Why your outdoorsy friend suddenly has a gummy bear power bank
theverge.com
https://archive.ph/1G2Ut
theverge.com
- 20,000 mAh is the rated capacity. Anyone who has tested 18650 batteries (which are the cells typically used in these battery packs) knows the rated capacity != tested capacity.
- Watthours is more important than amp hours
- Tested watt hours as typical loads is more important than amp hours
- It's very normal to see tested capacity to be roughly 70~80% of rated capacity.
- This commenter said they got "At 18W average, I pulled out 55.4Wh" on the Haribo [0]
- The generally considered "gold standard" for ultra light batteries in this range is the Nitecore NB20000 Gen 3, which regularly tests around 56 Wh.
So yes the conclusion is correct - you get roughly the same amount of capacity for a typical load (18W phone) for a cheaper price and slightly less weight. Very curious what battery cells the Haribo uses.
[0] - https://old.reddit.com/r/Ultralight/comments/1li5rxw/20000ma...
Absolutely not. Pouch cells are what most powerbanks have.
https://www.benzoenergy.com/blog/post/type-of-cells-used-for...
Things changed a lot since then. Most power banks these days use just lipo pouches.
I'd go a step further and say that amp hours is meaning less since voltage is not specified. The only valid battery capacity unit of measure is watt hours. While most battery packs use a single 3.7 lithium ion battery, Apple's first gen MagSafe battery pack used two internal batteries in series, throwing off everyone's amp hours only comparison.
I would also accept Joules. But yes, the unit should be a unit of energy.
Another fun one would be milli hundredweight leauge (mcwt·lg). Both hundredweight and league have multiple accepted definitions to make it more "fun". But the range maps quite nicely to everyday things:
AA battery - Around 5 mcwt·lg
Phone battery - Around 20 mcwt·lg
Laptop battery - Around 200 mcwt·lg
Car 12v battery - Around 1,000 mcwt·lg
EV battery - Around 100,000 mcwt·lg
(Context: 1 Calorie = 1 kilocalorie = 1000 (gram) calories; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie)
The "(gram)" make no sense here. We commonly use "kilo" as shorthand for kilogram", but kilo is just a prefix indicating 1000 and never indicates "kilogram" when given as a prefix to another unit, and so there's no implied/left out "gram" in 1 kilocalorie.
Though as the difference is at most 0.5%, it's probably won't affect your battery buying experience. :)
Measuring by TNT equivalent is more standardized. "This battery stores 50 grams of TNT."
Ummm, on second thought, maybe don't use that term at the airport, .. or in secure areas, ... or near the police, ... or in public, ... or on social media or anything else tapped by the NSA or other authorities.
1 joule is 1 watt-second to be precise. So 1Wh is 3600 joules.
Also, I wonder how usable a unit of time that was not based on a day would be, since so much of our life revolves around that cycle.
Compare Mean solar day vs Stellar day vs Sideral day - the difference is less than 5 minutes or so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_time
I was thinking along the lines of the ancient Sumerians arbitrarily deciding to divide 1 day into 24 hours, and 24 hours into 60 minutes, and 60 minutes into 60 seconds, and how that doesn't have anything to do with how humans came up with the concept of 1 year (the Earth rotating around the sun).
a real light weight battery construction isn't going to have redundant casings and fuses; it'll be the bare minimum pouch/plate style construction, the bare minimum fuses at main junctions, and as light a protective shell as can be produced to house it all in. It probably won't have a BMS of any kind on board, with the functions handled up-stream from the battery.
here's something close, although with plenty of weight compromise for reliability and safeties' sake. : https://global.honda/en/tech/motorsports/Formula-1/Powertrai...
> This is a very poorly researched article
So, yeah, pot, kettle, all that.
> but the highest capacity 18650 out there is less than 15Wh and this advertises 77Wh.
10x 2000 mAh 18650 batteries in parallel gives you 20 Ah @ 3.7V.
> So, yeah, pot, kettle, all that.
Totally unnecessary comment but thanks.
It's not more unnecessary than your comment about the OP article being poorly researched. If the conclusions are true, even if they didn't do the measurements themselves, I find it quite excusable to skip past the detailed specs of the battery.
