Argus BB-SBM12 Battery Bug Starting Battery Monitor

Here in the extreme south Texas heat, automobile batteries take a real beating. People think it's cold weather that is hard on batteries. That's wrong. Heat kills batteries and down here they die quickly and without much warning.Others here have praised this product and from what I read those reviewers were impressed by the display. Nobody mentioned the alarm. I feel that those reviewers will be sadly disappointed when they discover that the display can indicate a "good" battery that will not start the car. A battery can read full voltage and not work in the car. Just because the display shows you had good cranking power the last time does not mean it will start next time.As such, I didn't expect to derive much value from the display itself. What I wanted from this product was the alarm. The manufacturer claims it will provide an audible alarm when the battery is about to fail. That warning was the important thing to me.The warning emitted by this monitor is inaudible under a closed hood. One can try and position the unit in different ways within the limits of the attaching cables, but on neither of my cars did I ever find a location under the hood that allowed the warning to be audible. My hearing is in no way impaired and I can't hear it. My wife, whose hearing is acutely sensitive, can't hear it either.A few weeks after installation, the battery in my car died overnight while in my garage. I heard nothing walking out to my car in the morning. There was enough power to operate the device and the car's accessories, but not enough to crank the engine. Had I been away from home, I would have most likely been stranded. As it was, I was late for work. I had enjoyed the false sense of security up to this point and now I was paying the price. This is exactly the kind of inconvenience I was hoping to avoid by purchasing this item. My wife's car battery died a few months later also without warning.I am skilled as an auto technician and I think casual drivers will eventually be let down by this monitor. I have gone back to regularly using a load tester and measuring specific gravity of the electrolyte to determine battery health. I had gotten lazy and thought this device could help me reduce my weekend workload. Well, I'm back to maintaining my batteries the old fashioned way. At least now if I get stranded I can only blame myself instead of having placed my trust in a mostly useless gadget.I give it two stars because it does have a working display. Interpreting that display may be difficult for users who are not engineers or technicians. To me, the desirable aspect of this monitor was the alarm feature and that doesn't work.

This small,relatively high priced item hooks up quickly to a standard post car battery. Once you've made the connection it will begin a 30 second countdown. Now you start your engine and come out to see your battery strength as a percentage and the charge voltage. The 1st number tells you if you need to charge your battery or run your charging system and the second number tells you how well your charging system is operating. It recently helped me to get out in front of a 70% charged new battery that barely had enough juice in it to turn over my Subaru Outback Wagon in bitter cold -6 degree F weather. I ran a 6 amp charge for 3 hours and that solved my problem. The 2 amp charge was hardly registering in those cold conditions which is the method of charging I would have normally used. I've observed that that method of charging will raise the battery's charge by 2-3% per hour in milder conditions. If you have an internal post battery like older Chevy's use then you can use gorilla tape on the battery bug's leads to achieve contact and go through the same procedure. I would not recommend leaving this device attached to the battery as you are courting a malfunction exposing it to the elements and engine temperatures. It's best used as an intermittant tool to gage battery health and save time by getting you out in front of potential problems. Be careful working around hot batteries because they will arc and spark if you cross the leads which is easy to do if you're in a hurry or not paying close attention to what you're doing.

I was excited to try this battery monitor due to me consistently running my battery low. I expected good things from this device due to it's 4 star rating, but after owning it for about 3 weeks it is unusable. It worked OK at first, then after a few days I noticed that a couple segments were not showing on the digital readout. Now after about 3 weeks, the display has so many missing segments that it is unreadable. What a waste of $35! I don't think this device is rugged enough to sit on a car battery under the hood.*Update 11-12-2010 I sent this unit back to Argus and they sent me a new one. It's been installed on a brand new battery for a few days now and it is still working. *Update 12-03-2010 The replacement unit from Argus has failed! I need to squeeze the unit hard between my fingers for the display to show anything, otherwise the display stays blank. There is obviously some manufacturing defect with the display on these units. *Just so prospective buyers don't think I'm somehow abusing this thing, it's installed on a brand-new Autocraft Gold battery from Advance Auto using only the hardware that came with it, in a 2008 Ford Explorer. I'm giving up on this device. Almost $40 wasted so far including return shipping for the first defective unit. Now they cost $55?!?! Buyers beware.

I have purchased 3 (three) of these units and only one still works accurately.the other two give false positives about battery failure and sometimes drop down to 0% health when the battery is just fine.I know this because I swapped over the known good monitor and its been reading 70% or better the past couple weeks.I don't know if I will bother to send these two units back to argus or not but I should note they have replaced one in the past for me from a cracked screen from when my hood came down and hit it !make sure you're careful where you mount this thing and always connect the leads directly to the battery terminals.

I got this thing about 2 years ago or so. I just took it off today because I can't really read the screen. Some of the lines that create the numbers no longer work. It's never been all that great. I got a NEW Interstate battery put in my truck and the thing is telling me I have 50% or so battery life left. Some mornings I'll come out to my truck and the thing is beeping like the battery is low. It's a nice Idea, but really cheaply made and the readings it's telling you, you can't trust!