@mehcuda67 Or maybe even put them all in the fridge, and power the fridge from inside. Put the remote in there too. Wireless self-refrigerating batteries!
We are pushing the boundaries of battefrigerator technology here folks, good work everyone, proud of you all.
@awk Perhaps @kidsandliz can add some clarity, but I do believe that we have accomplished the rare triple burial: batteries in remote in fridge. We would have to bury the whole fridge to really get to the next level, but at that point we’d just be getting silly.
@mike808 that’s… That’s not how power works… 2 3000mah at 1.5V is not the same as a 3.7V 6000mah bank. 9 != 22. And good luck shoving those disposable AAs in your phone…
Well, I was going to buy a set, just about a dollar per amp, decent price for energy storage, but says my zip code is wrong, but it’s not. To bad PayPal wasn’t an opoption
One of the three coupon codes is calling. $2.50/6,000 mAh. But was already loaded up on battery banks before Meh suckered me in for a handful of those USB fan+battery bank kits in odd colors a while back. Hmmm… Decisions, decisions…
Hey, since those battery banks were single 18650’s, these banks would run the fans for hours, right?
@yeppers you must binge-sleep… didn’t time it but randomly happened to notice the legacy VMP K-offer appeared to remain un-sold-out for at least 24 hours.
@yeppers you might not have lost out as much as you might think unless you’re still averaging at least one Meh purchase/month. (I’m far from it.)
Depending on how you look at the Legacy VMP Casemates K-deal…
If you were contining to buy Meh deals every month anyway, it was a half off VMP (12x$60, the K-price) deal since you’d apply the 3 x $10 coupons to something you were already going to buy.
If you were not buying every month, but for some silly unexplained and irrational reason were letting that auto-VMP $5 charge hit every month then it might have looked tempting as a means to get current Meh deals back to the sweet deals of the first 12-18 launch months… with a 3 x $10 deal discount.
I’m in the latter “silly” category.
PS: BTW, if you happened to be a wine drinker who buys > $10 bottles of wine it certainly was a great way to bring the much more expensive $8-12 shipping over there down to $5/month.
I’m not and I don’t.
PPS: Note, I neglected to mention the “free” Casemates t-shirt - while it was appreciated, it wasn’t what made the Legacy VMP K-deal tempting.
@RedOak I’m more or less at the point of getting something once a month, justifying my VMP but no more than that, which is why the idea of prepaying 6 months of VMP didn’t win me over until after I read the email saying “look, effectively half price VMP if you prepay,” by which point I had missed it.
I’m not heartbroken about it. If I don’t get anything in March, I’ll probably cancel, which I couldn’t do if I had prepaid.
PS: I don’t appreciate wine, so the cheap stuff tastes almost the same as the expensive stuff to me (along with most of the US, as demonstrated in blind “Two Buck Chuck” tests [performed by statisticians, not me]).
@RedOak Sadly, my state doesn’t allow Costco to sell alcohol. I’ll stop by Total Beverage when they have sales on beer (I think I’m not snooty about it but I prefer Belgian beers when they’re not hideously expensive), G&Ts with Sapphire and Schweppes, and lately I’ve been hankering for Shipwreck rum for sipping. If my wife is with me and there’s a cheap wine that she wants to try, we’ll a bottle, but our upper bound is like $10. Actually, now that I think about it, we usually (also) get Barefoot or sometimes Jam Jar.
I’m guessing Costco’s London Dry Gin is Tanqueray 10, which a quick image search seems to bear out (green glass vs blue). Tanq 10 is also an excellent top-shelf gin, more available around here, and goes better with Canada Dry than Sapphire does. (My nearby grocery store’s private label tonic seems to be Canada Dry, and Sapphire with that or with name-brand Canada Dry is less good.)
Now you’ve got me talking about gin. This thread may never end.
@yeppers unless Tanqueray 10 is distilled in California (I thought all Tanqueray was distilled and bottled in Great Britain) I’d be very surprised if it is the same stuff.
The Costco stuff is distilled 5 times so if the “10” means ten times…
I don’t know about Tanqueray 10 but until I found the Costco brand, I most often drank regular green bottle Tanqueray.
