Piston Slap: A Brave New World in Automotive Branding
Hagerty Community Member DUB6 writes:
Sajeev,
For a long time, I read about (and watched on YouTube) using “jump packs” to start vehicles with low or dead batteries. My old-school mentality just kept me using chargers and jumper cables, but my curiosity finally got the better of me (well, curiosity and being stranded at a place where no one was around to give me a jump).
So I tried to do some research on what I maybe should buy. Wow – I couldn’t believe how many options there are! I finally settled on one that I think meets my needs (GOOLOO GP4000) – but as with most purchases from such a large selection, I’m always gonna wonder if I picked right.
How about giving us your own views and opening it up to your readers to tell us what they picked and why?
Sajeev answers:
This is a fantastic question because it’s an introduction to finding a good product in a sea of look-alike junk on places like Amazon and Walmart. The problem is so bad I almost want to tell people to buy automotive products from Summit Racing and JEGs. Both have a nice selection of jump boxes (Here and here), to be fair.
But let’s be real: The stuff on Amazon and Walmart is much cheaper. These days everyone’s looking to save a few bucks on a tool they will rarely use, and I can’t judge anyone for choosing this path. Many moons ago, our nation collectively deemed it worthy to offshore large chunks of our manufacturing and supply chain fortitude to other countries. Since we can’t unring this dystopian bell any time soon, I suggest we play the cards this Brave New World in Retailing has dealt us.
So let’s look at these products with bizarre names on Amazon. Between DUB6’s experience with GOOLOO (made by Hong Kong Haowei Technology, who might be in hot water right now with the U.S. International Trade Commission.) and my look at CTWJO (made by Dongguan Simer Electronics), we see a concerted effort to make a specific brand for online retailing by Chinese manufacturers. Ridiculous brand names for anything (not just jump packs) is a big problem these days. Or is it?
Not to get all Marketing 101 on you, but this could be a good thing: Brands can mature into something with a good reputation. Once a brand has a good footing, you can expect its manufacturer to stand by the product to keep all that brand equity. But what we see here is contradictory to building a quality brand. The brands we see on Amazon use the least amount of effort possible. There’s a reason for this action, and it has to do with Amazon’s presumably well-intentioned brand registry program.
This video provides a good explanation of the issue we’re facing. Oddball names jamming up a search query feels like a problem that Amazon should have seen from a mile away. Perhaps they did, and they just don’t care.
Either way, we have to separate the wheat from the chaff, and that’s not easy. My best advice for everyone is to do two levels of online research on a brand before buying.
- Open up a second browser tab and paste the weird brand name in a Google search. See if there’s a website for it, then go to the privacy policy page. Look for the parent company amongst the privacy information, and Google them up. If they seem to be in business for a long time and have a portfolio of products (on places like Alibaba.com) they might be worth your dollars.
- Since Amazon reviews for these products can be suspect, find a more independent, more honest series of reviews on the product on YouTube. The Project Farm channel on YouTube is one of those gold standards that deserve more publicity.
The spreadsheets at the end of their reviews are generally pretty good, though I welcome feedback to the contrary in the comments. And that’s where we stand with all these weirdly named products seen on Amazon.
Here you go, Hagerty Community: Tell us what you think of these bizarre brands, and how you determine which one is worth your money.
Have a question you’d like answered on Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.
I’ve always used NOCO and I’ve never had any issues with it
Sajeev, i agree with you on all those weirdly named brands, mostly Chinese sources products. I’ve always wondered how the came up with the brand names and product names.
For jump start packs, Noco brand seems to be one of those that had become pretty well regarded now. I’ve seen several friends using them and i finally bought one and it had performed well.
Anker is another one of those brands that had proven itself and now makes well regarded electronic products such as solar generators with panels, battery packs, Bluetooth headsets and others.
With any product, i definitely would suggest reading reviews and being picky about what you trust.
Anker has been in the battery business for quite some time, they used to be the go-to for cell-phone batteries and such (when that was still a thing). They’re not one of the weird-name outfits.
+1 on Anker. I learned about them last year, and will actively seek out their stuff when I am in the market in the future.
