What went wrong inside recalled Anker PowerCore 10000 power banks?
lumafield.com
lumafield.com
This is one of the Chinese reports on the issue: https://m.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_31048287
Excerpt from the report above (translated using Google):
> The Paper learned from an insider that Anker Innovations' battery cell supplier is already a leading battery cell supplier in the industry, and did not inform customers after it changed materials. In addition to Anker Innovations, the supplier also cooperates with leading power bank brands, so the impact is huge. Although Anker Innovations did not name the supplier, an insider pointed out that the supplier was Amprius.
UPDATE:
There's an exclusive interview by 36kr with one of Anker's VPs:
[1] Battery tester: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3IE3npEcuc
*unless the product is visible external packaging.
We have an entire lab just to test upstream components (which LiPO pouch cells are part of) and most of the out-of-spec cases were suppliers changing components or assembly tooling/process. We had DC motors that were failing prematurely in products and after some forensic investigation found that the supplier changed the stator wiring to a nominally smaller diameter which was overheating and burning out - and they added more metal to the casing so they would weigh the same.
This is all common knowledge, proven by example after example that it's necessary to have zero trust. It's truly an adversarial system. All the extra engineering effort for IQC is still cheaper. And, there's rarely an alternative to the amazing manufacturing ecosystem that is China.
After tracking down several of these types of issues, it appears that the Chabuduo mindset [1] is a very real thing.
I can only find https://youtu.be/3ZTGwcHQfLY but earlier this year it was all over YouTube.
US manufacturers aren't doomed: they already don't exist, and the infrastructure needed to support them also does not exist.
Close to impossible without a serious time investment and dedication.
Only to someone not involved with Chinese manufacturing.
It's not too hard to find good manufacturers that you can trust. If you do, they will be operating with this same mindset, completely distrusting everyone else. Great! You're done, right? Well sure, until management changes (this happened to us once).
The only difference is that is more difficult to hold Chinese suppliers accountable. Americans will happily cheat you as well.
I did not have too much experience with US manufacturers. I however can talk about Canada and Brasil. My experience with Brasil was stellar. Canada - you better fucking watch. As for China - I did order directly high power DC/DC converters. Those were available in the US and China. China came 10 times cheaper ($25 vs $250 apiece). The devices where we have installed those still work like a charm more than a decade after.
I remember these exact same “Chinese quality” threads 10 years ago and they read pretty much the same as this one, complete with the “well 10 years ago I got great stuff” and “yeah 10 years ago was different”.
Cycles, man. Cycles.
I have never had to deal with an American supplier "downsizing" wire from one guage to the next smaller for example.
Nor as linked above, including extra electronics to exfiltrate credit card data from terminals.
For example (hope I didn't mess up the details, it's been some time since I read it), a cosmetics manufacturer vendor replaced shampoo bottles with ones made with less (thinner) plastics multiple times, untill they started being destroyed in shipping... without notifying the company that ordered the shampoo... and then wanted more money for the "better" shampoo bottles.
Also some very questionable practices:
-----
The hair gel that we produced at the factory was green. One day, I noticed that the worker who filled the gel bottles had a skin condition. His hands were covered with the slick formula, and beneath the green, shimmery layer, I could see that the skin on his hands was peeling. Small, raw patches of flesh were exposed, and you didn’t have to be a dermatologist to see that his skin was infected.
“We should probably do something about this one,” I said to Sister, trying to sound calm, while in my head alarm bells were ringing.
Sister did not see the point. “Why?” she asked.
“It might be a health issue?”
“But the worker has done nothing wrong. It’s just an allergic reaction.”
Trying to press the matter, I suggested that the worker might contaminate the product.
Sister twisted around the argument. “How can he harm the product when it was the product that caused him the harm?”
IMO high tech cost optimization is like the opposite of chabuduo - it's not half-assing, but over value engineer under pressure. The PRC's "amazing" manufacturing system fosters adversarial competition down the supply chain because there are so many competitors, packed with technical talent incentivized to value-engineer the shit out of everything to squeeze out fractions of a RMB more per unit. Some engineering team probably poured thousands of man-hours and retooled $$$ manufacturing lines just to gain a tiny margin edge. Sometimes that backfires. But the pressure isn't about laziness - it's involutionary effort. The result is still a zero-trust environment, since when manufacturing base is so dense, everyone incentivized to cut corners or optimize/tweak silently, they usually do, forcing everyone upstream to stay hyper vigilant. So we end up in default equilibrium where it's cheaper/more optimal to squeeze downstream and inspect.
> and that the product being given to you is even yours (delivering a knockoff at the final step, and reselling yours on the gray market).