@richrauch-No, the cable comes with each Power Pack & you have to plug them & As Usual <<<Notice the last 2 words, now the 1st of the last two words!! Gotcha! Just playing, I’m bored until my nurse does a Tequila run for me!! MY BAD!!
@decoratedwarvet-Sorry,I read that while upside down! You want built-in Cables. Well, I’ll bet you don’t buy a lot of Stuff!! Most of my STUFF Does NOT have built-in cables. Does your cell phone & tablet have the cables built-in?¿ That would be like running around with an extension chord attached to them!! LOL!!
@decoratedwarvet Yes, but when there are built in cables, the added convenience is helpful… At least it was with the small Energizer battery packs meh sold a while back with the built in microUSB (and lightning) cables. That was always in my bag and served me well!
At least until I switched to USB-C. I’d need an adapter which would be much easier to misplace than a short USB cable, thus totally negating the convenience factor.
I wonder where that battery pack is now? Couldn’t find it in the refrigerator – which also has a built in cable BTW.
How does this work, I got some of this earlier in the year and when the light goes off while charging the phone it stops charging unless I’m doing something wrong. At this point they’re not working for me…help
Teardown: Batteries are marked Samsung ICR18650-30B. Pretty sure they’re fake, though; they have a four-point contact on the (+) terminal, and genuine Samsungs have 3-point contacts.
Items tested on a Keithley 2380-500-15 programmable DC load: Test 1: Unit 1 was cracked open to identify the cells and to test cells directly. Cells charged to 4.3V (per spec) maximum. Tester set up for 5W continuous power discharge, 2.9V cell cutoff.
Discharge time: 14830.3 sec.
Energy capacity: 20.598 Wh
Current capacity: 5.667 Ah = 2833mAh per cell. Test 2: Unit 3 was charged overnight via USB and discharged via USB through a 6" 20AWG cable into the tester. Tester set for 2.5W CP, 3.5V cutoff (output of the booster cuts off quickly; anything under 4V would be fine here).
Discharge time: 24545.1s
Energy capacity: 17.044 Wh
Current capacity (pack): 3.315 Ah
Current capacity (cell*): 4.604 Ah
cell capacity calculated normalized to 3.6V cell.
Note: I performed a discharge test using a decommissioned Apple 30-pin charging cable, repurposed to this test. It was about 1m long, and I estimate the wires to be about 28 or 30 AWG (really small). It introduced a significant power drain unaccounted by the test rig, so I got a plain USB plug and soldered 20AWG wires to it directly, to cut out the middle-man. Test results above are with the improved setup.
Test 3: Unit 3 charged via USB, discharged with the 20AWG cable to 2.5W CP, 3.5V cutoff.
Discharge time: 24618.3 sec.
Energy capacity: 17.096 Wh
Current capacity (pack): 3.326 Ah
Current capacity (cell*): 4.604 Ah
I may set it to discharge through the crap cable again, to get good numbers.
Note: 2.5W discharge corresponds to a 500mA (1/2 Amp) charge rate.
@PocketBrain That’s 6000 Chinese mAh. They lose about 2000mAh converting from Metric to Imperial, plus a few more after the new import tariffs. Just like flashlights… Are those Lumens, or Chinese Lumens?
But hey, at least they’re RoHS, right? (or was that just in the American product template artwork?)
Seriously though, why don’t they ever measure these damn things in Watt-hours?
@thismyusername Yes… The problem with doing the calculation yourself is you never know what the internal voltage is, and it varies greatly as things discharge. If you have 2 lithium cells in series it’s on the order of 7.2V, or 10.8V/14.4 for some of the jump starter packs, listing capacity in mAh is therefore meaningless and can’t be used as a direct comparison when judging capacity. Further, If your 3.6V lithium is using an inefficient boost supply to generate 5V, then the actual watt-hours you get from the product are significantly reduced…
You might as well weigh the product and see how heavy it is, it’ll probably be a closer approximation than the ideal estimates provided by the manufacturers. (Compare mass of an “Ultrafire 18650” cell to an actual Panasonig 18650 cell to see what I mean… )
But hey, at least they’re RoHS, right? (or was that just in the American product template artwork?)