Although that is completely true, pretty much all discussion, speccing, and marketing of batteries and power banks is done in Ah. So the article working in that unit is logical and consistent.
For instance I have a 20000mAh power bank which also has a 74Wh capacity printed on, a conversion factor of 3.7V matching li-ion chemistry.
Not to mention with PD neither the neither input not output voltages are limited to 5V.
I remember Colin Fletcher, years ago, writing in The Complete Walker about trimming the borders off his paper maps to save weight, which seemed like an insane over-optimization to me. But then, I'm not an ultralight hiker.
I am impressed folks are getting their loads down to 10 pounds though.
I'm not even remotely an ultralight backpacker, but I do count ounces (no matter what your weight limit is, you can't escape making tradeoffs to stay within it). Your hiking load is a great example of how quickly apparently insignificant quantities can add up. Saving fractions of an ounce multiple times gets you large savings far more quickly than you'd think.
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/performance-improvemen...
Edit: Looks like the Air is 165 g, vs 187 g for the 15 Pro; not even an ounce difference. A bit more compared to the 17 Pro (206 g); but I probably just hold on until Russia collapses into a new metastable state and we can get bulk titanium again.
For a solar panel to be useful you need:
- At least a few days without access to electricity, otherwise even at max power, you won't get as much charge as a similarly sized power bank
- Good sunlight, preferably in the summer (more daylight)
- No shade, which is the opposite of what you want in hot and sunny summer days
- Correct placement for your solar panel, for example, having it hanging from your backpack will only work if you have the sun in your back
- A large enough solar panel, these tiny panels you sometimes find on power banks are useless
- Compatible devices. Solar panels have a variable power output, not all devices support it, some of them just shut down charging. Your best bet is to use a compatible power bank, but that information is not often specified. Test it beforehand!
My experience with a solar panel is from two week-long music festivals in the summer, which would be almost ideal conditions. My experience was that over the course of a week, I got about the charge equivalent of a 10Ah battery from my solar panel (rated 10W, 300g), so about half the efficiency of that gummy bear battery, for the reasons cited earlier. Maybe I could have done better with a better panel and better planning, but I'd rather have a battery, much more convenient, and cheaper too. I want to enjoy the festival, not babysit my solar panel.
So I'd say you need at least a week without electricity in the best conditions to make a solar panel worth it, preferably more, which I believe is rather uncommon.
Also, I am talking about these portable <1kg solar panels. The large solar panels that go in your car/van are another story.
That's basically my use case. I have a "15 W" panel. I can get about 5 days from my iPhone for navigation, and most of my trips are 5 - 7 days, so really it's opportunistic charging for reading on my phone after dinner. I can generally get an hour or so of reading from just hanging the panel off the back of my pack, and another two hours from setting it in the sun during my ~1 hour lunch break if it's not so hot out that nothing charges. 300 g for ~3 hours of reading at night, indefinitely, is a good trade for me.
I've had trips where solar would have mostly failed - 11 days of nonstop rain on the Continental divide trail in Canada, to be specific - but solar has worked for me really well in CA, UT, WY, CO, etc. the places where solar would have failed were pretty obvious in advance, too.
And it doesn't take much direct sun on a 15 or 20W panel to keep two phones and a steripen charged if you're not being crazy with the use.
A 20 Ah (77 Wh) power bank weight about the same as a 15W solar panel. That about 3 full (0-100%) charges on a typical smartphone. I think that would have kept your wife phone up the whole trip no problem, and no need to worry about the sun.
On a 11 day trek in the sun, yes, by all means take a solar panel. However, most people I know who do such long hikes usually have access to electricity at some point. But if it is not your case, well, you are the reason why these solar panels exist ;)
It can - within reason - replace maps, guidebooks, emergency satellite beacons, a camera, a secondary flashlight, etc.
You can, if you want, go out with your pockets stuffed with high calorie emergency rations and no pack at all. The weight savings will be tremendous, but at a certain point the tradeoff for weight over comfort and utility becomes too silly.
I'm partial to Utah's canyonlands, and a lot of the adjacent pinyon forest (still desert) in Northern New Mexico and Colorado, but that's just where I grew up. The Saguaro forests in southern Arizona are also amazing.
