Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/11/12/this-giant-30000mah-power-pack-can-tackle-all-your-charging-needs-on-the-fly.html
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That’s a good price. Amazon is charging list price right now. The reviews on Amazon are quite good.
The text “It offers seven outputs, including five USB ports” is wrong. It’s seven amps of output on five USB ports. It has three USB-A 5V/1A ports, a QC3.0 port which offers one of 5V/2.4A, 9V/1.67A, or 12V/1.35A, and a USB-C port that doesn’t seem to have USB-PD and offers only 5V/2.5A. So you could charge a Macbook but, at 12.5 watts, it will take quite a while. (The power adapter for my Macbook Pro puts out 60 watts.)
It also offers wireless charging at a nominal 5V/1A, but I imagine two-third of that turns into heat as with every other wireless charger.
Charging this battery takes “6-12 hours” using either a micro-USB or USB-C port at 5V/2.4A. This is done by connecting it to “an official cellphone charger”. Here again, I would prefer USB-PD on that USB-C port to charge it more quickly at a higher voltage.
This battery weighs 1.4 pounds. That might fit in a knapsack, but would quickly rip a hole in a pocket.
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Despite the title of the post, you can’t fly with this battery pack.
Nominal charge voltage of a little over 4.2 V per cell, a 30 amp hour battery pack will exceed the hundred watt hour limitation for passengers to bring on a commercial flight.
(Edit- Fixed a typo, left my incorrect conclusion in place.)
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none of the outputs are capable of discharging 30amps, it’s 30 Amp-hours of charge held.
(I was under the mistaken, or perhaps outdated belief that 100 watt hour was a hard upper limit for passenger carried Li ion batteries. Airlines can now approve devices over 100 and up to 160 watt hours, the FAA and IATA max, but the standard is still just up to 100.)
Lithium Ion batteries are nominally around 3.6 volts, sometimes up to 4.2 volts when charged.
4.2 volts time 30 amp-hours is 126 watt-hours. That’s about the same amount of energy in 100 grams of TNT. (The battery would dump it slower, but it can still produce an “explosion”, and very hot, very hard to put out flames.)
The safety standard is based on the total amount of energy that might be released should the device suffer a thermal runaway, not how many electrons it intends to move per second in normal operation.
Anyway, I withdraw my original complaint. This can be flown with, so long as the carrier allows devices above 100 watt hours, though you can only carry two such devices per passenger.
(I read up on this at the beginning of COVID lockdowns. We shipped a bunch of out-date laptops to one of our offices where the employees had, until then, only used desktop computers. They had to go by air to beat the shutdown schedule across a border.)
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Clearly you know your stuff.
“On the fly is” an interesting phrasing here. Can you actually take this on board of a plane?
ETA: oh, I am late for the party, by it seems.
Problem is, the rules enforcers have effectively unlimited, unchecked power. If you expect to make your flight that day and they say “naynay” you are hosed.
Many if not most TSA wonks appear to be frightened by anything more complex than a pair of socks and will treat anything they do
not understand or that they have never seen before as Devil Magic.
Never forget one troglodytic set of “officers” tried to claim someone’s Medal of Honor was a “ninja throwing star” even when others remonstrated and explained what it was.
Yep. And what’s worse is, while they don’t apply rules consistently and jump at shadows, they do miss test bombs and weapons with such reliability, it’s as if their only purpose is to fuck with normal innocent people.
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