and mobility and quality, we have no qualms. However, they’re quite rare circumstances where the CS FREE is uniquely useful. A quality smart battery charger, including from CTEK itself, can be half the price.
Verdict
The CTEK CS Free is pricey and perhaps overkill for some needs, especially if your car’s flat battery was a one-off. With more regular usage, a cheaper trickle charger will do just fine to use occasionally. However, if you keep it in the car, there is the adaptive boost function to fall back on if you ever get caught out.
For those thinking outside the commuter box who tend to spend more time away remotely, the CS FREE makes more sense. If you’re an avid camper, for example, this CTEK charger is more than a one-trick pony. It doubles as a power bank for multiple electronic devices when a three-pin plug socket is far out of reach.
CTEK CS FREE
Price: £184.77 | VIEW OFFER
CTEK 60W Solar Panel Charge Kit
Price: £319.99 | VIEW OFFER
More items to consider
CTEK CT5 Time to Go Battery Charger, £74.86
NOCO Boost X GBX45 Portable Jump Starter, £134.95
Hyundai HYBC-10 Battery Boost Charger, £79.99
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