If you've never been to the desert in America, a good plan would be to fly to LA, and drive to the Grand Canyon. You will pass through a number of very different desert ecosystems.
In 10-14 days, you can do an exceptional loop from Las Vegas taking in:
Bryce Canyon NP
Byway 12
Capitol Reef NP
Goblin Valley
Dead Horse Point SP
Arches NP
Canyonlands NP
Goosenecks SP
Horseshoe Bend
Antelope Canyon
Zion NP
Valley of Fire SP
Then when you go back, you can do places requiring a bit more planning like Coyote Gulch (amazing), Buckskin Gulch (also amazing), and secondary spots like Natural Bridges, SR 95, etc. Hundreds of great places in Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, etc, and all before you get to adding anything more remote or long distance.
Most ultralight hikers optimize for low weight, I optimize for low weight and maximum leftover space to haul a ton of weight back.
Cuz trust me, you don't wanna leave that behind when you find it.
Out here in the west, you'll find a LOT of land in all 4 categories, not to mention state-level parks, which at least here in California allow some rockhounding near streams and beaches.
Very easy to bring crap you don't need as well. Always surprised me how much an extra hoodie or something would add to what was on my back. Also there is a 'stupid' light, where shaving grams is silly. Was shrinking down my hammock tarp and discovered my setup was not great when the wind shifted direction.
When it comes to power bricks, smaller things like this is great for the normal laptop bag or purse. This is cheap enough that I'd send it off to be black holed with all the other bricks I lend my kid.
This is so true it's not even funny. I keep a spreadsheet for each trip, and among other things, I record which of the items I actually used on the trips. It was very surprising to me how many things I thought I used and therefore needed, but when reviewing the records, I never (or very rarely) actually used.
Those items get cut from future loads.
- a knife
- a first-aid kit with some niche stuff like big gauze pads, electrolytes, strapping tape, etc.
- quarter of a roll of toilet paper
- a compass and whistle
- a paper map
- spare laces
- 3L of water, unless water is guaranteed to be available (2L is more standard)
- spare calories in case I'm delayed
- emergency beacon (except my phone does this now)
I could sacrifice these and be fine most of the time, but I've needed nearly everything except the whistle, the full quarter-roll, and the emergency beacon.
When people talk about "10 lb base loads" I assume they are talking about overnights? 10 lb base loads for day trips would not be impressive.
I don't have a fancy pack. My old crown vic is about 2lbs.
I like my hot coffee and meals, so usually bring some sort of cooking and water filtration. 600ml pot, some sort of stove (stick, alcohol, or hexi), spoon, ursack, pot grabber, and befree - and I'm over a pound.
Ounces start to add up fast. 6-7lbs with just the basics does not pack any clothing or food. Both tend to burn the folks I hike with. Always the poor soul who packed in 3lbs of gorp or three sweaters. There is nothing magical about 10lbs. Plenty of people in the ultralight community could look at my pack and say I had an extra 2' of dental floss as well as no business to hike with cards and a kindle. It does set a target where you may not be able to just pull out gear that does not consider weight. Personally, I like to try to target about 8-12lbs + food/water. I don't know how some of the other guys we hike with pull off their 30+ pound packs. I'm not strong enough to do what they are doing.
I’ll happily carry 10-15lbs on a casual weekend with some friends, but when I did the PCT my baseweight was down to 6lbs once I passed the Sierra.
Turns out if all you do is hike all day, for months at a time, you really start thinking about pack weight.
That weight is the maximum and (in addition to everything above) includes a 70L pack, tent, sleeping gear, poles, rain gear (the weather is treacherous here), a stove, thermals/scarf/beanie for the cold (some places in the Victorian Alps like to dump snow on you in the middle of summer), a hat and sunscreen, spare socks, a toothbrush that I haven't cut in half and toothpaste that hasn't been dried out, light source and batteries, water filter, battery pack on longer trips, dry bag if we're doing a deep river crossing, etc.
I take out what I won't need, swap in less rugged gear when there's lower risk, and usually end up somewhere between 6kg and 9kg base weight. I could probably shave off another kg or even two, but at some point I'd be sleeping under a tarp in Victoria's famously horizontal rain or ditching safety gear.