Culturally, chabuduo is more of an excuse/greed of the lazy to convince you it’s close enough [that it won’t make a difference to you] and they’re too lazy or out of patience, for many reasons they also don’t want to explain to you.
So many things are caught. At best there is a lack of QA on the Chinese side, but it's definitely worse than that. They have no qualms sending you known-bad items, and just see it as "maybe the customer won't notice" and worth a try. It's definitely a giant pain in the ass, and adds a ton of expense and friction to the process. Lots of stuff you simply cannot source from any other country though - even if you do, the supply chain usually traces back to China anyways so all you're doing is adding a middleman layer to the problem.
It's extremely important to set very explicit and strict quality parameters and specifications prior to any deal you do with a vendor. Even then you will miss things that will later be argued about. The more you can specify the better, otherwise it will be seen as negotiable/changeable.
A lot of folks used to living in a high trust society get really taking advantage by this. Any vendor sourcing from China and not implementing an extreme level of QA to the process is being negligent, and I assume that's quite a lot if not the vast majority.
It a glance this feels insane. Batteries are in everything and such a basic need.
How is it possible that buying through known scammers with tons of QA is still cheaper than manufacturing in the West?
Obviously for Tesla it isn't cheaper to buy from China, so why is it thought to be cheaper for the rest of the West? Is it purely scale?
It is remarkable that Tesla was able to figure it out.
It's still that way, but a bit less so. The intractable problem now is entire supply chains end to end do not exist in the west. If you wanted to start a battery company you are going to have a really hard time sourcing all your components in-country. All the way down to the inks used in printing the serial number on stuff.
In the end of course it all ends up as a cost, but even if you somehow dropped all environmental standards and set the cost of labor to match China today it would take decades just to get the institutional knowledge and infrastructure back.
(no idea if that’s the case, I have no specialized knowledge about batteries, just venturing a guess)
The battery packs themselves have been pulled apart and studied by everyone, pretty much all EV manufacturers are doing similar things anyway, so no real special sauce anywhere anymore.
Now there are more mature EV players in the game, innovations are happening from many manufacturers now (not just Tesla leading anymore) and then everyone else converges on the best ideas.
They are also starting to build their own lfp batteries at a new factory in Nevada, though it sounds like those will be for stationary storage.
Thats what im thinking as well. I was concerned when Straubel announced his departure but after reading multiple sources, it seems like the real reason he left was because he was getting bored and wanted to start something new (battery recycling). My hope is that he put a team there to continue onwards. It didn't seem like anyone was panicking when he announced, sounded like it was in the works for a while.
Cybertruck was supposed to have something like 250k yearly right? Are they even getting 30k yearly?
But still...tabless, structural pack, 4680, dry cell these are all things they had in production first right?
BYD Blade is amazing, but its more of a optimizing a mass market LFP cell no? Whereas I am referring to putting cutting edge tech into production.
/s
/Games Without Frontiers
As for designing them, this was a good interview with the CEO of CATL pointing to talent pipeline issues. We don't train enough chemical engineers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VIXjjw4u9A
Now with EVs and energy storage batteries are super interesting, and battery factories are being built in west too - by Asian companies (CATL, LG, Panasonic).
Even Tesla doesn't make their own cells, Panasonic does. Tesla's promised own cells are only in very few Teslas.
Basically, a specialized vendor for a given component is setting up their own production/assembly in your facilities - in some instances even along your assembly line.
The workers operating these machines are usually trained and employed by the supplier.
This setup does have some benefits, like less potential for supply chain disruptions as well as guaranteed capacity. But it is extremely personell intensive and generally requires enormous upfront investments.
On top of that, the US does not have very many lithium or rare earth metal mines or processing facilities relative to our demand.
But it’s hard to deny scale: the US is a populous country. But there are more than ONE BILLION more people in China. It’s foolish for us to expect to stay on the same playing field forever. The economies of scale and innovation you can accomplish with that many people is… a lot.
This was a fascinating article about specifically the robotics side of technology, touching on some of these points: https://semianalysis.com/2025/03/11/america-is-missing-the-n...
Part of the idea is that there are cities in China that have really strong positive feedback loops when it comes to developing new, cheap robotics tech. Whereas in the US, it might take weeks to order parts from suppliers in, you guessed it, China. It’s hard to compete with companies that have direct access to the supply chain and skilled workers right across the street, in an industry where lots of iteration and evolution is necessary.
This is true for the US alone, but US+Canada+EU is on the same order of magnitude, all of which prefer a more-than-zero-trust situation.
