Keeping an eye on your car’s battery health is always a good idea. Not only will it help you to increase the life of your battery by knowing when to trickle charge, but in the long run, it will save you money. It’s also cheap enough to do with the Topdon BT100W battery tester.
What is it?
It’s a small handheld device powered directly by your vehicle’s battery. It can run several tests on Flooded, AGM, Gel EFB and VRLA 12v batteries. These tests work across many standards, too: CCA, CA, BCI, MCA, DIN, IEC, EN, SAE, JIS and BG – so you’ll always be able to test your battery no matter the numbers and letters printed on the outside.
You can run crank, charging, ripple and an ordinary 12v test.
How?
There’s a bright backlit 2″ LCD display that shows you all the info, and five buttons on the front allow you to navigate around the menus. Below the LCD are three small LEDs that light up once you’ve tested the battery – Good, Charge, and Bad. Making it incredibly easy to see the health state of your battery.
Two crocodile clamps, red and black, feel solid, and overall the unit feels well-made.
What’s it like?
The Topdon BT100W battery tester is so easy to use. You will need to know the CCA rating of your battery, or SAE, EN etc before you start. This could be easier said than done, depending on where your battery is and how much plastic you have around it.
Connecting the crocodile clips fires the BT100W into life. You just have to select ‘Battery test’, enter the CCA/SAE etc. and then it will test and tell you if the battery is good, needs charging, or is bad.
Testing it on the Peugeot 207, it came back that the battery was ‘bad’ even though the car starts just fine. It’s likely due to the 207 being sat unused for long periods, but the Bosch S5 battery isn’t actually that old, so it’s a bit of a worry to see it say the battery is ‘bad’. I wouldn’t have known this without testing it though.
Trying it on a few others, and the readings seem accurate enough. Another car that’s always on trickle charge with a CTEK CS One came back as ‘good’, and an older battery needed a ‘charge’. The voltage readings always seemed accurate when compared to a multimeter too.
The other tests, such as crank and charging, could be handy for fault finding – dodgy alternator and the like. But they’re not really of any use until those issues arise.
It would be nice if the BT100 came with a case so it doesn’t get damaged while floating around from shelf to shelf in the garage. But apart from that, there are no other gripes.
You can also link the BT100W via Bluetooth with an app from Topdon, but I’m not sure why you would want to do that…maybe to remotely test/check on your battery?! I think that would slowly drain it though eventually. So just don’t worry about that. It’s a bit gimmicky.
Where can I get one?
Topdon seem to be a growing force in the automotive world, with them even appearing on eBay banners of late. But the quickest and easiest way to get your hands on one will be Amazon, with prices hovering around the £59 mark.