@caffeineguy RoHS is an European Union standard. If it was US market only, there’d be NO standards. Remember – all the toxic wood that wasn’t legal even in China was 100% legal in the US because of the lack of standards here. http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14169
@caffeineguy@thismyusername
(mAh)*(V)/1000 = (Wh)
Sort of. The cell voltage will drop from fully-charged, under load (about 4.1V) to the setpoint (2.9V is essentially drained). More reason why Ah/mAh is a meaningless metric. That’s why I include Wh; it is a meaningful metric. I should have said that up-front. I might kick off a Teardown Tuesday with this study.
Note: 2.5W discharge produced a USB voltage of about 5.1V with the short, larger gage cable and about 4.7-4.8V with the long, thin-gage cable. I imagine you would get significantly reduced capacity with a full 2.1A discharge rate either way.
Specs
What’s in the Box?
4x Portable Power Banks
4x Micro USB charging cables
Pictures
Chargers
One charger
Cable
End
Flashlight
Charging
Price Comparison
$70 at Amazon
Warranty
90 Day Mediocre
Estimated Delivery
Friday, Nov 11 - Tuesday, Nov 15
Wow, four tiny refrigerators!
(Am I doing this right?)
@awk Here’s a pro tip: it’s much easier if you just use one slightly larger refrigerator and put all of the battery packs in it at once.
Stick with it - you’ll eventually get the hang of it.
/giphy perseverence
@shahnm If something is rectangular and contains batteries, it must be a refrigerator.
@awk Unless it is the remote control.
@shahnm Your fridge has a remote control?
@awk
/image remote controlled fridge
/image fridge controlled battery
@awk Can you use one to power a USB refrigerator, and put the others inside?
@narfcake That mobile R2-D2 fridge
✓ is a fridge
✓ contains batteries
✓ has a remote control
/giphy the future is now
@mehcuda67 Or maybe even put them all in the fridge, and power the fridge from inside. Put the remote in there too. Wireless self-refrigerating batteries!
We are pushing the boundaries of battefrigerator technology here folks, good work everyone, proud of you all.
@awk I believe, to be accurate but a bit pedantic, that particular future was a long time ago (in a galaxy far far away)…
As an aside, I must have that R2D2 fridge. Your move, Meh buyers…
@awk Perhaps @kidsandliz can add some clarity, but I do believe that we have accomplished the rare triple burial: batteries in remote in fridge. We would have to bury the whole fridge to really get to the next level, but at that point we’d just be getting silly.
@awk-Yea, just do it!! Let Me Know Who It Turns Out!!
@shahnm are you saying that you can use one charger to charge the other 3?
@shadow7118 No. I’m not saying that.
But
/giphy thank you for playing!
Pity I’m busy. I could have some fun with this one…
@shahnm Something something refrigerator something?
@narfcake
/giphy we have a winner
@narfcake Well if @shahnm would put the contents of his cupboards in the fridge then it might a salt and battery on a fridge…
/giphy snore
@sammydog01 You’re clearly not looking at this the right way.
If only lightning connectors were included.
@shortman I have a ton of micro usb ones and bought a pile of micro usb to lightning adapters at Gearbest. They work pretty well. I was shocked.
@sammydog01 Not to be too much of a contrarian, but if you were shocked, maybe they don’t work so well after all?
Power you can bank on!
Good use of the dieresis.
/giphy neo style
healthy-agreeable-cheese
These are like 2xAA batteries. Junk.
@mike808 This one in particular? or do you just hate power banks in general?
@mike808 that’s… That’s not how power works… 2 3000mah at 1.5V is not the same as a 3.7V 6000mah bank. 9 != 22. And good luck shoving those disposable AAs in your phone…
@unksol Can everyone just please put your batteries in the fridge and chill?
@mike808 i got these around new years when they sold them by the pair. They actually work really well.
I would say that I get a charge out of this deal, but I don’t think they are big enough me a full one.
@hchavers what would be big enough you a full one
@unksol well seeing that my battery is 6400, these fall 400 short.
Maybe I am just too demanding.
@hchavers What ?
@hchavers That’s why you get multiple packs. You’re good to go.
Well, I was going to buy a set, just about a dollar per amp, decent price for energy storage, but says my zip code is wrong, but it’s not. To bad PayPal wasn’t an opoption
For a 6000mAh power bank the dimensions (Size: 3.5" x 1.1" x 1.9") sound correct.