You can solve in a day what might take you a day, what might take you 20 days, 3x the price and a lead time of weeks. These kinds of hyperfocused, super dense innovation zones have existed in many places across all of time.
This assumes that Gear Set Alley is near you. At >3km you'd go by car and the "meet people on the way" breaks down. At >100km you'd rather call them and miss the wrecking yards and other factories nearby.
In China, Gear Set Alley may easily be 1000km from you. Or it may be <3km from you, if you're lucky. The point is that China, taken as a whole, has no advantage over EU or US in geographical proximity. Certain regions may have that advantage, but that is totally possible in every country on earth (beyond a certain, very tiny minimum size).
The current US administration's weird argument is that the USD values exchanged in inter-national trades must be symmetrical, but if you think about it, the amounts just don't mean anything. Balancing the amount only, like forcing the other party buy tons of American stuffs, won't solve it. The exchanged amounts only fuel philosophical border towns and dependency chains don't penetrate deep into foreign economies. The prices are not manipulated, it's just random.
The US has enough of everything to make batteries, you just can't fight something sold at completely arbitrary prices on economical grounds.
Look at that research base that got targeted. Imports: what the scientists need. Exports: science. The latter doesn't show up, it looked like it was hugely "out of balance" despite the only inhabitants being penguins.
In the real world, something's being exported even if you're not tracking it. If there was a large, continuing imbalance the relative values of the currencies would change.
The US is running a persistent current account deficit (and the largest one at that) for 20 years, which is the more relevant metric that includes services & data. This is an undisputed fact by most economists and institutions.
The relative values of currencies aren't changing because the central banks of surplus countries are actively managing capital inflows by buying foreign assets to keep their currency values stable. The Fed is one of the few that don't because they don't have that mandate.
In Econ 101 going back to Keynes, if you run a persistent current account surplus, the increased demand for your currency to pay for your exports will strengthen your currency, thus reducing the competiveness of your exports, thus reducing your trade surplus. Vice versa for a deficit. Hence persistent trade imabalances should not exist due to self-balancing FX-effects.
This isn't happening in reality for a variety of reasons, but it's common knowledge that it's government policies that directly try to prevent that from occuring. Capital Controls, Protectionist Policies, etc, the most explicit mechanism is the controversial currency manipulation, whereby many central banks manage capital inflows by buying US assets to keep their currency stable.
But the aggregate result of this is that we have a strange situation today whereby the US dollar is simultaneously strong yet running a massive deficit, while surplus countries have weak currencies. And these imbalances are growing rather than shrinking. Many mainstream economists don't think the situtation is sustainable, but their proposals to fix it are differing.
I'd agree that Trump's method of "forcing" other countries to buy more American stuff is just a short-term fix that won't solve the underlying issues, but the real solutions of tariffs, currency revaluations or introducing capital controls will be hard to stomach for everyone, albeit necessary. Although the "correct" solutions like the Bancor will all be much more harmful to surplus countries than the USA.
Everything you describe happens even with US suppliers. Dealing with one right now that sent us sheet metal that was painted + silkscreened incorrectly (a very large symbol was completely dropped by them). They proceeded to "refinish" them, wrong by silkscreening a second time which completely degraded the quality of smaller text on the metal panel. They sent it to us with not a care in the world.
They got sent back and told to rework the panels completely (strip them). And what did they do? Not strip the paint fully and now components that slot into the panels do not fit because there's basically an extra 1/8" of paint on the inside edges.
The worse part due to our own internal politics, we couldn't just let use our significantly more reliable Chinese supplier who has easily eaten a million dollars in errors before.
This US supplier is charging us for every single bit of their incompetence.
The difference though is your vendor using a lower grade metal than specified, knowingly and with intent to defraud since they decided that you might not notice and/or care enough for it to matter. That sort of thing doesn't seem to happen as much in the West.
I do agree that the reliable Chinese vendors will make things right at their expense if you can prove that they did not meet what they agreed upon. This is basically how I choose to deal with a vendor or not in China (or anywhere, for that matter) - I know stuff will happen, but how hard did I have to fight for them to make it right?
This happens a lot in Italy. There was even a huge scandal about how olive oil isn’t pure olive oil.
I don't think that's entirely fair, since there's definitely some naivety here. "What happens if there's a mistake" needs to be the first thing you ask, when working with anyone. If you don't, you've both agreed to an uncomfortable argument, when things go wrong. Get it out of the way at the beginning, but expect to pay a little more for not relying on hopes and dreams of perfection.
And, there's a good chance that if you read the fine print, you explicitly agreed to this.
