NOCO GENIUS GENPRO10X3, 3-Bank, 30-Amp (10-Amp Per Bank) Fully-Automatic Smart Marine Charger, 12V Onboard Battery Charger, Battery Maintainer and…

I am impressed with this NOCO charger and their entire line of chargers. Last summer this charger worked liked a charm and got me on the water to fish all day.

I upgraded from the single typical cheaper chargers as I needed one to do 3 batteries at a time and no guessing. Does everything as advertised. I even brought back to life a battery I hadn’t used for 8 years. Incredible!

I purchased this for my boat to charge and maintain 3 new deep cycle batteries. Bank #2 quit 6 weeks after installation, it only had to recharge 3 times after mild usage. Customer service by email was excellent. I could send it back and wait 4-6 weeks, or purchase another from them directly while mine was being tested and they will refund the purchase cost after determining it to be faulty. I purchased a second one and installed, sent them the defective unit. Cost me 47 bucks UPS. That sucks. The second one so far is working perfect. Hope it lasts, I really do like it. Stuff happens, luck of the draw.

So far, so good. I am a rigger at a very high end boat builder. I had a well known name brand charger in my own boat and it was hit by lightning. We will just say it was yellow and black. To my surprise , that charger came with regular copper wires.i took a chance and bought the Noco charger and was pleased to see the built it with tin coated copper wires. This is a huge plus because my boat lives in Salt water 7 or 8 months of the year. Nothing against the yellow and black charger but the noco has the edge here. The second thing I like is the more control noco gives you. Not only can you quickly understand each battery’s state but you can also put it into de-sufating or maintenance mode. Very nice!

I purchased this charger to replace an existing 2 bank battery charger, and based on the reviews I had very high hopes, but after working through the NOCO support team I’ve determined this battery charger is not suitable for situations where you have batteries that get continues use – such as house batteries for boats, R/V, or off grid. I have a very basic battery configuration for a boat – 1 starter battery, and 2 house batteries. I have minimal load on the batteries during the day (1.6Ahrs) and even less at night (1.0 Ahrs). After installing the charger I allowed it to fully charge the starter and house bank and go into maintenance mode – it actually sat for 2 weeks and seemed to maintain the batteries. The problems started when we started using the boat and the house bank of batteries. After a period of 2 or 3 days the charger would shut down and allowed the batteries to completely drain. I sent this information to the NOCO customer support team and after a number of email exchanges I was told the following:

“”Noco chargers are not intended to indefinitely provide charge to the batteries. Our chargers expect to fully charge the batteries at some point. If the customer does let the charger finish its work due he is constantly draining the batteries the charger will eventually timeout. On the customer application it seems he is not letting the charger to finish maintenance mode. While the charger is in maintenance mode the customer started to use his refrigerator and his stereo. Maintenance mode uses a very small amount of current to top off the batteries. If while the charger is on this low current mode the customer turns the fridge on and stereo on, it won’t allow the charger to top off the batteries and eventually it is going to timeout and show bad battery indication. The actual issue is not really the amount of load, the issue is the customer not letting the charger finish. If the charger completes the charge, the customer can use his stereo and fridge with no problem.”

Once the load is applied and the charger kicks back in to top the batteries off again, that 41-hour time-out comes back into play, and if the load continues beyond this 41 hours (meaning the batteries aren’t able to reach a full charge due to the load), the charger will time out and show the error again.”

This type of operation is not suitable for house batteries.

I had a Gen1 Noco for my AGM batteries in my camper previously, so I purchased this one when I upgraded to lithium-ion batteries.
Most of this stuff, sadly, is way over my head in terms of understanding what it all does, so if you are like me, here are a few things I wished I had known before I purchased.
It charges at 10amps per hour. I saw 10amp rating and the “30 amp” and assumed it meant that it charged at 30 amps. 3 hookups at 10 amp-hours each are where that 30 comes in, so don’t be stupid like me. I just did not know what that meant in terms of TIME it takes to charge. I recently purchased 2 206amp SOK batteries (the best out there in terms of price/build per Will Prowse- you are welcome when you go check that out) so, I had to upgrade to this charger because it will charge lithium and my other one would not.
Well, it took 20 hours to charge from almost dead (because they have to ship that way). It makes sense to me now, 206 amp-hours divided by 10 means 20 hours! Not sure I would want a faster charger, because it was running pretty hot and I split the time because I was worried about the heat it was generating from the NOCO. Batteries were fine, but the NOCO was putting off a ton of heat. It was in the 60’s, so not hot at all and in an open area (unlike where I would be putting it in the camper) and I had to put a fan on it to keep it cool. I did not want to get it too hot to let it shut off automatically. This running hot is very concerning to me, so I changed out the shelf it was on and put in an aluminum plate with holes drilled in to help dissipate the heat and will put a larger fan to pull air in and out and some vent plates on the cabinet and hope for the best.
It might not be an issue because I hope to never drain it to that level since I have 2 batteries, but if I did, I would need to watch it closely instead of plugging it in and go about the day like my other one. I do like the fact that the wires are nice and thick as they should be and the connections are very sturdy. The whole unit is 7.7 pounds and very sturdy. I also like that it is very easy to set the type of battery and the lights let you know how far you are in the process.
My gen1 would charge for 10 hours without getting hot, so I was surprised by the heat it was generating after only 4 hours but I did have it hooked to 2 batteries. My Gen1 was wired for one battery even thought it was 2 batteries in parallel. My lithium will also be in parallel, but the instructions say to wire for each battery since the lithiums have a BMSs.
I will come back on and let you know how it does this summer once I get everything installed and up and running. I just used it out of the box in my garage to get the batteries charged once I received them.