Disclaimer: had to run an multi-stage ultra in the sahara, weighed everything, finished with 1xpacket of carbs+hydration that was right at the bottom of the bag, was upset with myself that I didn't use it for the last day. That's like almost 200 calories I could have used to keep myself warm at night (the desert gets cold at night).
I'll pack in a second mini-bic. One that stays in my pocket, one for our group to constantly loose throughout the trip. Same for that extra TP packet. I'd rather have it with, then find myself in the woods running short. Got a whistle in there too that I don't think I've ever used on the trail.
Most of my hikes, I'll plan to be at the site before dark. I'll still bring a reasonable headlamp.
I was talking about the other stuff.
You can have a backup paper map inked on your skin.
(Mildly amusing, I first read 'printed handkerchiefs and bananas'. Like paint your map on the skin of your apple, or the shell of your hardboiled eggs.)
It's all literally in the hot path.
When bugs show up in the form of back pain, "pre-optimize everything" sounds like a sensible option to me.
Personally I'm not into paying a premium for "ultralight" and similar so I might have misinterpreted something when glancing at people that seem to be. For me part of the hiking experience is getting used to carrying weight and living off equipment that would work in a crisis or adjacent to armed conflict, i.e. my basic gear clocks in at about twenty kilos or so, though that's enough to feed and 'house' about four people. Two field kitchens, teepee-style storage tent as well as a large pyramidal tent for sleeping, field spade, handheld radio units for the family/team, fishing equipment, &c. Usually I carry ~10 liters of water, a liter of ethanol, food, spare clothes and whatnot on top of it.
I find that lowering weight into the single digits doesn't give me that much extra range consistently over several days so I'd rather set up camp close to the area where I'd need it and leave some weight behind while I take on the more demanding trail or climb. At the end of the day it's going to be an endurance activity rather than a sprint anyway, at least for a non-athletic button pusher in his forties, like me.
Clearly people that mostly roam areas close to cities or that have joint issues or similar would have reason to make other decisions.
I'm no ultralighter, but I rarely carry water aside from a 16oz bag to sip on while I'm heading towards my destination. Water is crazy heavy. I make sure that the route I'm taking, and my destination, have water nearby that I filter and drink.
It was the same thing when I got into photography. It's always easy to talk about the easily measurable things. This lens is better than that and so on. Gear is cool and fun...
But the old guy with the beat up camera and not optimal lens shooting next to me ... he will take better photos almost every single shot.
Most ultralight folks go light so they can cover more ground while being more comfortable. Experienced ultralighters consider how a weight reduction introduces risk against that goal, rather than simply "lighter is always better". Aka, don't go "stupid light".
An ultralighter is basically guaranteed to use their phone for navigation. A surprise battery failure may cut a trip short and possibly risk their well-being, both of which go against the goal.
It's not recommended to use battery models that haven't been extensively tested because there are conditions in the backcountry that you may not think about or be able to test beforehand, such as performance in cold conditions, whether the IPX rating really holds up, whether it's possible to brick the device accidentally by pressing the wrong button combination, etc.
A common recommendation is the Nitecore nb10000[1] for 10k of battery, and if you want 20k then bring two. (One of the Anker 20k models is also popular.) Bringing two 10ks is ~0.3 oz heavier than one 20k (per manufacturer specs), but it gives you charging parallelism (shortening down your recharging time by N hours, if your trip requires that you recharge midway) and device redundancy, both of which help you move faster with more reliably.
Related, it is also recommended to only use a battery bank that you have personally used for a few full charge cycles beforehand, to smoke out manufacturing defects.
[1]: https://nitecorestore.com/products/nitecore-nb10000-gen-2-qc...
[2]: https://nitecorestore.com/products/nitecore-nb20000-gen-3-du...
How do two independent power banks achieve this?
There are roughly 1 or 2 thousand attempted "thru" hikes per year, who hike from southern to northern border of the USA over the course of 3-5 months. Far more "section" hikers, who will do a 1-4 week segment of a larger trail.
Such folks often resupply food and recharge their battery banks every few days.