A number of the integrators I worked with added rules banning customer-supplied CPUs because Intel would give away "working" product to educational/other institutions that, uh, did not POST, and it was such a headache so often that they banned using the product.
Anytime you find a weird outcome, assume there’s an internal misaligned incentive in a company. (Or just laziness / incompetence)
My old workplace received such donations, we had to pay to replace a number of them that were DOA in the resulting systems, and the VAR we were using to build our systems for us informed us they had added a policy forbidding BYO for that reason between our failure rate and others who had used them.
My assumption would be that they were only slightly more carefully managed than things that "fell off a truck" - that is, they were probably given away internally because they were nominally cosmetically unsuitable for sale and not easily salvageable by binning, but you got what you paid for in terms of warranty coverage.
Until you say, "Well, since these are out of spec, we're not paying for them. That's in the contract." And now it's suddenly a problem for them!
But the Korean and Japanese can be even weirder, because they will often only listen to someone if they have at least as much seniority as them. Like it won't matter how right you are, just your position.
So I looked, and yeah it's pretty well described:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_distance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_culture_on_aviation_...
So, my question to you is, given that the above is pretty widely recognized, why is it racist to merely describe an experience with this cultural difference?
Saying that someone grew up in a culture that values a certain type of academic education and achievement is different than saying they have those characteristics because of their racial genetic heritage.
It's also one thing to be aware of cultural trends and differences when designing multicultural systems to function well. It's another to project cultural trends onto individual people since the variation between people in a culture easily dominates the variation in the averages between cultures.
Of course, nuance like this rarely makes it into common discourse, which often does end up just being racist.
That's not an option. There's usually nowhere else to go that makes financial sense. So you work in the cheap zero trust environment, and pay a bit more to verify everything.
Anker skimped on verification because there was non-zero trust, and they're paying the price.
Free market types take note: good regulation and “red tape” can actually help free enterprise
It is a great read and surprisingly (scarily so) still relevant. I do however take issue with the title (clickbaity), it is a tad repetitive and sometimes very insightful while one paragraph later it reads like the authors first 10mins in China.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poorly_Made_in_China
Edit: note, the tricks described in this book are not exclusive to china.
Sounds like “fail fast, fail often.”
The old argument for why IBM PCs (pre-Lenovo) cost more than a competitor was that they guaranteed the supply chain to exist when a repair was needed across your whole fleet of deployed machines.
Similarly, Winnebago RVs have a specific quirky reputation that the manufacturer holds on to molds of all previous products essentially forever, so they can re-manufacture parts to things that haven't been in stock for years.
I still remember in 2012 - 2013, when I suggested exactly that, someone on HN replied and suggested I was racist.
> Amprius Technologies, Inc. has never developed or manufactured batteries for power banks. For accuracy, please attribute the certification issue to Apex (Wuxi), not Amprius. Recent reports have incorrectly linked Amprius Technologies, Inc. to a battery certification issue. The company involved is Apex (Wuxi) Co., Ltd., formerly known as Amprius (Wuxi) Co., Ltd., a Chinese lithium battery manufacturer based in Wuxi, China.
> Apex (Wuxi) was once a subsidiary of Amprius Inc. but was never part of Amprius Technologies, Inc. In early 2022, Apex was spun off, renamed, and has operated independently since, with no ties or relationships to Amprius Technologies, Inc.
(source: https://www.gizchina.com/2025/07/14/anker-baseus-romoss-amon...)
Going from that last quote, they would in fact have been made and sold by Apex(Inc) at the time it was a subsidiary of Amprius Inc. and claiming otherwise seems like deliberate deception.
Their own website makes clear that Amprius Technologies Inc and Apex (Wuxi) are related in the description of their CEO, who served as CEO of both companies simultaneously. [1]
[0] https://www.anker.com/a1263-recall
[1] https://ir.amprius.com/company-information/executive-team
Second, Anker is one of the few companies I actually have a very high trust for. A few years back I bought a wall charger[0] from them, it has 2 USB-C and a Type A. A month in, one of the Type-C ports wouldn't charge if the other port was being used. If you send a support ticket they annoyingly give you a response with very basic trouble shooting. But if you respond to that you get a person. They just sent me a new one right away (<10 days) and there was no need to return the charger or anything. So I still use it, just blocked the bad port. I gotta say, whenever I encounter good customer service I become loyal.
I wanted to say this because I think a quality matters. Quality often takes nuances and this can often run counter to maximizing profits (Lemon Markets and all that). Looking at Luma's report, I don't get the indication that they had this issue because they were cutting corners but looks like it must be upstream[1]. But am happy to see they were giving gift cards along with the recall. Companies should minimize mistakes as best as they can, but it is important to judge them by how they handle mistakes. It can be easy to get caught in the negativity but I personally don't think I'll stop buying Anker products.
