Black & Decker VEC026BD Electromate 400 Jump-Starter with Built-In Air Compressor

This is a great backup to jump start my cars, charge cell phones, and charge Nintendo DS systems. I have successfully jumped my 8 cylinder truck (small block) and the wife's six cylinder minivan numerous times. The vehicles start immediately without waiting for the car battery to charge.

I have jumped three cars on one charge without issue. Probably could have done more, but a testing lab I'm not.

This unit is clean and easy enough for the wife to rescue a friend who's battery went dead. The build in light is very nice to see what you are doing under the hood.

In short, this has been one of the best spending of my frugal dollars in a long time.

What it is not...

It is not an alternative power source to run tools, hair dryers, or TV's. It would likely run a newer laptop fine.

It is not a good Air Compressor. Forgive the marketing people for their overzealous hearts in trying to sell a product. I am sure the engineers at B&D cringed when the idea to add a compressor came up, but that happens often with those in marketing. Always a battle internally. I truly believe it would inflate an air mattress in your tent, but don't expect it to inflate a car tire all the way up.

It is not a radio. There is some mistaken text in some ads that say it is. Nope, not in here.

Just because there are two "house outlets" on the front, don't think you can plug just anything in. The instructions are very clear on what this will and won't do in an emergency or while camping.

This does not come with a cord to plug into the wall. Use your own decent sized extension cord (I have one that is 10 feet long that works just fine). I would want a permanent cord plugged into this as it would add to the bulk too much.

You will need to pull this out and charge it up on occasion. We keep ours in the garage, but keep it in the car/truck for trips. I have had this for over two years and the battery is holding up fine.

Buy one for you or your wife if you need to jump off a car on occasion. Much safer and easier than moving the cars into place.

Not great for accesories or household items. Will jump a car.
Takes forever to charge and doenst seem to hold a charge for long.

Bought this from Home Depot for $99, plan on using it camping. I inflated two aero beds, a football and let a small fan run continously for 6 hours until it died. Great little unit however just a little heavy for a long hike in camp spot.

I received this model as a gift for Christmas 07. It did in fact save me one morning from a dead battery. That was the first and only time I used it for that purpose. The next time I tried using it, the battery was totally dead.. So dead it wouldn't power the LED lights on the front. It sat in the garage plugged in the whole time. Whether this was a bad idea or not, I don't know.

The compressor worked decently for topping off tires. I just (today) purchased a replacement internal battery from zbattery dot com for over $70 after shipping. I was half tempted to just replace this, but thirty bucks is thirty bucks. And if you do have to replace the battery, the innards of this thing are a booger to get to. More screws and wires than I expected.

We recieved this for x-mas '07. We use it all the time. We have a boat and have loaned it out to other boat owners at the lake many many times to jump start their boat. We've used it on a truck twice when we left the interior light on all night. We also use it to air up bike tires. During bad weather (we live in OK) we have used it to power our cable and tv during storms when they knocked out the power to the rest of the house (tornado season). Very useful. I would recommend everyone have one of these. We will probably buy more one for each one of our vehicles.