Brian Reay explained on 21/07/2020 :
As for chargers, you may find one with meters etc but I expect it will be
expensive, unless it is an old (second hand) simple dumb charger. Modern
ones tend to have lcd or led displays and have smart charge capabilities.
Aldi and Lidl have them on offer every few months- each do versions of the
CTek (or Ctech?) charger which are pretty good. I have an Aldi one and I
bought my son in law a Lidl one. They are essentially the same, just
branded differently. Have a look on YouTube.

The Lidl one is suggested to be better built than the Aldi version.


Neither have proper meters. They attempt to emulate a meter on the LCD.

Which is fine, there is no need for current measurement, as with old
fashioned dumb chargers - the charger takes care of current.

They do charge very low batteries, the early ones didnt. There is a video
on YouTube covering this.

I didn't know that, until years after I bought it, I watched the video.
I thought the flashing display simply meant it was unable to attempt to
charge (I never read instructions).

The older smart chargers, the only way to get them to charge was to
initially parallel the flat battery with a charged one.

I agree it is just plain daft, not to fix the discharge/ the boot light
left on. It is a great way to quickly wreck a battery and so easy to
fix. Modern cars turn their interior lights off, if the car is left
undisturbed for a while. Leave my car's door open for 20 minutes
without otherwise disturbing the car and the interior lights go off.
I going a stage further - I ordered myself a fancy micro-based battery
analyser last week, due for delivery today. I have quite a few
batteries around the place and battery capabilities are notoriously
difficult to assess effectively.