For reasons probably bordering on OCD, I watch a LOT of teardown videos of various electronics. And one thing that always strikes me is how a company with a product will routinely and often change what's inside, while the model number and exterior appearance stays the same.
For example, I wanted to buy a big 12V LiFePo4 battery and all of the cheapest ones are on Amazon. Amazon reviews are generally garbage because they're all borderline fake (from useless Viners, or wanna-be useless Viners). The only "honest" reviews of these I could find were YouTube teardowns where they basically have to destroy the case in order to take it apart. I would watch a teardown of one popular battery, and then run across a different teardown of the same model from someone else and the internals of each would be completely different. Completely different cells, battery management board, wires, construction everything. But they both looked identical on the outside.
Finished product manufacturers in China rarely have a consistent supply chain. They are negotiating suppliers and batches of components constantly, and are constantly re-engineering everything about the product, except for the external appearance of the case. This Luma Field article confirms what I've already run across myself.
Even Apple iphone(tbf, also made in China) double-source important components inside their phone(modem)
Samsung goes a bit further. Depending on where you buy e.g. a S23 FE, you'll get entirely different SoC architectures - the US model ships with Qualcomm Snapdragon, the international model with Samsung Exynos.
Do you have any reccs you enjoy watching? Asking for a friend :)
And it seemed the main issue as identified by Luna was not with the cells but the bank design itself.
> If the recall is affecting units made with 18650 battery cells from multiple suppliers, that suggests the root cause of the recall stems from elsewhere in the power bank. We next focused on the PCB and assembly of the board with the cells.
> We can measure the distance to quantify how dramatically the gap between the positive and negative bus bars varies across the three units. In PB1, that distance is only 0.52 mm
But it is still upstream since AFAIK Anker just rebrands other products.
If you try their provided troubleshooting instructions, your port may return normal again. Worth give it a try.
They are good with returns/replacements. My experience with their product quality has been less good though. I had a pair with earbuds from them, I think it had some firmware issue where on an Android phone, volume would go from far too soft to 'blow your eardrums out'. No other buds had this issue with the same phone. They sent me a replacement which was fine, but it could certainly have caused hearing loss.
I also had an USB-C adapter from them (one of those USB-C with power passthrough, HDMI, etc.) it was so badly shielded that no WiFi or Bluetooth connection near it would survive.
I think people generally rave about them because the among very cheap/affordable Chinese vendors they have support that actually writes back and are helpful. The quality of their products is not great though (also see all these power bank recalls). I avoid them now.
Does not mean that all western brands are great either. My wife bought a Satechi USB-C adapter with DP-Alt mode that Satechi claimed would support 4k@60Hz. There was no way to get it running on Mac or non-Mac at 4k@60Hz. So, I did more research based on the MAC address of the device and found that it just a 'recased' version of a $20 Chinese USB-C design (which was specced to only support 4k@30Hz). Not only were Satechi just selling a rebadged USB-C adapter, they didn't even take the effort to check whether the specs that they claim to support are supported (luckily I could return it within 30 days). Also see: https://overengineer.dev/blog/2021/04/25/usb-c-hub-madness/ (in which they find that an Anker adapter is probably a rebadged Ce-Link design)
Edit: found my original Satechi rant, including my experiences with their support: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30907221
Sounds like they have alright customer service, if you live in a region where it is actually available (not me), and don't care about polluting the environment with yet more short-lived plastic trash. Not really something to support with one's hard-earned money IMHO.
I've been overly cautious of batteries for several years now, I charge my devices with 1A charger and keep it between 40% to 80% . I now carry a single 18650 cell power bank instead of those 10,000 mAh, 20,000mAh power banks.
I don't sleep with phone, tablet or kindle on bed and I force my partner to do the same to her irritation. Last week her MacBook became spicy overnight and I had to rush to Apple Store morning, the price for battery replacement was more than the price of that MacBook in used market so I had to buy a new MacBook.
I miss the good old days where I could take the battery of the Nokia phone and spin it on the table to see if it's become spicy. I pray to EU gods to please force the manufactures to bring back user replaceable batteries.
Lobbyists have worked hard to weaken the regulation, but it should still be a major improvement over the status quo
My theory is just I've had a bad luck with batteries.
The recall is concerning, especially since once they started with the one, they quickly added several more to the list. I've ordered at least 17 Anker products over the last ten years (not all of them power banks). I pay the premium over cheaper external batteries, and I have advised my family in the past to do the same. This is ostensibly because they are supposed to be the guys that don't explode. If I can't even take that for granted, then there's really no reason to maintain customer loyalty. There are countless other, cheaper brands available online from no-name Chinese companies.
