I wonder how much not-catch-fire juice they can afford to put in that thing for that price.
10,000 mAh for $13 is amazing. I remember Costco offering a Sony 10,000 (packaged with a 2,300 mAh spare) for something like $60 (down from $80) and wondering if there was something magical about Sony quality or if Costco is just really behind the curve on offering USB batteries at good prices. So, sounds like a good deal as long as it doesn’t break and you don’t need the full 2 claimed amps.
(I am wondering, though, about the link shortener “amzn.to/1MKusWb” that inadvertently hides that this is an affiliate link to Amazon. (I had to click on it to be sure, so, no worries, you’ll get a cut of anything I put in my shopping cart for the next 24 hours. 
) )
That was kind of how Sony almost got me to pay extra - too many stories of cheap chargers / batteries causing fires. But I don’t really know how common or likely that is. It is really hard to evaluate that risk without good data.
Man, the refusal to label them is bad enough, now they’re actively hiding them…
It’s also possible that the brand-name batteries are even more vulnerable. The problem is the separator foil; the thinner, the better the battery capacity. The higher also the vulnerability to damage via e.g. crystal growing through it - with the resulting short circuit, thermal runaway, and fire.
The more expensive cutting-edge high-capacity brand-name cells of course use the thinner separators.
I heard it somewhere, don’t remember where.
Where did uou see a shortened link? The two I see have a description and a hyperlink, no address.
Also, what is this 24 hour thing? Is it just because you are adding to your amazon cart from the original link/browser window posted here on BB?
The image hyperlink and the text hyperlink both look shortened to me
In the OP, this is hyperlinked text:
(The hyperlink is parsed out by the Discourse quoting system.) When you mouse over it on the OP, you’ll see that the link is to:
amzn.to/1MKusWb
That is a shortened URL - made to be shorter so you can tweet it without going over your character limit. Link shortening also hides the fact that the link is an affilate link because you can’t see the affiliate tag apended to the Amazon URL, as you would be able to see with the full URL. The full URL is
If Mark had used that full URL instead of the link shortened one you’d be able to see the “boingboing” affiliate ID and the other signs of an affiliate link by mouse overing the hyperlinked text. With the shortener you have to click on the link to see where it goes, which also turns on the Amazon affiliate tracking which tracks everything you put in your cart in the next 24 hours (even if you log out and log back in later) and gives Mark a cut of every one of those purchases you complete within 89 days. And Amazon sends Mark a list of everything sold, though it doesn’t send your name to him. This means it doesn’t matter to Mark if you buy a charger, only that you click on the link and put something, anything, in your Amazon shopping cart in the next 24 hours, and buy it within 3 months.
Anyway, nothing wrong with Mark making money by informing us of a good deal. But even Rob, who has poo pooed clearly disclosing each affiliate link, has specifically said that he believes that the full affiliate ID URL should be visible when you mouse over it, and that he rejected a system that had the side effect of concealing the full URL.
I have one of these, its fantastic.
I could swear I just saw a portable unit like this one with solar panels on it to supplement juice and it wasn’t that far off in price either.
Every time I follow an affiliate link to Amazon from here, it always says “connection was reset.”
Those links are kind of a pain in the ass.
Well, mark did post an affiliate link to a $50 Stacksocial deal on a 20,000 mAh battery/solar charger in Feb. (All sales final, no returns.)
You might also have seen this same KMASHI battery deal on Gawker today, though that post is clearly labeled as a “Commerce Team” post and is tagged as “Kinja deals.”
When you access Amazon via an affiliate link, anything you purchase within that session, whether it is the thing that was linked or not, creates a payment for the person who sent you to Amazon.
Amazon considers a “session” to end after 24 hours, or after you go to Amazon via someone else’s affiliate link.
So if Mark’s was the last affiliate link you followed, any purchase you make on Amazon for 24 hours will be counted for Mark.
This is one of the reasons sites can still make money by sending you to Amazon, even if they are linking jokey products, or to highlight silly reviews or something.
I don’t recall where I saw it but I did some poking around and it might be the REvive brand charger which is $20 for 7500Ma discounted from $50. I may have seen it on a Gizmodo deal of the day post.
Ugh, doesn’t ship to Canada. Same item on amazon.ca $62.
super lame.
This thing probably contains four 18650 cells. Fun trivia: these are the same cells used in the Tesla model S. Same size cell anyway 
I’m guessing these cells are total crap and will wear out quickly. What more would you expect for the price. There is a reason that there are more expensive battery cells out there.
I’ll save all other curious people the googling: a built in battery for an iPhone 5 is 1440 mAh, so 10Ah (1,000 × m = 1) this will multiply your total battery life by nearly 8. Other touch screen cells phones I looked up had similar batteries (up to about 50% larger or 25% smaller).
You might want to take voltage into consideration.
The amphour calculations on power banks are worse than capacity calculations of hard drives. Of course the alternative watt-hour specifications aren’t so popular…
