12-for-Tuesday: Powrtabs Emergency Chargers
- Emergency backup batteries that hold their charge for years (until 2022, to be exact)
- They’re the equivalent of freeze dried emergency food, and they probably taste about as good
- You can keep them in all the places you will at some point be an idiot who forgets to charge their phone or powerbank
- Yes, they look like bizarre novelty condoms you might pick up at a Japanese truck stop
- Each one provides about 4 hours of power for most devices – ample time to finish the word jumble
- Available for both iPhone and Android (and Windows Phones lolllllz)
- Model: POW-IPH-1PA (3 of the top search results for this model number are for our own pages, 1 is for the Wikipedia page on the Chinese steamed Baozi buns, 1 is a Google Books result for the ancient tragedian Euripides, and 1 is for the Powrtabs website)
Powr Issues
We didn’t explain these well the last time we sold them, and many of you called out why you thought they were a bad deal:
I’ll stick with the Violife Powerbanks with fans. Those were $6 for two and each battery was 2600 mAh.
By conventional powerbank wisdom you should try to maximize the juice (mAhs) for as little money as possible. But it’s not always so simple. These, for example, are not normal powerbanks – they’re emergency supplies. They maintain their (relatively small) charge for years, whereas normal powerbanks lose theirs in weeks. They’re the backup battery equivalent of freeze-dried emergency food.
You see, dessicated protein paste tastes gross and doesn’t provide as many calories per dollar as a Big Mac, but that’s not the point. Big Macs won’t age well if you shove them in the corner of your fallout shelter for a few years, just as a normal powerbank won’t hold its charge in your glove compartment all year.
Powerbanks solve for everyday boneheadedness like forgetting to charge your phone overnight. These Powrtabs solve for unforeseen problems, like when you leave Dave and Buster’s and your phone battery drops from 40% to 1% for some reason and you can’t check to see where your Uber driver is and you’re too embarrassed to go back into Dave and Buster’s and ask if they have a phone charger because it’s already sort of embarrassing to be an adult who plays video games, never mind one who can’t take care of basic needs like keeping their phone charged.
You know … like that.
And unlike emergency food supplies, you’ll actually use these. How many times in the last few years have you found yourself in a survival situation and needed to eat your emergency food? And how many times have you found yourself running out of phone battery when you really need a little more juice? With these Powrtabs you’re paying for 12 resolved emergencies, not 12 phone charges.
If you’re only trying to maximize your mAh/dollar you would rightly consider these a huge rip-off. And if you’re only maximizing for calories/dollar you would consider freeze-dried food the same. But in either case you’ll be screwed when the shit goes down, or the shit hits the fan, or whichever shit-based euphemism occurs.
Did we explain it better this time?