To be fair, we'd generally call it backpacking rather than hiking. But the premise of the article was backpackers, so I didn't bother distinguishing.
I prefer "Durable, but as light as possible", not the other way around. Most ultralight gear breaks after a few uses or when it is mishandled in anything-less-than-perfect conditions, which, happens a lot outside.
my thermarest pad is a decade+ old and I won't hesitate to take it on a lengthy backpacking trip as long as I have a patch kit, same as a bike tire.
I was a restless sleeper though and had/have extreme difficulty getting to sleep often; learning to sleep on my back helps. Expressed another way, if my brain says I have to be on my side for comfort, and I have to achieve comfort to sleep, then if that comfort isn't achieved no sleep for me. Getting my brain to accept "and now we lie down for sleep" without thinking about comfort let me be actually comfortable in more positions/settings.
But unlike India British Columbia is a completely different climate. We can go from very comfortable sunny warm days to very cold nights. The last time I went camping it was May and the days were nice but the night dropped down to like 5c. I have teens and told them all to pack lots of warm clothes, told them it will be cold at night, made them bring extra blankets. But in the end they still did not have enough and in the middle of the night were so cold. So I gave them 2 of my blankets and some of my clothing. This left me absolutely freezing. I had to finally get up at 1am and make a fire. I struggled to warm up and even had to go start my car and put on the heat for a bit. I put a large rock on the fire and got it hot. I put the rock into a cast iron pan I brought and put it onto a couple sticks in my tent so it would not burn the floor. I had to keep that rock close to me all night and I still was cold and miserable.
So yes on a warm night, and we have those here in BC, a pad is not essential at all. But for the other 10 months of the year if you don't have the right gear you will be cold and miserable. Being directly on the ground is like sleeping on a cold water bed (yes I am that old). It feels refreshing at first but then you fall asleep and wake up with your core temperature stolen and cold.
The pads do list their insulation value, but so do non-ultralight sleeping pads.
The reason is that the insulation value is incredibly important to comfort. From experience, a sleeping mat that is thick, but with bad insulation will lead to a way less comfortable night than a thin one with good insulation.
Sleeping bags don't provide much insulation on the bottom because they are compressed under your body (the insulation from a sleeping bag typically comes from air trapped in the fill). Any insulation between you and the cold ground has to come from the sleeping mat. That's why it is important to get one that is cushioned enough for your body as well as being insulated enough.
R values aren't an ultralight camper thing, they are an informed camper thing.
Very different philosophy behind this kit (durability and flexibility), but here's a good intro.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kin_bjAYk0Q
EDIT: I forgot he also has a more "ultralight" full backpack kit:
They're just marketed by R-value because better insulation will cost more. Many people don't camp in places that would require a high one.
A solid pad in Ultralight often also doubles in the backpack as a replacement for what would be the frame in traditional backpacks, so it's dual use (or triple, if you consider using it as a sitting mat when taking breaks.
Also, sleeping bags typically compress under your body and lose isolation because of that, so with a pad you can use quilt-style sleeping bags (they wrap around the top and sides but not bottom, which makes them again lighter).
Quite often they end up being used a lot more too.
Last time I moved I showed up the day before my stuff did, I slept on a camp cot I had bought for which I was 90% of the max weight. I used it on a carpeted floor for one night, it bent in two places. If I’d put the damned thing across a root it would have looked like a pretzel the next morning.
Apparently I'm not a spherical cow.
I don’t think many (if any) backpackers are taking a camp cot with them? I imagine most are using an inflatable sleep pad or a foam sleep mat.
My Big Agnes is treated as if it is tissue paper where the Eureka somehow survived containing teens wrestling inside. I hope my BA lasts the rest of my life.
I will agree with the advances in materials, they are amazing - I just think we've made some amount of trade-off in durability.
Packs used to have MOLLE/PALS strips and/or external pockets. Packs made now seem to have supersonic flight aerodynamics as the primary design feature… heaven forbid we add 20 grams of stitching/webbing for expansion/versatility.
Perhaps it's just their Germanity shining through?
https://www.amazon.com/DCHK-10000mAh-Charging-Portable-Motor...
https://www.amazon.com/DCHK-20000mAh-Charging-Portable-Motor...
