Can I Use a Trickle Charger On an OPTIMA Battery?

Trickle chargers, tenders, float chargers, maintainers or whatever else you'd like to call them can all generally charge OPTIMA batteries without any issue. While OPTIMA offers their own line of chargers and maintainers, that work great on just about every 12-volt battery out there, we also offer some general guidlines if folks choose another brand of charger or maintainer, including trickle chargers.

You often get what you pay for, so steer clear of the bargain bin chargers that may not properly-regulate current to batteries and could overcharge them. Fully-automatic, multi-stage or multi-step chargers will vary both voltage and amperage, depending on the needs of the battery. Microprocessor-controlled units and those with AGM-specific charger settings are highly-recommended for OPTIMA batteries. They'll work just fine on flooded batteries as well and do a better job on AGM batteries than standard chargers.

For regular charging, we recommend charger output be in the range of 13.8-15.0 volts, 10 amps maximum. For float or trickle charging, we recommend 13.2-13.8 volts with a maximum of 1 amp of output.

We do recommend avoiding "gel" or even more confusing, "gel/AGM" charger settings, because gel batteries are a very different technology than AGM or flooded batteries and gel charger settings may not fully-charge non-gel batteries and could damage them over time. Traditional "float" chargers will provide constant voltage with tapering amperage to the battery, even when it is fully-charged. Those types of chargers are ok to use and definitely a better option than doing nothing to maintain battery voltage, but the "smart" chargers are a better option.