For now I don't avoid them, yet. Definitely not switching to a random cinese brand instead.
I also only buy portable battery models that I believe will sell or has sold many thousands of units so any widespread manufacturering defects should become apparent sooner.
Just also darkly hilarious — “I only buy <PRODUCT> with a history of product recalls”.
There was a time in which we used to avoid such things…
https://medium.com/@christian.dobbert/the-missing-bullet-hol...
Part of the price of cheap shit.
Anker on the other hand is a recognizable name with a brand image. So they need to do right to keep their trust.
Would you want to tear down Lithium batteries??? It’s slightly hazardous…
Also, repeating your sentiment, for all the tech gadgets.. bluetooth speakers, I'm looking at you.. why not have replaceable batteries for those? There have to be enough vapers now that the knowledge of this type of battery as distinct from the old alkaline ones has passed into mainstream consciousness. This would be a huge selling feature for me.
The reasons I see are that it is because the rechargable li-ion are more dangerous and a fire hazard, but is this really true? As with most anything that can carry a risk if misused, I can find a few dozen instances where a vape battery went awry, but surely the benefits outweigh the concerns?
Edit: I do understand the irony of saying this on a post about when they do go boom.
Flashlight and vape enthusiasts are mostly adults who likely trend as all three of: older and more knowledgeable, more likely to take and accept risks, and more willing to pay a premium for the benefits of replaceable batteries... and the companies that make vapes and high-powered enthusiast flashlights are probably less worried about a customer suing them over a battery issue than a large toy manufacturer. If you're a vape company, you have bigger safety issues to worry about -- like the normal operation of your products :)
There are no mercury alkalines anymore for general consumer use, those collection bins were removed from stores in the 90's and they can be disposed of with normal waste.
I'm with you on the risk/benefit calculation. E-waste is bad, and the option to bring a spare battery makes a lot of products more useful. A Li-ion cell can be dangerous if mishandled, but less so than a jug of gasoline or larger power tools.
This can be considerably mitigated by sticking a protection circuit on the end of a cell, which makes it no more dangerous than the proprietary Li-ion batteries used in things like cameras.
My Logitech G604 works fine on NiMH. The calibration for reporting battery charge as a percentage is off, but it runs for months.
Logitech no longer makes the g604 :(
I got 14500s for my Logitech F710 game controllers, and then drilled a hole in the battery compartment of the controller to make them plug-in chargeable. I've only just played with them a few times - no guarantee this is a long-term solution, but it seems to work well for now.
Note that this does mean you'll have a bin of things that look like AAs but might cause a fire or melt if you put them into the wrong thing that accepts AA batteries (like the just-a-wire-fake-batteries have allcaps warnings about never ever putting them into a charger).
Actual protected 14500s will be too long in most devices meant for AA, but it's possible to find protected 14430 cells marked as "14500" from some flashlight brands like Acebeam and Skilhunt. Those are safe with regard to over-discharge, but the voltage of a fully charged cell might still damage devices not rated for it.
I'd rate this modification as risky and only suitable for people with significant battery expertise.
Edit: saw the other comment mentioning 14500s with USB ports. These will be protected against short circuit and over-discharge, and are actually based on 14430 cells.
I saw some articles and ads for doing it using 3.1V LiFePO4 batteries but I couldn't find any of those with USB charge-ports... I guess your warnings are why you're supposed to use the 3.1V Li-phosphates for that. So I went with the 3.7V LiIon because I really wanted that port.
I guess I dodged a bullet. Thanks for the warning. I actually did systems engineering as an undergrad (though I just work in software) so that makes me a bit overconfident with electronics even though I don't know jack about battery chemistry besides the basic theory. I'll be more careful on research next time I undertake this kind of project.
I have pretty much the opposite preference regarding charging: I'd much rather swap in a charged spare and stick the drained battery in a slot charger than charge batteries inside devices. There's no waiting that way.
I do often stick unprotected cells in flashlights that came with protected ones. It's important to know whether the flashlight can over-discharge the cell, but most can't, and it's important to not short-circuit them. I suggest people who don't want to learn about batteries stick with protected.
Consumer product safety regulation is written in blood, and exists for a very good reason.
Let the advanced right-to-repair audience open up the device with a screwdriver and install a new LiPo pouch. We don't need a battery door to let kids in like it's as safe as AAs in a gameboy.