That reminds me, I recently bought Samson SR850 headphones as a budget way to get into studio quality music listening, and they are shockingly good. That’s another electronics brand that’s officially on my radar for fantastic value and excellent quality.
I just bought a NOCO. They have been around for a good while and they have a good rep.
Buy the one for the engine sizes you will use. Summit and NOCO have a chart.
The trick to buying this is to look for something that has been around and has good reviews.
Most all is made in Asia and done are made my MFGs that you never heard of because all they do is MFG. like Apple designs but they do not mfgs their phones.
What matters is that the naming company sets the quality and design then they must monitor the mfg to not take short cuts.
At work we have ignitions made there and if they follow design they are as good as anything. But if they sneak in cheap bits then quality drops. We have people on-site to monitor this. Sone companies do not.
Also companies line Summit are easy to return items if you don’t like them.
Apple had a company that mfg a phone and subbed in cheaper screens. They got caught. The phones were scrapped and the mfg lost the contract.
The old saying in China is every one speaks English when you place an order and no one dies if you catch defects. This is why Chinese speaking American in plant are important.
Sanjeev,
I watch Project Farm videos a lot, and in fact, that is one of the research steps I took that made me decide on the GOOLOO. While not the most highly recommended one he tested, it fared pretty well overall (I think he also has it in a different review video than the one you included). As you rightfully address, price point is what tipped me in that direction. In the end, did I want to spend $100 +/- for an item that might forever sit in my trunk and never get used, or $300 +/-?
I had not discovered the info about GOOLOO being in potential trouble, but even if I had, I don’t see how that might affect the performance of the item. Understanding who the parent company is only gets one so far, as that can be as confusing as the strange product names themselves. And really, for a $100 purchase, I’m not sure many are going to go down the rabbit holes of trying to understand international manufacturing and marketing corporations – can be more like spider webs than rabbit holes, actually. For the record, I didn’t buy from Amazon or Walmart, but directly from GOOLOO itself.
But so far at least, Noco seems to be leading the way in the comments!
You bring up some excellent follow up points, especially the legal hurdles they might be facing. For something as cheap and simple internally (probably) as a Gooloo, that’s not a big deal. If it goes bad, these types of products aren’t worth fixing, they just become land waste with little harm done to your wallet. That’s not meant to be a knock on your purchase decision, as I have done the same with cheap tools (like my aforementioned plastic welder) from Amazon/eBay.
To be fair, I’ve had battery tenders from expensive brands (whose names I have forgotten) fail over the last 20 years, and they’ve turned into land waste just like the cheap stuff we stereotype in this manner.
Why is it that everyone seems to label my $100 item as a “cheap purchase”? Maybe some of those others are just “overpriced”! 😂
When someone says, “you get what you pay for” – and what I paid for might well be a perfectly fine item – I’m not sure who is making more sense. Paying more money does NOT guarantee better quality… Can we at least wait until we find out that GOOLOO is a piece of junk (if it is, I’ll admit it, I swear!) before we cast aspersions?
No aspersions cast, they are just cheaper than similar units available from places like Summit Racing!
Paying more money certainly does not guarantee better quality, as a handful of 2000s-era Craftsman hand tools in my collection prove that point!
Well, perhaps my definition/connotation of “cheap” is somewhat different than some others’ might be. A “less expensive” item, to me, isn’t necessarily cheap. Sorry if I was over-sensitive!
I think a lot of auto-related items we now see for sale on Amazon (or similar places) are fitting of the phrase “less expensive.”
Well the problem is the word cheap can mean multiple things, both bad and good.
I buy most of my gas at the Costco near my work because it is much cheaper than the gas station across the street and the Costcos near my house that we actually go inside the stores.
On the other hand it is used to note something that is poorly made.
So yeah this one is cheap and only time will tell which side of the line it falls on.
For me on many purchases it does depend a lot on what the item and its use is.
