by James W. Harris, 5/18/22
Back in November, I had to jump-start my truck the old fashion way with cables off my wife’s car. It was tricky getting her car into position so my cables could reach. After that, I started parking my truck facing out in case it happened again. But I had also heard about these portable chargers and I got on Amazon and ordered a DBPOWER 1000A Portable Car Jump Starter (pictured above).
When it came in I couldn’t believe how small it was. It comes in a nice case, but the actual charger is about the size of a paperback book. I charged it up on 11/6/21 and stuck it under my truck seat. Today, I went out and discovered I had done the same dumb thing again – which is to not shut my passenger door tight after getting groceries out. I know, I’m a dumbass.
I immediately remembered the DP1000 and wondered if it was still charged up. It was. So it holds a charge for at least six months. It was damn simple to use. You plug in a small set of cables, connect red to positive, black to negative, turn it on the DP1000, and start the truck. It started instantly. I was so impressed. I’m going to get one for my wife’s car now.
I’m not advocating the model of device I got is the best. It says it was good for up to a 7.0L gas engine or 5.5L diesel. There’s a huge variety of them to choose from, even some that are combined with an air compressor. I already had one of those.
I was mightily impressed with this little device. I’ve helped jump other people’s cars with my cables and it hasn’t always been convenient to align the vehicles. This is the solution.
JWH
Auxiliary Memory 
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I didn’t know such a thing existed.
I’m soon going to be moving across several states and this could be a really helpful item to have. For the model you got, do you charge it using a typical phone charger plugged into the wall? I’m thinking a typical type C phone cable and charger – is that correct, or did you need to get some other sort of cable to charge it?
And thank you for your eye-catching heading! I’ve been incredibly busy with this upcoming move, so when the last handful of your posts have shown up in my email I’ve archived them for future reading, but this one got my attention and I’m so glad it did. I’ve got an old vehicle (with an even old driver LOL) and the idea of interrupting the trip to deal with a dead battery is NOT appealing.
Yes, it uses a USB-C charging cable. But for the life of me, I don’t remember if it came with a cable and wall wart. That’s because there isn’t one in the case. It might have come with one and I left it in the house with all my other charging cables and wall warts. I need to get one to keep in the car for traveling.
What a great helpful blog entry! I knew these things existed because at some point before I moved up here to ND I had battery trouble in California. Okay fine. AAA comes out and fixes it and that guy had one like you show – a hand-held thing. Then I told a male friend who said yes, they were available. Okay fine. I go along my merry way and not until now, probably 2 1/2 years later, do I think maybe I might could get one for my car. LOL! I’ll ask my son-in-law. (I think he has one, too! – lol!)
Girls don’t think about actually buying stuff like this. We think about which male person would know what to do. omg. It takes time.
Which is why I’ll have to buy one for my wife and show her how to use it. By the way, it can also be used to charge smartphones. I’ve also bought a Jackery for charging smartphones and tablets during power outages and it worked great. It’s bigger, about the size of a lunch box.
Thanks for the post James, that’s just what we need. We tow a caravan in Australia and are often off grid with a bunch of needy devices.
This sounds like nifty device…but I’d just call AAA.