I think there’s still a big chasm between that level of skill and knowing there’s a difference between protected and unprotected 18650s… or even knowing what an 18650 is at all. Most people have never heard of them.
The right-to-repair “I know what I’m doing” crowd can disassemble the device as long as it isn’t glued shut.
It's not the right choice for all applications of course. Products intended for children and that are particularly demanding in terms of electrical power require greater caution than speakers or most flashlights.
https://budgetlightforum.com/t/my-18650-batteries-are-about-...
> The batteries that come with the light are perfect, but all the panasonic 18650s I have purchased are about 1/8 (3mm) too short.
> I was thinking of using aluminum foil.
If people on enthusiast forums are struggling to put batteries in their devices safely, the mass market is doomed. Proper safety engineering is to design a device in a way where foreseeable misuse by a layperson does not result in a safety issue.
This isn't incompatible with a right to repair. Just simply don't glue the device shut. The LiPos used in many devices are common jelly-bean components.
What I'm advocating is a bit beyond just repairability; field-replaceable batteries the ability to charge spares externally, and the ability to share spares between devices are substantial benefits.
From memory, the max output was about 20~30W for the bigger models [0]. For 2 cell types it gives 10W, so barely good enough to slowly charge a smartphone.
Most of them use rails though, so different cell chemistries are a bit of a risk over time.
Downside is that you've got parts in your bin that are dangerous because they look like AA batteries but could cause damage or even fires if somebody put them into the wrong AA thing. Make sure to mark the batteries loudly. I've electrical-taped the pairs together to prevent this problem.
It will take 3x ordinary or rechargeable cells, or it will take it's Li-Ion pack that is the same size as the 3 cells side by side. Designed in from the start so there are no dangerous bits. Hiking headlamps are something where you do *not* want to be left with a dead battery!
There are a handful of these on the market and they're not common in retail stores. I'm fond of the Skilhunt H150.
You must have a charge controller in Li-Ion between each voltage point because overcharging a cell is asking for trouble.
Sealed battery pack, you can put a little controller in there with it. Loose cell, you either give up some capacity and add some cost by putting a controller in each cell, or you trust that the controller in whatever charges it is good. Bare cell, good charger, fine. Bare cell, iffy charger, you might get the blame when the cell goes up. Thus it's very hard to find good bare cells.
Anything with a built-in battery is nearly always e-waste within 3 years, while I've had AA/AAA devices that are 5-10 years old that are fine.
Pop the batteries out when in storage, never need to wait for it to recharge (just rotate in new batteries), use disposable batteries from the corner shop in an emergency.
All electronic devices are eventually e-waste, but devices that use AA/AAA can last decades longer. I only buy something with a lithium ion battery when there is almost literally no alternative (essentially phone and laptop).
If they put in a round cell I'd stay away. I usually replace the cell with one I know is good and check the circuit for protection. Wouldn't be the first time I've seen something with no over or undervolt protection whatsoever.
No phones use this chemistry. I have no idea what you're on about.
>Wouldn't be the first time I've seen something with no over or undervolt protection whatsoever.
Even the cheapest lithium ion charge controllers have overvolt protection by the nature of how they work. What can happen however is a controller could be specced to charge to 4.3V per cell and a 4.2V cell is instead installed. This is a problem.
I thought we were discussing a power bank not a phone.
No-name batteries are often way lower capacity than advertised, which means less stuff, and therefore less densely packed and less stuff to burn.
I am not saying that these batteries are safer, or that it is not a scam, but the fact that these batteries are lower capacity can compensate for the sketchy build. Power electronics is another story, so while the battery may be ok, the charging circuit may not.
Maybe using USB-PD signaling for the finely adjustable voltage modes (PPS/AVS) could help though, at least if USB-PD coding has reasonable range left in the protocol fields there to communicate the entire voltage and current range that such an e-vehicle charger would want. Though there's other readily suitable communication protocols to pick from if USB-PD isn't suitable.
Note 7 thing was a faulty velding line. And no x-ray quality checks.
Reminiscent of the tylenol case study, handled a tough situation correctly and it's still on the shelf.
They won’t pay for devices that Amazon says are in scope, but the black on black serial number is illegible.
For devices that are covered, they advise you to not dispose of them at a retailer like Home Depot that accepts lithium batteries, but provides no means to safely dispose of this fire hazard. So I got my $40 payment, but I assume now that will disclaim any liability when my house or car goes on fire while I try to find a facility that accepts dangerous batteries.
I'm not sure who to trust, but I've erred on the side of caution and trashed the batteries. Because it's not worth dying in a fire over $30 in batteries.
That is not true. Please don't spread misinformation that could lead to deaths or people losing everything they own.
