Minimal Power Bank?

@Rex I have heard from multiple people those octopus connectors are just plain bad. Bad at reliability-no decent company makes one, bad at charging-very slow charging use this over a single cable.

Difficult to find quality cables in more obscure categories, including octopus connectors and tiny multi-adaptor thingies (like a Swiss Army Knife for USB connectors). Apple MFi certification implies a certain level of quality, but rare for many reasons.

Charging speed is another can of worms, depending on battery pack, recharged device, and cables. Octopus cables recharging two or more devices probably divide the speed between them.

Sigh. Testing is tempting me again.

— Rex

@Rex, the octopus users I hike with all reported slow charging with one device connected. It was brutally slow. I told them to throw that POS in the trash and get short name brand cable and all is well now.

Yeah.  Buy decent cables to get fast charging.  Most people (including my dear wife) just don’t understand that not all cables are made the same.

I thought this might interesting to anyone needing a small capacity battery bank for a top up on weekend trips, or for watches.

The incharge people have a new 2000mAh battery bank coming out, the Tau 2, weighing 1.7oz with integrated cables (C, lightning, microUSB). Not super cheap, but pretty reasonable for the value add being tiny and with 3 built in options for charging connectors.

For comparison, 5000mAh UL solutions are 3.5oz (Vapcell, without a case) to 4.6 oz (Nitecore) with an incharge 6 cable.

I figure this will give a little over a third of a charge to an iphone: these batteries are usually ~ 55% (fast charge) to 65% (slow charge) efficient;  60% transfers 1200mAh equivalent capacity;   iphone batteries ~ 3300mAh, & 1200/3300 = 36%

does anyone make a power bank where you can swap out another battery?  so, take as many batteries as you need for a specific trip?

nitecore and fenix used to have such products but I think they’re discontinued

yes.  The XTAR PB2S.  There’s even a newer “2023” model on Amazon so look for that one.  I think it’s black vs the older colored ones. It has better “clips” to hold 18650’s correctly.

I just dropped my older PB2S on the driveway on Saturday and broke it and ordered the new 2023 model.

The 21700 batteries have better capacity the the 18650’s.  I usually get mine from https://www.imrbatteries.com/21700-batteries/

$10 from amazon

“diymore 1865O Battery Holder Double Li-ion V8 Battery Shield Micro USB 5V/3A 3V/1A Power Bank Battery Charging Module for Raspberry Pi and Arduino ESP32 (2 Holders)”

$17 for 2 batteries – 9900 mAh

“2 Pack 3.7 Volt 18650 Rechargeable Battery 9900mAh 18650 Battery Button Top Li-ion Battery for Flashlight, Headlamp”

5 ounces total – that would be almost 20,000 mAh

I suspect that it’s unreliable.  Not waterproof – no case.

I’m tempted to buy just as an experiment

my 20,000 anker weighs 12.5 ounces

Jerry – I have SERIOUS doubts about the charge capacity of those batteries.  imrbatteries.com carries a TON of 18650 batteries and none of them come anywhere close to the claimed specs of those.  Nothing from Sanyo, Samsung, Sony, Panasonic, or Nitecore.

Those 9900mah batteries are probably fakes from China.  I wouldn’t trust them.  Most decent 18650’s are 3000 – 3500mAh

yeah, I’m skeptical of both charger and batteries

xtar pbr2 is $20 at amazon.  It weighs 5.6 ounces?  kind of heavy  Or is it 3.2 ounces? better

21700 5000mAh is $5 each at imrbatteries, 2.4 ounces each

hmmm… overall weight is about the same as my 20,000 mAh Anker

this is just weird – I just got an email from “elon power bank”

I’m using google chrome.  Did they see I was entering “power bank” and then sell my email address to elon power bank???

oh, it wasn’t from elon power bank, just some weird email address like typical spam