The 3 Best Portable Jump Starters in 2026: Get Charged Up

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on used to mean a knock on a neighbor's door—or a long and maybe costly wait for a tow truck. But battery technology changes everything, whether for cars or portable blenders or power packs. Portable jump starters now don't cost much more than the price of a single tow and can jolt your car awake even with a bone-dead battery. Most can also charge your phone or laptop in a pinch.

My conversion moment happened in a remote stretch of northern Delaware, where I'd left my headlights on after a foggy morning drive. I chased phone signal for most of an hour, until a passing parks employee happened to have one of the new breed of lithium-ion jump starters tucked behind his seat. I drove straight to the auto parts store and procured a basic 1,000-amp NOCO jump starter ($100) that saved my hide multiple times thereafter.

NOCO is still a brand I recommend. The same goes for a reliable, low-cost Gooloo A3 jump starter ($70) that I bought after moving cross-country. But after testing eight of the most highly regarded lithium-ion jump starters on the market over dozens of starts, it's the Wolfbox 4,000-amp jump starter ($170) that came out on top for its mix of reliability, price, capacity, and sheer cranking power. The Wolfbox charges fast, starts the engine smoothly, and stays above half capacity after 15 jump starts from dead on a six-cylinder engine.

A newer 1250A NOCO Boost X ($125) is the most compact option I tested and recommend. A bulkier and more expensive 2,000-amp model from Battery Tender ($170) offers the most comprehensive solution for battery maintenance, as long as your battery's not stone dead. For this round, I focused on lithium-ion power packs, which may not be suitable for the most extreme weather conditions (see below). In future updates, I'll also look at the newest generation of battery-free supercapacitor jump starters.

For more power-related coverage, check out WIRED's guide to the Best Power Banks, the Best MagSafe/Qi2 Power Banks for more magnetic wireless chargers, and Best Portable Power Stations. Also see WIRED's guide to Essential Emergency Gear.

Featured in this article

• Other Jump Starters I Like
• Also Tested
• Frequently Asked Questions

Best Portable Jump Starter Overall: Wolfbox 4000A Jump Starter

• Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
• Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
• Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
• Video: Matthew Korfhage

Wolfbox

4000A Jump Starter

• More than 15 jump starts possible before needing recharge
• Charges from dead, with good safety protocols
• Digital display, LED lamp

• Power port on side of device is awkward placement

This jump starter from Dallas-based Wolfbox does not have much in the way of bells or whistles. It'll fast-charge a laptop or phone at 65 watts off a USB-C outlet if you need it to. It has an LED lamp, if it's dark. But mainly it does two things: It maintains a charge, and it releases a charge. It does so safely, without risk of sparking or reversed polarity if you get your wires crossed. And if you press the Boost button, overriding the low-voltage safety cutoff, this Wolfbox can juice a starter battery that's as near to dead as a healthy battery can get.

Tested on an old six-cylinder 1994 Land Cruiser with a (dead) six-month-old battery and on a ’97 Mitsubishi Montero, the Wolfbox managed to turn over my engine faster and better than it would normally start after sitting for a couple of days. The 89-watt-hour capacity is among the largest of jump starters I tested. On a single charge, I was able to jump-start the Land Cruiser 15 times before the battery got down to 50-percent capacity. (Beyond this, jump-starting is still quite possible, but the manufacturer notes it begins to lose efficacy.)

That's a heck of a lot of runway on starts that also give reason for confidence. The LED lamp is placed appropriately, the clamps are larger and offer more spacing than most jump starters, and the device remains relatively compact. While it's listed above $150, I usually see it much closer to $100, making for a welcome mix of economy and power.

It's not a sophisticated battery maintainer, and I probably wouldn't use it that way unsupervised. And if you try and fail to jump a car with this thing five times in 10 minutes, you'll nonnegotiably need to wait another 10 minutes to try again. This is an intentional safety feature against reckless overheating, but it's worth noting. The Boost function also can't be used when the battery core temperature drops below freezing, so don't store this or most other lithium-ion jump starters in sub-zero temps. I'll be testing some jump starters in the future that have a self-warming function.

Best Compact Jump Starter: Noco Boost X GBX45

• Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
• Video: Matthew Korfhage

Noco

Boost X GBX45

• Most compact jump starter WIRED recommends
• Reliable for two to five jump starts
• Separate lamp controls, USB-C and -A charging

• Less power capacity than top jump starters

I don't know what else you keep in your purse. But this is the only effective jump starter that could fit in there. Ohio-based NOCO is an automotive accessories company of long repute, and even its lowest-amp jump starters have served me admirably with both four- and six-cylinder vehicles.

I haven't tested the highest-capacity devices from NOCO, but this little 1250A Boost X jump starter packs a reliable wallop despite its diminutive status, able to be tucked into most nooks or crannies and carried around easily in most bags. It's a lower-capacity battery with high output, which means it's good for only a couple of cold starts before it reaches half-battery capacity—though it was still able to crank four more times after this before efficacy started to be affected.

The headlamp is controlled by a separate button and is placed appropriately to shine where you'll be connecting the battery—an odd oversight on some other jump starters. But the small clamp size and cord length may cause trouble on some car models.

Best Jump Starter for Safety and Versatility: Battery Tender 2000A Portable Power Station

• Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
• Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
• Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
• Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

Battery Tender

2000A Power Station and Jump starter

• Both maintains and jumpstarts 12V car batteries
• Large power capacity
• Unmatched safety and power maintenance

• Bulky
• No LED lamp
• Can't charge from dead

This device from Battery Tender, owned by legacy auto and marine company Deltran, is the most sophisticated device I tested. It was the most reliably spark-free and the best shielded from any minute current discharge. It is also able to operate as a battery maintainer, topping up batteries so they don't need jump starting in the first place—and reliably shutting off before overcharging them. In addition to being an effective jump starter, it's also an excellent all-in-one battery management device for a car you keep in the garage and only drive sometimes.

It charges slowly from a wall outlet but can also top up through a cigarette lighter outlet in your car, which makes it a welcome power bank while on the road. It offers 100-watt AC power with a standard three-prong outlet, as well as USB-C, USB-A, and DC charging. It's a nice all-in-one power station and jump starter with admirable safety.

But this said, if your car battery drops below 2 volts, it's not going to jump your car. Battery Tender does not offer a safety-override button. In practice, you'll have to leave your headlights on for a very long time to get your battery much lower than 2 volts if it's otherwise healthy: I left my headlights on for multiple days and still got a jump from this Tender. But it's a consideration. I also could wish for an LED lamp, rather than have to fumble for a separate flashlight or use my phone at night.

But all in all, it's a powerful system. And while it's quite bulky and slow to charge, I'd prefer the versatility of this device over the more svelte, dedicated jump starter options I also tested from Battery Tender.

Other Jump Starters I Like

Gooloo 6000-Amp Jump Starter for $170: This flagship device from Chinese brand Gooloo is a quite good jump starter, one that performed almost as well in testing as the 4,000-amp starter from Wolfbox. The price is also comparable, and I'd have no trouble recommending it. But my starts weren't quite as frictionless with this Gooloo as with the Wolfbox. The device's LED lamp is also placed nonsensically so that it faces away from where you'd connect the battery. This said, capacity is slightly bigger than the flagship Wolfbox, and fast-charging is slightly faster at 1.4 hours to full charge—but only if you buy a separate 100W fast-charging block.