On my van I’ve been getting O2 sensor codes for a while, It used to be that it would pop up, I’d clear it and it wouldn’t come back for a thousand miles or more so I didn’t make it a priority. Well last week it came on for the first time in a long time. When I got home I cleared it and it came on again on the next trip. So yeah I figured it was time to do it. Looking at it in the car and on a youtube video I decided that I should pickup the Crow’s foot style “socket” since the traditional socket with the cut out, I already have, wasn’t going to fit as well.
Since the O2 sensor is kind of critical I went with Bosch who was the OE supplier. It was a fair amount cheaper than in the OEM branded box, but a bit more than the ND. There were other options that were much less with brand names I’ve never heard of and I didn’t even consider those. I figure I didn’t want to find out if the unknown brand was of reasonable quality or not.
On the other hand for the Crow’s foot I went for the lowest price one with branding that is a bunch of letters that don’t really form a word in English.
I figure if it broke, I’d be unhappy but I’ll be sitting in my driveway when I found out it was a piece of junk. I also don’t figure I’ll use it more than a couple of times. If the O2 sensor failed, I would be unhappy, possibly 100 mi from home and have to do the job again. Plus the O2 sensor is used literally every time you use the vehicle. So yeah I didn’t save 50% on the O2 sensor but I did save 80% on the tool.
On the other hand the quality of a lot of formerly respected brands has gone down hill so just purchasing the known name brand version is not as “safe” as it used to be.
NOCO HD. Use it quite a lot, works perfectly and is easy to use. I’ve always believed you get what you pay for.
I just went through this as well… and I would have happily paid more for a known brand doing the footwork and slapping their logo on it! It felt like such a crapshoot… and interestingly, i take the opposite view. This is the type of thing that I buy to work when I need it! This is the opposite of oh-well-it-was-$50-cheaper… but I am stuck somewhere with a dead battery!
The one I bought was well-rated, higher than many with much higher prices.
It wasn’t “$50 cheaper”, it was much more than that.
You seem to assume that the one I bought won’t work if I need it – no proof of that, at least not yet.
I still carry my jumper cables and my cell phone – I think I’ll survive.
But despite those points, I get what you’re saying. It’s a matter of choice based on perspective. And honestly, I asked for the opinions of others, so thanks for yours!
And for the record, I’ve had good luck with NOCO products too. I use their battery tenders and they do a great job, even saving Optima Red tops that I just assumed were ready for recycling.
There are hundreds it seems of portable air compressors, plastic tools, battery chargers, etc. that look 100% identical because they are. Yet for some reason they get branded more ways than you can think of. I’m not sure why this is a thing, they could probably save 5 cents if they branded them all the same.
Here I thought it was just because the Chinese were clueless about English. Today I learned. 🙂
They certainly understand the path of least resistance in the world of E-Commerce.
I really don’t know why people want to carry these jump packs around. Either fix the problem or replace the damn battery both of which may even be cheaper. Or I guess you could just get an extra battery and carry around. Wal-mart’s batteries start at $69 bucks which is what I usually buy and most of them have lasted 8-10 years.
The person whose problems only happen right in their garage and not out on the road somewhere is indeed a lucky ducky. The person who never runs into someone else with a problem that can be helped by something you have in your trunk probably doesn’t get out much. My jump pack weighs about 2 lbs. An extra battery would be, what, 40 pounds?
I’ve had only good experience with the HALO brand.
The jump packs get you home to fix the problem. Mine is a Rugged Geek. It holds a charge for along time and works OK if the battery is simply weak. If mostly dead, the pack has to charge the battery up before you can crank. Completely dead (0v) and it doesn’t work.
What I really like is that it saves pulling out jumper cables to rescue someone. I can hand the pack to a stranded driver and show them how it works. I don’t touch their car and they don’t touch mine. No chances of damaging somebody’s ride by mistake because the jump pack will not discharge unless connected properly.
BTW- I have about 4 of the NOCO trickle chargers. Love them. Easy to use, rugged and keep my batteries charged up on everything that sits. I even use them overnight on our daily drivers from time to time to top up the batteries.
Agreed on the NOCOs, we have 3 of them that get rotated around the shop for our vehicles/toys that aren’t used often enough. The NOCO 10 will even charge a 12v lithium battery.