The $45 Gizmo I Won’t Drive Without
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One cold February morning this year, I climbed into my tiny, ever-dependable Prius C, pushed the start button, and the 13-year-old hybrid defied me in a way it never had before. Every light on the dash started blinking in a rapid, irregular rhythm before the whole machine just shut down. My battery was dead, my toddler was hungry, it was below freezing outside, and I was stranded on a sleepy street in western Queens with my closest jump start about an hour away. Disaster.
But really, my panic and toddler-dad catastrophizing aside, this was a temporary and surmountable problem with a clear solution.Just flag down a friendly fellow motorist, hook a set of jumper cables from their car to yours, and jump the dead battery.Yet that still requires cables — and the kindness of strangers. I had neither. My own dad ended up coming to my aid after a long stretch of waiting, but there is actually a far simpler way to solve this problem that requires just one little gizmo and no other people: a portable jump starter. These fit snugly in a glove compartment and costjust $45. I bought one immediately.
The one I chose was the AstroAI S8. It’s highly rated, recommended often byexperts, holds a reliable charge for months, and is truly tiny. I can grip it securely with one hand, and it lives semi-permanently in my glove box. (Like many batteries, it’s best to keep this one within the temperature ranges specified in the manual.)In the four months since I bought it, it still holds a battery charge of 100 percent.
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Construction-wise, it’s pretty sturdy. The AstroAI is encased in a tough plastic shell — and holding it reminds me most of holding the sort of heftymedium-size drill-bit setyou might find at Home Depot. It’s also very easy to use. It comes with a short set of charging cables tipped with alligator clips that feed into the car battery from the side. A set of lights on the cables confirm that they are correctly placed for a jump. Separate indicator lights display the percentage of charge remaining on the battery, and the unit also has a handy flashlight and two USB ports that can revive your other devices in a pinch. You charge it with a USB cable that feeds into a dedicated side as well, and everything fits tidily into a small drawstring pouch that comes included.
When you’re ready to use it, just attach the cables to your car’s battery (red cable to the positive end, black to the negative), confirm that you see a steady green indicator light on the cable clamp, and start your car. (If you don’t see a green light, that means your car battery is so dead the unit can’t detect it; if so, push the S8’s “Boost” button once, then start the car.) Importantly, as a warning label notes, it’s designed to jump run-of-the-mill 12V road-vehicle batteries only, not “airplanes or other 24V vehicles/boats.” If you want a slightly upgraded model, the AstroAI S8 Ultra has even better reviews and ison sale for about $30 moreright now.
As for the one I own, the S8 unit’s size and portability obviously help maximize storage space, but it also makes reaching your battery easier when you consider situations like mine. While some users complain about how short the cables are, their length can be a real asset depending on where the battery is in the car. Instead of under the hood, my Prius’s battery was located beneath the rear right-side passenger seat. (Youcanjump it under the hood, as I learned on YouTube, but it requires quite a bit more effort.) Its placement made it especially tricky to connect traditional cables from under the hood of another car, doubly so because I had parallel parked along a sidewalk. I managed to jump it after a tedious process of trial and error that involved running cables through my trunk and blocking street traffic for several minutes, but if I had had the S8 that day, I would’ve just clipped the cables on, started the car, and been on my way.
Later in spring, we offloaded our Prius to my little sister in favor of a larger car that could better accommodate my family but not before its battery died, yet again, this time in my dad’s driveway. A portable charger revived it instantaneously. Nowadays I can’t imagine driving regularly — let alone late at night or on a long summer road trip or in an especially chilly, battery-sucking winter — without one. For less than $50, sanity comes pretty cheap.
More useful gadgets to keep in your car
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Prevents stuff from falling in that car-seat gap.
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You’ll never have to go to the gas station to top off your tires again.
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