But the picture seems all wrong for those dimensions, and if the picture is correct then 6000mAh seems too low for that physical size.
@sdb the first pic it looks a little broad. If you scroll through it’s the size of 2 1850s plus packaging/charge circuit.
@unksol
/giphy little broad
@unksol 18650’s?
@RedOak yep lol dropped a number
/giphy big broad
One of the three coupon codes is calling. $2.50/6,000 mAh. But was already loaded up on battery banks before Meh suckered me in for a handful of those USB fan+battery bank kits in odd colors a while back. Hmmm… Decisions, decisions…
Hey, since those battery banks were single 18650’s, these banks would run the fans for hours, right?
@RedOak Thanks for reminding me of that coupon.
/image abundant-massive-frankenstein
@yeppers is the coupon from backing the wine venture or something else?
@nalesean yes. Kickstarter reward for Casemates.
@nalesean My coupon was from the poorly randomized holiday bags. I overslept and missed the casemates stuff.
@yeppers you must binge-sleep… didn’t time it but randomly happened to notice the legacy VMP K-offer appeared to remain un-sold-out for at least 24 hours.
@RedOak- Yes, Definitely!!
@RedOak Hilariously, I do, but it wasn’t a 24 hour nap thing, it was more that I:
This is not Mediocre’s fault at all, but as a result, I ended up not getting in on the casemates stuff.
Now you know a lot more than you really needed to about this.
/image the more you know
@yeppers you might not have lost out as much as you might think unless you’re still averaging at least one Meh purchase/month. (I’m far from it.)
Depending on how you look at the Legacy VMP Casemates K-deal…
If you were contining to buy Meh deals every month anyway, it was a half off VMP (12x$60, the K-price) deal since you’d apply the 3 x $10 coupons to something you were already going to buy.
If you were not buying every month, but for some silly unexplained and irrational reason were letting that auto-VMP $5 charge hit every month then it might have looked tempting as a means to get current Meh deals back to the sweet deals of the first 12-18 launch months… with a 3 x $10 deal discount.
I’m in the latter “silly” category.
PS: BTW, if you happened to be a wine drinker who buys > $10 bottles of wine it certainly was a great way to bring the much more expensive $8-12 shipping over there down to $5/month.
I’m not and I don’t.
PPS: Note, I neglected to mention the “free” Casemates t-shirt - while it was appreciated, it wasn’t what made the Legacy VMP K-deal tempting.
@RedOak I’m more or less at the point of getting something once a month, justifying my VMP but no more than that, which is why the idea of prepaying 6 months of VMP didn’t win me over until after I read the email saying “look, effectively half price VMP if you prepay,” by which point I had missed it.
I’m not heartbroken about it. If I don’t get anything in March, I’ll probably cancel, which I couldn’t do if I had prepaid.
PS: I don’t appreciate wine, so the cheap stuff tastes almost the same as the expensive stuff to me (along with most of the US, as demonstrated in blind “Two Buck Chuck” tests [performed by statisticians, not me]).
PPS: Yeah, the shirt didn’t knock me out either.
@yeppers we’re in the same boat wine-wise. We top out at Beringer or Barefoot when it’s on sale for $4.99.
I’m partial to beer (not snooty about it), Jack Daniels on the rocks, or G&Ts using my new favorite Gin, Costco’s at $25 for 1.75L.
@RedOak Sadly, my state doesn’t allow Costco to sell alcohol.
I’ll stop by Total Beverage when they have sales on beer (I think I’m not snooty about it but I prefer Belgian beers when they’re not hideously expensive), G&Ts with Sapphire and Schweppes, and lately I’ve been hankering for Shipwreck rum for sipping. If my wife is with me and there’s a cheap wine that she wants to try, we’ll a bottle, but our upper bound is like $10. Actually, now that I think about it, we usually (also) get Barefoot or sometimes Jam Jar.
I’m guessing Costco’s London Dry Gin is Tanqueray 10, which a quick image search seems to bear out (green glass vs blue). Tanq 10 is also an excellent top-shelf gin, more available around here, and goes better with Canada Dry than Sapphire does. (My nearby grocery store’s private label tonic seems to be Canada Dry, and Sapphire with that or with name-brand Canada Dry is less good.)
Now you’ve got me talking about gin. This thread may never end.
