ANCEL BST500 12V 24V Car Battery Tester with Printer, Battery Load Tester

I don't leave many Amazon reviews. But this little guy deserves a LOT of praise: -Interface is very straight forward and easy to use. -Backlit display is clean and clear regardless of lighting -I'm able to take crystal clear photos of the results and text them to my customers, to alert them if their battery is on the fence or needs replacing -Printer works perfectly when you need a hard copy for the customer -Cost is incredible for how well this works -And the one item no one here has mentioned: SPEED! See my notes below for the speed portion. This thing is Tesla fast... I run a small auto repair shop I've had since 2013. I've wanted and needed a quality battery tester for YEARS, but it was always out of budget. Midtronics dominates this part of the auto tool market, but their equipment runs $500-2500. My grievance with the MT testers I have used in the last 10 years is speed: they are sloooooow. Very capable, but slow with each step, and they require you to take additional steps to enter a ton of unwanted data. The yield: the most basic battery test can take up 3-5 minutes on the Midtronics tools found in most big name shops. The ANCEL I found here will produce a solid, accurate battery test result in under 8 seconds. Gives me the voltage, also represents it as a % of charge, and a clear amp measurement of the CCA. If you just want to find out if your battery is good/bad, strong/weak or omniscience's the fence, this tool handles all of it. For a quality battery tester under $400, this is truly the best I've found. Hope this helps!

I do a lot of side job automotive repairs in my spare time. Testing the battery is an easy test to do. Before, I would have to write down what the test results were and remember to provide that to the customer. Now with this Ancel, I can just print the actual test results and leave it in the car so I won't forget. I tested two different batteries along with two other battery load testers. All 3 gave the same results, so I know this one is accurate. The only difference is that this one has a built-in printer. After printing, I can tape the results to the battery for later use. The thermal printer is a neat idea, as you would never have to worry about running out of ink.

As a service adviser, this is a great tool to have in your arsenal when you can quickly grab and test a battery and give a print out to show the customer. Of course at the shop, we do have professional Snap-on equipment to test batteries, but can never find it when you need it in a hurry. So it definitely helps to have a personal item that I have handy. All in all, it works great, just as accurate as our Snap-on tester, but at a great affordable pricing. The reason why it's getting 4 stars instead of a full 5 star review is that it could definitely use improvement. I do understand that this is a budget tester that comes included with a printer when competitors are charging more than twice the amount for a printer, but small things could be done better. The "rugged grippy case" that's in the description is definitely not the case for one, it's just hard molded plastic. A little bit of rubber padding on the sides would be nice. Speaking of the case, a magnet on the back would be nice to keep the cables in check, and to attach it to a body panel while doing testing. The printer, although a very good selling feature on this unit is a bit flimsy. The paper feed slit is not very large, and paper would get curled back up inside the housing, causing you to need to open the cover to remove the printout or requiring you to first pull some paper out before printing. A larger slit or a paper feed button would've been nice. The last thing is not being able to print out readings for alternator or starter results. The only thing that's able to print is a the battery reading. With it having a printer, I would say that was a huge oversight.

I work in the motorsports industry (motorcycles, ATVs, UTV's, PWCs, etc.) and have specialized testers for the batteries used in these products, but I didn't have a tester for larger batteries and decided to try this one from ANCEL. Once received, the first thing I noticed was that it is easy to operate, even without reading the manual. You basically just have to hook it up to a battery and follow the onscreen commands. (The backlit screen is easy to read.). Instead of writing these steps out I have provided some screenshots below that show the different screens you will encounter when checking a battery. (see 1st 4 pics) *Battery Type: 12V Model *RESULT: Replace Battery *VOLTAGE: 12.38 V *INT RES: 14.12 mΩ (internal resistance, anything over 10 is not good) *SOH: 15% (state of health) *CAP. Act: 198 CCA (current cold cranking amp capacity) *CAP Std: 500 CCA (rated cold cranking amp capacity) *DATE/SER. NO: 00000000 (insert date here if you want) At the end of the test you can choose to print the test results, a sample of a tested bad battery below. Note: The printer uses thermal paper which requires no ink. This tester can also test the charging system of your vehicle, providing results of the charging system while the vehicle is running with a load. I've included a few screenshots below and will update this review once I have had a chance to use these features more. (see last pic) Overall I think this is a very nice battery tester and charge analyzer. It is very easy to use and the ability to print out the test results either for your own personal reference or to attach to a customer repair order is extremely handy. The only slight negative is I wish it came with a case, but cases are cheap so this is not a big deal to me. I will update this review once I have used this tester a little more.

I really did like this battery tester when it was new. It didnt take long before the printer started having problems, the paper always gets stuck and sometimes when it prints then there is nothing there. As far as testing batteries i did have two instances when the battery tested good but it was indeed bad. One time was on a Chevy Silverado with a liftgate. Client used the liftgate twice when the truck wasnt running and the battery died. They were able to get it jump started and drove it back to their yard. I got to the yard later, the truck started up just fine for me upon arrival and the battery tester indicated the battery was good. But I used the liftgate (brought it down and then back up with only using my body weight (i weighed about 210) and the battery started to die because it wasnt holding a charge. I ended up replacing the battery after kind of being embarrassed that the tester said the battery was good and showing them the results from this tester. I will look for a battery tester that can actually put a load on the battery to see how strong it is in the future.

Thanks for sharing!!!!!

I am a heavy equipment Technician. I compared this unit to the 700 dollar tester that our shop has. It does the same tests and it matches the accuracy of the expensive unit we have in our shop. I tested a 720 EN rated battery this morning that failed. Voltage rating and EN reading were within .02 volts of each other and the EN Amp reading was within 2 amps of each other. I am impressed and several techs I work with now want to purchase one for themselves. I especially like that I can put the machine serial number in on the printout tag. Helps with our warranty claims.

Great deal

ممتاز

Nice easy product and great value for price, works great

I have used this on several occasions and works great.

Great

The tester came very quickly, and has worked very well. It is easy to use and has been great tool for selling more batteries.