The weight difference to the Nitecore pack being mentioned is only ~15g.
This seems off, either nitecore is putting a very heavy premium on their products while not using obvious weight saving options, or the Haribo pack simply will not deliver on capacity
https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/23/24326077/i-asked-chatgpt
LLMs are pretty good at imitating styles, if asked to do so. It's just their default style that's easy to recognise.
(You are probably right in everything you say! I just wanted to point out that style of an article isn't necessarily a giveaway.)
Without knowing more details about the battery, "20Ah" alone does not convey enough information to determine how long the battery could power a given load for. If I need to power a 100 watt lightbulb, will a 20Ah battery power it for an hour? 10 hours? 10 days? No way to know.
Wh is the unit of stored energy, Wh is what I want to see. Even the official Amazon product page for it doesn't list a Wh figure.
But watt-hours would make infinitely more sense for all batteries.
For what it's worth: 1 mAh ~ 2.25 * 10^19 electrons. Or with SI-prefixes: 22.5 exa-electrons (= 2.25 Ee).
Technically speaking, the pack voltage as well as Ah rating should be that of the pack and not cumulative total of the pack; two NMC 18650 in series should be 7.4V 2600mAh, not 3.7V 5200mAh. But denoting as if all cells are in parallel allow this figure to be maximally inflated and so that's what manufacturers do.
High voltage charging etc are not relevant. Though, high voltage assembled battery packs should be marked in that high voltage amp-hour ratings.
The technical reason why amp-hour rating exist is because there are parameters dependent on amperage than energy or voltage, such as thickness of the wire to be used in the device or cycle life of the cell. Voltage of a battery also kind of change proportionate to remaining energy in it, and values like 3.7 for NMC or 1.5 for Alkaline is a 50%, averaged, state.
https://www.inchcalculator.com/ah-to-wh-calculator/
Watt-hours won’t save you, because we don’t know what voltage your bulb needs. Don’t assume it’s 120/240V.
...this is why we should measure the total energy in Wh, not Ah.
Alternatively, since this is USB-C, and we assume the marketing copy is honest, use the max voltage USB-C can deliver: 20v.
So, draw 20V from this device and measure the amp hours it outputs.
Wh is really the only sane way to go.
This is absolutely not true at all. 'Ah' is a measure of capacity and 'amps' is a measure of current. Batteries typically have three measurements: nominal voltage, capacity (Ah or mAh), and rated continuous current (amps).
> watt hour measurements are path dependent
Watt hour is a normalized measurement of the battery's capacity. For example, it lets me compare a 12v/100Ah LifePO4 battery versus a 3.7v/3Ah Li-ion 18650 battery in terms of each batteries capacity (in this case 1200Wh versus 11 Wh).
For example, 1C is rated continuous discharge amps, which means a 1C rated battery will provide 1 * Ah. So if a 20,000 mAh battery is rated for 20,000 mAh @ 1C, it will (in theory) discharge 20,000 mAh at 20A in one hour.
> You can of course estimate the battery capacity in watt hours, but it’s not how the battery is classified (eg in a data sheet)
You're right but this is irrelevant because real life usage highly varies. Data sheets are just guides.
Most lithium batteries can drain themselves much faster than an hour.
Also, in this particular instance, phone batteries are measured in miliamp hours, so it makes the thing I actually want to know, how many times can it charge my cell phone, really easy to figure out.
But as somebody who tinkers with inverters and such, I agree, it is annoying. It is still generally not that hard to do in my head, and trivial with a calculator. But I’m with you.
(Though for American hikers it would be somewhat fun to use a unit of 'pound feet'.)
Even if you assume you're charging a phone with that, you first need to subtract 25-40% total losses. And then consider that phone batteries are LiHV with 3.85-3.9V nowadays.
Charge/discharge current capacity is constant throughout, at least so battery manufacturers say, at 1-20x the amp-hour capacity depending on the cell. Usually 5x or less.
Since energy = voltage x current, instantaneous W capacity is higher at first, reducing as it becomes supply side limited rather than load side limited.
But all those is irrelevant to why everyone uses mAh, it's because products with biggest numbers sell fastest. Marking capacity in Wh is noble, but it's a clearance worthy sin if you ask the shelves.