@yeppers unless Tanqueray 10 is distilled in California (I thought all Tanqueray was distilled and bottled in Great Britain) I’d be very surprised if it is the same stuff.
The Costco stuff is distilled 5 times so if the “10” means ten times…
I don’t know about Tanqueray 10 but until I found the Costco brand, I most often drank regular green bottle Tanqueray.
To me the two taste very different.
Fine, you got me back in the game.
/image personal-painted-assasin
If only my garbage can had its own address, it would save me the trouble of opening the box when it arrived.
@Pufferfishy it would appear this comment might be based upon personal experience.
https://meh.com/forum/topics/2-pack-neo-style-6000-mah-portable-power-banks#5a47202785cd210d8ce33bf2
Can these supply power while they’re being charged?
@Dillon1337-Yes, definitely, but it’s like 220, so be Careful!!
{VMod note: Uh, not 220. Not from these packs.}
@Dillon1337 I think you can use 1 to charge the other 3…
420 aye?
Bought some last time. 2 18650s inside. Mine worked well. Still leading the charge.
@boeing377 Can these supply power while they’re being charged?
@Dillon1337-Yes,definitely, but be careful!! They supply like 220V!!
@decoratedwarvet Huh? I highly highly highly doubt there’s any transformer coil in this thing that would allow 5v to step up to 220v.
@Dillon1337’s question is whether or not the output still works while the input is connected. Some battery banks can, some can’t.
/image formal-tempered-slug
Fine. Take my money. My VMP hadn’t been getting much use lately.
@Blahbbs nor mine. Been since October, I think. And that happened with diligent monitoring of every day’s deal.
A buck less each (were $6 ea) than last time but now you gotta buy 4 instead of 2. (Thanks mehstalker.com for the easy search and price.)
Meh must still have pallet loads of them.
https://meh.com/forum/topics/2-pack-neo-style-6000-mah-portable-power-banks
Meh. No built-in micro-USB cable means no sale to me.
@richrauch-No, the cable comes with each Power Pack & you have to plug them & As Usual <<<Notice the last 2 words, now the 1st of the last two words!! Gotcha! Just playing, I’m bored until my nurse does a Tequila run for me!! MY BAD!!
@decoratedwarvet But it’s not a built-in, which is what @richrauch was looking for.
@decoratedwarvet-Sorry,I read that while upside down! You want built-in Cables. Well, I’ll bet you don’t buy a lot of Stuff!! Most of my STUFF Does NOT have built-in cables. Does your cell phone & tablet have the cables built-in?¿ That would be like running around with an extension chord attached to them!! LOL!!
@decoratedwarvet Yes, but when there are built in cables, the added convenience is helpful… At least it was with the small Energizer battery packs meh sold a while back with the built in microUSB (and lightning) cables. That was always in my bag and served me well!
At least until I switched to USB-C. I’d need an adapter which would be much easier to misplace than a short USB cable, thus totally negating the convenience factor.
I wonder where that battery pack is now? Couldn’t find it in the refrigerator – which also has a built in cable BTW.
@ciabelle I love those batteries. Mine have disappeared. Stupid kids.
@richrauch Very surprising !
I’m no Dove, so do I have to return these Power Banks?
If you actually want a good quality power bank, there are some deals on Aukey right now.
https://slickdeals.net/f/11257547-aukey-power-banks-20000mah-15-5000mah-ultra-compact-4-more
@cinoclav Aukey’s OK but I’d watch for for Anker or RAVpower deals.
Nothing scientific - just an Aukey Bluetooth adapter that works great most of the time but sometimes fails to auto-connect.
@RedOak I place Aukey third behind those two, but eons above those being sold here.
@cinoclav agreed.
/giphy twisted-malleable-imp
How does this work, I got some of this earlier in the year and when the light goes off while charging the phone it stops charging unless I’m doing something wrong. At this point they’re not working for me…help
Teardown: Batteries are marked Samsung ICR18650-30B. Pretty sure they’re fake, though; they have a four-point contact on the (+) terminal, and genuine Samsungs have 3-point contacts.
Items tested on a Keithley 2380-500-15 programmable DC load:
Test 1: Unit 1 was cracked open to identify the cells and to test cells directly. Cells charged to 4.3V (per spec) maximum. Tester set up for 5W continuous power discharge, 2.9V cell cutoff.
