Best Portable Charger

Jouni K first post about crowdfunding project…likely has financial interest.

Lol, what a brick,

Cases like this should be reported please.
Cheers
Roger

It’s an assumption. Don’t be an

I am a happy Anker user. Had mine a couple years now with no issues.

Hi Ken
Jouni is one of the principals in the company.
Cheers

Glad you checked. I dismissed the idea solely on weight and faff.

DGoggins recommended the Folomov A1 as a lighter 18650 battery charger. Based on his reference, I ordered one from Amazon and tested it. I gave it a 1-star rating.

It doesn’t charge batteries to their full 4.2 volts capacity. But much worse, even with a fully charged battery in it, the output is .47 A versus the 1A spec. This happens because the voltage output drops below the USB minimum at only .47 A.

In laymen terms, your smart phone will take twice as long to charge as it should with a 1A charger.

Thanks for that….I did find the following review of the Folomov A1 ->

http://lygte-info.dk/review/Review%20Charger%20Folomov%20A1%20UK.html

It looks like he does state ->

The charge current starts at around 1.2A and termination current is around 150mA, this is fine for larger cells and for some small IMR cells.
There is a problem with the voltage, it stops charging at 4.1V, it is way to low.

I got two for testing, the second one stops at 4.15V, it is better, but not perfect.

As for the output charge, honestly, I’m not really sure how to read the charts he has. But if it discharges at .47A to a smart phone..that..is super slow. His conclusion is ->

Conclusion

This type of charger do not take up much space, but there are some limitations, here the current is too high for small cells.
Adding a power bank function to the charger is an interesting idea, it works fine, but it will not charge a smart phone at high speed.

The charge voltage is rather low, it can be used in an emergency, but is not really good enough for a regular charger.
The same with the usb output voltage, I would also a liked that a bit higher.

Due to the low voltages I will only call it fairly good.

Compare this to the Nitecore F1 ->

http://lygte-info.dk/review/Review%20Charger%20Nitecore%20F1%20UK.html

Though honestly…again I’m not that fluent in reading the charts.

For myself…I have decided against using direct 18650 batteries as my power source, especially since I don’t already have a 18650 flashlight. I’ll just be using anker power banks.

When going through the lygte-info.dk site though, I did see this ->

Olight UC Charger

Which….it can charge both li-ion AND nimh batteries. Weight is 20.5 g. The review is fairly positive ->

http://lygte-info.dk/review/Review%20Charger%20Olight%20UC%20UK.html

Though…this is only a charger…not a discharger. And you would still need to bring a separate charger to charge your phone from a power bank. But….regardless…its still another option.