View Single Post
Old 08-18-19, 01:09 PM
  #16  
01 CAt Man Do
Senior Member
 
01 CAt Man Do's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2012
Location: Columbia, Maryland
Posts: 1,141

Bikes: Mountain bike & Hybrid tour bike

Mentioned: 4 Post(s)
Tagged: 0 Thread(s)
Quoted: 183 Post(s)
Liked 7 Times in 6 Posts
Originally Posted by gauvins
Interesting, but awful reviews....

[edit]

After (too) much searching, I tentatively came to the conclusion that a charger equipped with a USB output is the way to go. Such as this. 4x18650 Lithium batteries would make it a 40Wh bank. It charges at 4A, twice the speed of typical banks, and in a pinch you can drop disposable batteries in the charger and use them as a poor-man's bank. (If I am not mistaken, it'll charge close to 15Wh in an hour. Allowing for inefficiencies, let's assume 10Wh. Not bad)

I've looked into super capacitors, but makes no practical sense.
About the edited part of your comment; Yes, you can buy a cell holder and use something like what you linked to to recharge the cells at a faster rate. However I would not buy the 4-bay charger you linked to. First, if you are looking to use a 4 x 18650 cell holder as a power bank I doubt you would want to use 18650 cells with just 2500mAh of capacity when there are so much better batteries. Secondly if you scroll down the page of the Amazon link that you linked to, you can read the product specifications which are not so impressive. Yes, if you only charge two cells you might get them to charge in a little over two hours assuming you use cells that are more near 3000mAh capacity. But...if you charge all four cells at the same time than the current is split between all four ( 1 amp for each bay ). The real deal killer is the USB output port which only supplies 1A of current. Charge anything with that and it will take twice as long as a standard USB wall charger ( 2A ). Not to mention that the USB output port on your typical Trustfire 4 cell holder is likely something like 1.5A ( my best guess ). Making it worse the 4 cell holders have a terrible rate of self discharge. I take the top off of mine when not in use.

Now about the reviews on the battery bank I previously linked to. If you are referring to the bad Amazon reviews, sometimes you have have to read what the people are actually complaining about in order to see if they are making a fair assessment of the product. Seems the nonexistent customer service was the biggest complaint ( which is probably actually true ). However there are only 40 - some reviews to judge from ( a rather small consumer base ) but from what was said the product did actually charge in 30 minutes. Some of the complaints I felt were nit-picky but if you are using Amazon Prime you should have no problem returning an item or arranging for an exchange if something goes bad on the product.. If I had one of those and if the button came loose or the USB output port came loose I would just return it to Amazon ( if still under the warranty guidelines ). Then again I'm not into fast recharge of a battery bank so if I bought a battery bank I'd likely buy one of the Anker products. That said if I was into bike touring and needed to charge my battery bank fast while at a pit stop I'd likely roll the dice on one of these 30 minute recharge battery bank...AND...while I'm at it plug in my Samsung S9 wall charger which charges my phone pretty fast all on it's own.
01 CAt Man Do is offline