You can put out a Lithium battery fire with a class-D fire extinguisher. If you don't have one available, you can isolate the burning battery by surrounding it with sand or other inert, dry substances to keep it from spreading until the fire department arrives with proper equipment to dispose of or extinguish it.
Also you can keep things near the battery wet.
There's actually very little lithium by weight in li-ion batteries.
If you stop the water, it may reignite or smolder and produce smoke, but water will work to combat the fire.
How is throwing a potentially damaged lithium battery into the trash, where no batteries of any kind should go, cautious?
My current perspective, recall or not, is their quality is no different from the alphabet soup companies selling identical looking (and possibly identical) items.
It seems like the overheating issue is “not thier fault,” but part of being a trusted brand isn’t just recalling but vetting suppliers and the components they receive.
I mean, there's probably very good ROI on this marketing; I'm not saying they're foolish or selfless. Just that it doesn't cost them that much to do, so it's a win-win for everyone.
actually no let's not blend the lithium, forbidden inhaled powder
Here's a blog post with interesting information that just so happens to advertise how you can use our product
The addition of what I assume is a temperature sensor on the cell in the new design also points to the addition of some charge/discharge regulation based on the active cell temperature that wasn't present in the original model.
Moving from busbar to insulated leads also suggests some recurring issues with bus bar short/contacts but was probably not the cause of the overheating issue as busbars usually have lower resistance and higher current capacity.
If I had to guess I would say the recall was very likely due to cell overheating on high discharge (PD in/out) in high temperature or high insulation (in a backpack or in the sun) situations where there was no thermal feedback from the cell to the controller and the cell was outside of the specification temperature. Thermal runaway is a known issue with lipo cells and can cause cell rupture and combustion.
I've had tons of other packs that have gotten too hot to touch during high charge/discharge and that have "pillowed" up (there is an entire amusingly-named subreddit for shaming cells that have done this... /r/spicypillows) and that is without putting them in a backpack or other insulating environment, or doing so in high ambient temperature. I think anker is likely singled out in the recall because of their size and not necessarily that they made a worse powerbank than most others... but that is only anecdotal based on how many off-brand powerbanks I've seen fail in the same way (bluehive, inui and safuel specifically, to name names) without any recalls or sanctions.
See also the CPSC link:
https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2025/More-than-One-Million-Anke...
(Notably, this page mentions "Anker has received 19 reports of fires and explosions. This includes two reports of minor burn injuries not requiring medical attention and 11 reports of property damage totaling over $60,700." Puts it into context! That's not a house, but with numbers like that, I wonder if a couple cars were destroyed.)
There's also Anker's product recalls main page:
https://www.anker.com/product-recalls
which adds a few other models with different enclosures but presumably with the same upstream manufacturer to the recall.
This is really annoying when trying to find product information because, for example, the Anker Nordics site doesn't have product pages for all the products they sell in Europe, but they won't let you look at product pages from other regions without some VPN shenanigans.
A) Keep using it, even if they do hear about the recall
B) Throw it in the trash can
[0]: https://www.theinternational.at/nusdorf%E2%80%90debant-500-f...
In the last couple of weeks, there's been a lot of noise [1] about how the regulations [2] about carrying power banks on planes in China got a lot stricter and any powerbank without a C3 mark is prohibited on-board, regardless of size, also any device with the C3 mark that's subject to a recall.
Given the timing of these two events, I suspect that there's some relationship.
[1] https://www.travelandtourworld.com/news/article/flying-with-...
[2] https://english.beijing.gov.cn/latest/news/202506/t20250628_...
Are models sold in some regions different/known-good?
Should probably at least discharge it to be safe(r), I guess.
Maybe the faulty batteries were only used for some models/regions pairs ?
[1] e.g. BT earbuds where one side randomly stopped working after a few months, got a replacement after just a few minutes of explanation/verification hassle.
Should be 710,000, right?
i say it's a release asap and fix design issues over time, cheaply.
basically the Google school of hardware products.
> we don't know exactly what flaw triggered this massive recall
https://www.pcbway.com/pcb_prototype/Automated_X_Ray_Inspect...
Are you nuts?
X-ray inspection is not that rare, there’s even small assembly houses here (Spain) that can do xray automated inspection.
This has been standard for years to the point I’ve been sent forms for assembly houses RFQ where there are checkboxes for xray inspection, and I haven’t handled a serious assembly development in ~4 years.
What’s new and they’re advertising here is CT, which is another level.
https://www.lumafield.com/case-studies/loreal
https://www.lumafield.com/case-studies/case-study-enabling-8...