A thru-hiker’s power management dream come true?!

I can get a 10,000 mAH charger from Gearbest for $17. If I want two usb ports, I can buy two. Still cheaper, also made "half a world away". Why would I want to give them $45 and wait 45 days? Who do they think they are? This is nothing special and it isn't cheap.

Terran

I don't see one 10,000mAh battery cell on that site with a built-in charger….especially for the weight. …I would also question the quality of the electronic components/battery in any of those cells.

The wait is because it's a Kickstarter. This is how the original Bolt production was funded in its development phase. The wait is because the product has not been produced yet.

HTH

KJ

http://www.amazon.com/KMASHI-Thunderbolt-Incredible-Blackberry-Smartphones/dp/B00JM59JPG/

10,000 mAh, $12

Bolt also has the 110/240V AC charger built in, but most people have one of those already. Bolt may be better quality, be more reliable.

^^ WOOF! 12oz?! …not including a charger and cables (charger to bat. cell).

KJ

Jerry,
Note that this unit will not charge from the USB output while being plugged in and charging itself, as I had hoped, and as some of the other battery packs are able to do, working as higher powered USB hubs. I did not see this mentioned in any other reviews, so I hope it is helpful.

What's potentially attractive about the Bolt 2 is having a 6,000 mAH battery and dual-output wall charger in one unit, for nearly the same weight as an equivalent battery alone.

It's a good device at the $35-$45 range, but $60 puts it too high at only 6000mAh IMO. The dual USB is a nice feature.

Ryan

I dunno, I just go into town every 7-10 days and charge my battery camera. Not sure if this is really a dream come true unless it weighs less than my 1.5oz camera battery charger.

maybe if you have other devices to charge like phone, gps, steripen,…

Different needs
Different wants
Different desires
Different likes
Different tools
Different people

It's wonderful to live in a time with so many choices.

Yes, it's wonderful to live in a time with so many choices.

The product doesn't exist yet, I think it's pretty foolish to count your grams based on a non-existent product (something about counting eggs and hatching). Even if announced weights are correct, it's a small difference in weight compared to batteries available for years, and possibly overpriced, with no reason to believe it is higher in quality than an Anker battery pack (I like those).

Below is $30 on amazon for same capacity, same weight, built in microusb charger cable, NO WALL CHARGER, but it's not vaporware, it exists right now and I can buy with free shipping. I use a slightly different Anker 6400 battery with 2 usb ports and 1oz heavier myself because it only cost $10 on sale.

Anker Astro Slim3 6000mAh External Battery
154g/5.4oz

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CEZJT2E/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&m=A294P4X9EWVXLJ&tag=ianker-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399373&creativeASIN=B00CEZJT2E

EDIT:
An interesting wall charger option at $2, 19g
https://www.fasttech.com/product/1254100-1000ma-usb-power-adapterwall-charger-us-plug

Here is one of the lightest USB wall chargers I can find to pair it with, for $6 from a decent brand (anker), this would take longer than the kickstarter battery to charge a 6000mah battery most likely. It weighs 25g.

Unless they have new battery technology, they're going to be just as heavy as the next guy. kickstarter, Mass Drop, mainly overpriced products as far as I can see. Not that much original stuff unless you're into picking locks.

I can see investing in kickstarter to encourage an entrepreneur

They're buying stuff from " half a world away". I don't owe them a living.

But if someone sees it and thinks it's good that someone is trying to start a business, and contributes to it, fine with me

Or if someone thinks it's just someone trying to scam them and doesn't contribute, also fine with me.

silly me …
I saw the title, and thought this thread was going to be about Human Power, and offer some endurance management tips …

never mind.

I was reading amazon reviews for the first bolt product. Everybody loves the built-in dc power supply/wall charger. There is one interesting review about how much usable capacity the device had when they received it, this is basically what I meant about counting grams before they hatch. If the new 6000mah one really provides 3000mah usable power or half of the similarly weighted cheaper competition, I'd rather add the wall charger because adding that 1oz may gives me twice as much power if it's that bad.

There is at least one claim that the first one is that bad (54% of claimed capacity–80% is the battery business, 54% usable is failing to deliver). It's not hard to understand why–the units are already hyped up and selling, they don't need real world performance now, and buying cheaper lipo cells probably helps them reduce costs. This is why we test our equipment before we use it in an extreme situation–make sure to run your electronics off your new battery packs before your back country trips, use airplane mode on phones when remote, etc.