It's also a function of the rate of discharge. Have a look at this:
https://marsen.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Panasonic-N...
All that space between the black and green curves is energy being lost to internal resistance.
This was openly crowdfunded in Japan. Please explain the lie/scam for us? How does Makuake rip people off?
https://www.makuake.com/project/haribo_dcglobal/
Is this comment anything more than the normal shit HN negativity?
Nihilism is so cool, thinking is so hard, if I try I might fail.
Sure you might be right. Just want to know where the scam is here?
Do you honestly think they are putting the most cutting edge lipo technology in a gummy bear branded battery pack?
I agree with your GP, it is unlikely.
Maybe at least consider the density vs SOTA before you accuse someone of being a nihilist.
[] https://www.cei.washington.edu/research/energy-storage/lithi...
(This is the absurdity of using Ah to measure the capacity of consumer-oriented power banks. They usually output 5v over USB A or a variable voltage over PD, but measure current at the cell level. Of course this fact or the precise voltage is rarely stated anywhere.)
20000 mAh (3.85V/77Wh)
Which is consistent with what the latest mass produced batteries can do.
Batteries are made out of components, they have a capacity, volume, weight and price. It doesn't make sense that a cheap battery with low weight has a higher capacity than the existing expensive product.
I replaced all my travel electronics to be powerable from USB-C. This saved me from a lot cables and adapters.
Even re-soldered the cable of my electric shaver to use a USB-C PD adapter PCB. As long it's somehow close to the standardized voltages (5/9/12/18/etc.) there will be no problems.
Surely the hunting knife you use to kill your dinner when combined with the mirror you use for starting your forraged twig fires, that would be the ultimate solution.
...or just not shave for a few days. I guess you could do that too.
It's a trade off but I think it makes perfect sense after a few nights of not-sleeping directly on the ground under a miniture dyneema tarp.
[1] https://shop.panasonic.com/pages/multishape [2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CMGQWM1B
(Coincidentally, the Nitecore power bank briefly discussed in the article supports that.)
Retractable C to C cables are also worth it.
The weight savings, the "escape from electronics" bonus... It's not nothing.
That's 16 years ago...
In some places it's no longer possible to travel without a smartphone. For example, where I live you can't buy a ferry ticket without an app. So if I want to travel to another island with a motorcycle, I'll have to bring a smartphone.
Seems like this article is skipping something important. What's the point of a light battery if it won't hold enough charge?
Also do you really need a power bank for a 2-day trip? In airplane mode a phone can live like 2 weeks.
(signed, an American living in Europe)
Also matters when your buying things for recreational purposes. Especially when only buying points.
if you're cutting off the borders of your map, by all means, use a calculator
Ounces are more annoying to convert.
Highlight text, select convert, see conversion:
But the real solution is for Americans to stop using dumb units.
Long press home button for "circle to search", draw line across text, see conversion.
Looks like a guy there measured it and it is 14.7 which is more than I thought it would be.
> So at a nominal 3.7 volts that’s around 14700mAh, which is around 73-74% efficiency. That’s fairly standard. If you perform the same tests with other batteries rated at 20k mAh, you’ll generally see a similar usable capacity.
I was thinking of getting the Haribo one because I like to camp and climb mountains, but I found an old Ravpower battery bank (RP-P819) my Mom got all of us maybe a decade ago and it is 16,750 mAh on the label and weighs 308.5g. I'm not worried about ultralight enough to make that into e-waste and get the Haribo. I guess technology hasn't changed that much with regard to battery packs. The age of the plateau continues.
Or just write it as 20 Ah (not you, the reddit poster). I suspect people have no concept of SI prefixes. They know that k = one thousand but are unaware that milli is one thousandth.
(I wish batteries were just rated in Joules)
-Lightweight -Durable -Reasonable price
In reality, you can only choose two of these.
I often will be stopping at a cafe for lunch, and in the 45 mins I'm there I want my phone to charge from 15% to 90%, and I also want my battery to recharge from 15% to 90% to give me another 3 days hiking before the next recharge stop. That involves carrying a dual-output USB adaptor where both outputs are fast charging, two cables, a battery bank and my phone.
