Gilles Caron is the people person at Best Batteries: communication, partnerships, the link with brands and suppliers. But behind the communications manager's suit hides a car enthusiast who never really left the family garage where he grew up, surrounded by engines and batteries. It was only natural that he became the site's go-to tester for car equipment: jump starters, chargers, auxiliary batteries, inverters, everything that connects portable power to the world of the road.
His method bears the mark of his playing field: he likes products that have to prove themselves in unforgiving conditions, on a frosty morning, in a car park, at the edge of a country road. He checks compatibility with petrol, diesel and hybrid engines, puts the clamps and safety features through their paces (reverse polarity, short circuit), and measures how they really hold up over time. His role in partnerships also gives him a keen read on the market: he can tell the brands that genuinely innovate from those that merely follow, and that feeds his articles on bidirectional charging or choosing a jump starter.
On Au Frais, he extends this expertise in 12-volt power and mobility to compressor cool boxes, where he assesses cooling speed, consumption and noise level. Two worlds, one obsession: power that follows the user on the move.
A driver at heart, keen on rallying and off-road raids, Gilles often tests his gear in the boot of his own car, so much so that the team nicknames him the "rolling laboratory". A photographer in his spare time, he is also the one who shoots part of the site's product visuals. Since his divorce he spends Wednesdays with his daughter, who has inherited his little home-made game: guessing, by hand, the weight of a battery.
With three ports active at the same time, this cigarette lighter charger promises to keep everyone in the car topped up. The promise holds, but the advertised 30W is a shared ceiling between the ports, well below the sum of what each one can deliver on its own.
Published on September 30, 2026 by Gilles
On a vehicle built to leave at a moment's notice, every accessory drawing on the starter battery is a liability. Dual batteries, a DC-DC charger and a jump starter that never leaves the vehicle: the electrical setup that guarantees the engine starts, every time.
Published on September 20, 2026 by Gilles
An automatic transfer switch between shore power and battery power in 50 milliseconds, built in as standard on an inverter priced under $150: that is the rarest feature in this segment, where pure sine wave rivals usually charge extra for a separate accessory. Here is what its 1000 continuous watts, its standby draw, and the included cables are really worth.
Published on September 16, 2026 by Gilles
Fossibot claims 580W on the move for $199, but this alternator charger does not recharge a service battery the way its rivals do: it feeds a power station's solar input at 45 to 80V, with no charge profile tailored to any particular battery chemistry.
Published on September 16, 2026 by Gilles
The MOTOPOWER MP0514B shows a voltage down to a hundredth of a volt and sorts it with a colored LED: that is the whole promise, with no CCA and no calculated state of health, unlike its two direct neighbors already reviewed on this site. Its official documentation is as precise about voltage as it stays silent about everything else, operating temperature and warranty length included.
Published on September 16, 2026 by Gilles
A main port that holds between 120 and 134 W no matter how many other devices are plugged in, a combined total that never quite reaches the 300 W in its name, and a real long-term reliability concern on the ports.
Published on September 16, 2026 by Gilles
This small, tall and narrow AGM battery fits a good share of the world's 125s and city scooters, with 100 cranking amps delivered without hesitation from the first attempt. The real risk to its longevity is not frost, though, but winter storage without a maintainer, a risk its 6 amp-hour reserve makes even sharper than on the bigger references in the same lineup.
Published on September 16, 2026 by Gilles
With 16N magnets and an adhesive mount that skips the need for any air vent, the Nano covers the essentials of Qi2 magnetic charging at 15W for a clearly lower price than the Prime. But the weaker side of its magnet sits right where the phone attaches, and no independent measurement confirms the charging speed the manufacturer advertises.
Published on September 16, 2026 by Gilles
At 25W over Qi2, this cigarette lighter charger promises to take an iPhone to 50% in 22 minutes thanks to active cooling. That figure assumes a recent, updated iPhone, and the system that makes it possible admits its own limit in hot weather, exactly when it matters most.
Published on September 16, 2026 by Gilles
One number explains why this battery is factory-fitted on nearly every big-bore motorcycle: 200 A of cold cranking amps. The real threat to its lifespan, though, isn't frost, it's sitting unused without a maintainer.
Published on September 15, 2026 by Gilles
Diagnosing a 6V or 12V battery from a smartphone rather than a built-in screen: the Autel MaxiBAS BT506 aims higher than the screen-based testers already compared on this site, at a catalog price nearly four times higher than one direct competitor and more than six times higher than the other. Adaptive conductance is the same underlying principle; the real difference plays out in the ecosystem, not in the measurement range.
Published on September 15, 2026 by Gilles
The 200A BMS advertised up front implies an output that the manufacturer's own technical documentation contradicts by half, a gap worth knowing before sizing the inverter paired with this 2560 Wh LiFePO4 battery.
Published on September 8, 2026 by Gilles
Updated on July 29, 2026