Stolen from amazon:

Nice design, very poor performance
By Rob W. on August 26, 2014
Color Name: Stealth
Received this battery as part of the Kickstarter campaign. I will leave the campaign details out and focus the review on the battery

This is a portable USB plug that doubles as a battery, note i didn't say it in reverse. The device actually is more useful as a plug than a battery due to its overall poor performance and high cost. I'm sure there are some that may find it useful but i would recommend continuing on to other devices unless you can get this device on a really good sale.

Basically it a wall adapter with some added Lithium cells. When ever the unit is plugged in you can use it as a normal wall adapter, but when you leave you take it with you and you can continue to plug into it to get a charge even if its not plugged into the wall. Its a really great concept. That said, while i think Flux Mob really nailed the design with this product, i think they missed the boat on the performance or functionality. The unit itself seems fine looks good and is durable, but based on the test results it seems they may have used rather poor lithium cells, and for the price i would be expecting much better. At a retail price of $60, you can easily get a portable batter with over 3 times the capacity. I’m just not sold that the extra cost is worth the perceived convenience of having the battery built into the wall adapter.

Summary of test results
In a series of 12 controlled tests the battery simulating real world usage its shows that it has an average output rating of 54%. This means that you can, on average, expect to get about 1,614 mAh of actual juice from this 3,000 mAh battery.
Putting this into terms that many end users can relate to, using the average rating of 54% or 1,614 mAh.
This device is not intended for any tablet so i will bypass those. Your Galaxy S3 will get about a 77% charge, Galaxy S4 will get about 62% charge. If you are an iPhone user your iPhone 5 can expect to get about 1.2 charges, and for the newer iPhone 5s/5c you can expect a bit over 1 full charge.

Source for full review with data more info
http://poweredreviews.com/2014/08/bolt/

If you look carefully, the claimed capacity on USB power banks I've looked at spec the capacity of the battery, not the capacity of the power bank

Battery is ~3.7 volts. It has to get stepped up to 5 volts. Capacity will get scaled by that factor, plus any inefficiency, plus any deviation from spec of the battery.

I think all USB power banks have a capacity of about 60% of the battery capacity.

Maybe it would be more useful if they spec'd the USB power bank capacity rather than the battery, but if one manufacturer did it, consumers would be confused and buy a product that has a higher spec even though it was "apples/oranges". Besides, most people don't really know what is the capacity required to charge a device.

There seems to be a standard for spec'ing USB power bank capacity based on the capacity of the battery, so that's probably as good as anything else.

Maybe they should spec the battery capacity, and then mention that the USB power bank capacity is about 60% of that.

Jerry, my expectation of 80% is based on the lipo packs "usable" portion of the pack's capacity. If these products use the packs beyond that capacity there is likely to be a safety impact or a major longevity impact (may last weeks instead of years). This is assuming they are using standard polymer lithium batteries which so far everybody does seem to. Cells do vary in energy density and cell selection is a major part of engineering the pack, do you want it to charge fast or do you want it to be the most energy dense cell? You don't generally get both, they are a trade-off.

But you're completely right about 80% not being realistic, I missed that point. This is a 3.7v nominal cell being stepped up to 5v, there is going to be a little inefficiency, but the design and component selection in this area is an item that can legitimately be executed better or worse by the battery pack designer. Either bolt1 had really bad lipo cells, or they had a really inefficient step up circuit, or they just got a defective unit (or review is fabricated of course). If you look at a more recent review on that site, there are battery packs doing 70% efficiency. 70% efficiency 5200mah probably beats getting 54% out of 6000mah–you want to look at usable mah per weight and also review whether they are able to charge at the same rate and determine if those rates work for your needs.

This is very similar to building a lighter 2 man tent by relabeling the old 1 man tent, the name on the item versus what is really delivered is not always the same. Except they want you to buy a tent that hasn't been finished, you can't look at in a showroom, and there's no recourse if the tent ends up being a different size at the end (a .5 person tent is not really useful right) or they fudged the numbers some.

not to quibble over words, but to convert 5 Amp-hour of 3.7 volts to 3.7 Amp-hour of 5 volts, for example, isn't inefficiency, just basic physics. If there was no inefficiency, the capacity of the USB power bank would be 74% of the capacity of the battery. Except the voltage of the battery and the USB power bank varies a little so it would be proportionally different than 74%.

I think the capacity of USB power banks are more typically 65% of the battery capacity, so the difference between 74% and 65% is inefficiency.

The capacity of the battery, the inefficiency, and the capacity of the USB power bank also varies with how much current you draw. I think high current would probably yield lower capacity, but also maybe really low current.

My 6400mah unit weighs 4.8oz. Yeah, you can't charge it directly, but oh well. It cost 1/3rd as much.