Thats a lot of stuff to carry, when someone would ideally make a single AC adaptor with a built in battery and cable such that when plugged in to AC it recharges both itself and an attached phone, and when unplugged from AC it discharges itself into the phone.
With clever design, some of those bits of electronics can be combined and casings and heatsinks shared making the whole setup smaller, lighter and cheaper. By integrating the battery charging logic into the AC adaptor, the temperature of the adaptor and output towards the phone can be used to adjust the charging speed to maximize use of the flyback transformers saturation current.
EDIT: Doesn't seem to be. Similar design, but two USB cables on that one. Not sure I trust the capacity.
Backpacking is spartan and uncomfortable by comparison. And with canoe camping, much more primo sites and much fewer people around.
It weighs 205g/7.2oz.
I have to think the Haribo power banks were on the same lines, although it's a bit strange that they're actually being sold on the company's Amazon storefront.
Tradeshow coming up very quickly, previous merch supplier has let the sales team down.
Mid-level Haribo employee responsible for merch finds a supplier willing to rush through everything, because let's face it, Haribo are probably going to pay their bills.
MoQ is 100 units, which is 1 lot.
Sales person intends to order 2000 units, better to be safe than sorry and run out. Accidentally orders 2000 lots of units with 100 units per lot. This isn't noticed until they're already printed and then it's, as they say in the legal profession, no takesie backsies.
Haribo suddenly have a lot more power banks than they have booth visitors, and employees combined.
Rather than store them indefinitely, they sell them off at cost and shift them quickly though Amazon. This drastically cuts down on warehousing space of small lithium (explosive) packs that the candy people have to store.
And kids and grown-ups love it so, with 20,000mAh wherever they go.
If you Google XU102998-24006, you can find some seemingly identical generic version
Weight is of course a major consideration, but its not the primary reason im not bringing batteries on a hiking trip.
- A satellite communication device. You don't use them for internet access, but it does allow me to send my location and a small message so I can let an emergency contact know where I've made camp for the night (and a lack of a message means I'm in trouble). It also enables me to contact search and rescue if I know I'm in trouble.
We did have to use it once when my sister lost her footing and fell of the side of a mountain and shattered her leg. (full recovery, thankfully)
- GPS receiver. I've shifted to using my phone as my GPS unit (with Gaia GPS). Trail GPS units have been subjected to planned obsolescence in a bad way, many will only be supported for a few years now, after that you can't load maps into them anymore. Might as well use your phone and Gaia works offline. Although you do learn that modern cellphones really, really hate being offline for weeks on end and random things start breaking down.
The latter was super important this year. With the budget cuts to park services this year in the US, many of our back country trails are in worse disrepair than they usually are. There were multiple days where the only way I knew I was still on the trail was to follow the dot on my GPS and look for the occasional cut log...
A hike could be just the way to get to the camp, where you will spend 2 weeks primarily coding.
I was in the market for a 20Ah battery to power my Burning Man totem last month. I ended up buying two off Amazon - a no-name brand and an Anker for 2.5x the price ($65 for 28Ah). The Anker bank was heavier than the no-name and had substantially longer battery life under the same usage patterns.
I don't know a lot about batteries, but what I do know is that they're very important tech and any performance wins would have cascading effects through multiple industries. It's incredibly unlikely that there is new battery tech that is meaningfully better while also not taking the world by storm. It's far more likely that whitelabel/noname brands are just lying about the specs/cheaping out on energy density and hoping consumers don't notice or care.
Then again I am the kind of masochist who used to run ultramarathons with a backpack full of rocks just for the jollies.
Empathise on the gear-lugging - I have Sherpa’d full size solar panels up a pathless and sheer mountainside, and it was not fun - although again standing up there with two tonnes of hardware going “heh, I hand lugged all this here” was gratifying.
At least I didn’t have to carry them back down.
10Ah battery is $60, 5.9oz. the 20Ah is 10.2oz and $100. Unlike the Hasbro, it comes close to its rated specification.
My backpacking trips have definitely not needed 20Ah. For two or three nights I can usually get by with a 5000mah, if I shutdown at night and frequently use airplane mode. And my phones are usually getting on, don't have Greta battery life.