Discharge time: 14830.3 sec.
Energy capacity: 20.598 Wh
Current capacity: 5.667 Ah = 2833mAh per cell.
Test 2: Unit 3 was charged overnight via USB and discharged via USB through a 6" 20AWG cable into the tester. Tester set for 2.5W CP, 3.5V cutoff (output of the booster cuts off quickly; anything under 4V would be fine here).
Discharge time: 24545.1s
Energy capacity: 17.044 Wh
Current capacity (pack): 3.315 Ah
Current capacity (cell*): 4.604 Ah
Note: I performed a discharge test using a decommissioned Apple 30-pin charging cable, repurposed to this test. It was about 1m long, and I estimate the wires to be about 28 or 30 AWG (really small). It introduced a significant power drain unaccounted by the test rig, so I got a plain USB plug and soldered 20AWG wires to it directly, to cut out the middle-man. Test results above are with the improved setup.
@PocketBrain I curse my 13 year old son … I actually read this for the details!!!
We have had some magic blue smoke incidents lately with too many amps going through objects.
Sooner or later he will steal my charger to power something – that is what happened to the aforementioned type of charger with the built in usb cord
Awesome job!
Test 3: Unit 3 charged via USB, discharged with the 20AWG cable to 2.5W CP, 3.5V cutoff.
Discharge time: 24618.3 sec.
Energy capacity: 17.096 Wh
Current capacity (pack): 3.326 Ah
Current capacity (cell*): 4.604 Ah
I may set it to discharge through the crap cable again, to get good numbers.
Note: 2.5W discharge corresponds to a 500mA (1/2 Amp) charge rate.
@PocketBrain That’s 6000 Chinese mAh. They lose about 2000mAh converting from Metric to Imperial, plus a few more after the new import tariffs. Just like flashlights… Are those Lumens, or Chinese Lumens?
But hey, at least they’re RoHS, right? (or was that just in the American product template artwork?)
Seriously though, why don’t they ever measure these damn things in Watt-hours?
@caffeineguy
(mAh)*(V)/1000 = (Wh)
@thismyusername Yes… The problem with doing the calculation yourself is you never know what the internal voltage is, and it varies greatly as things discharge. If you have 2 lithium cells in series it’s on the order of 7.2V, or 10.8V/14.4 for some of the jump starter packs, listing capacity in mAh is therefore meaningless and can’t be used as a direct comparison when judging capacity. Further, If your 3.6V lithium is using an inefficient boost supply to generate 5V, then the actual watt-hours you get from the product are significantly reduced…
You might as well weigh the product and see how heavy it is, it’ll probably be a closer approximation than the ideal estimates provided by the manufacturers. (Compare mass of an “Ultrafire 18650” cell to an actual Panasonig 18650 cell to see what I mean… )
@caffeineguy RoHS is an European Union standard. If it was US market only, there’d be NO standards. Remember – all the toxic wood that wasn’t legal even in China was 100% legal in the US because of the lack of standards here.
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14169
California enacted regulations in 2007, to go into effect over the subsequent years.
https://www.arb.ca.gov/toxics/compwood/compwood.htm
The other 49 states … 2017 … sort of. You can thank Washington that you can still be poisoned by your wood products.
https://www.woodworkingnetwork.com/news/woodworking-industry-news/trump-administration-issues-regulatory-freeze-epa-formaldehyde
https://www.epa.gov/formaldehyde/formaldehyde-emission-standards-composite-wood-products#voluntaryconsensusstandards
@caffeineguy but if they list specs then they have to stay within those specs, much easier this way.
@caffeineguy @thismyusername
(mAh)*(V)/1000 = (Wh)
Sort of. The cell voltage will drop from fully-charged, under load (about 4.1V) to the setpoint (2.9V is essentially drained). More reason why Ah/mAh is a meaningless metric. That’s why I include Wh; it is a meaningful metric. I should have said that up-front. I might kick off a Teardown Tuesday with this study.
Note: 2.5W discharge produced a USB voltage of about 5.1V with the short, larger gage cable and about 4.7-4.8V with the long, thin-gage cable. I imagine you would get significantly reduced capacity with a full 2.1A discharge rate either way.