Decent portable charger i.e. Not chinese?

tommysaver

billywhizz wrote: »

The 20,000 Anker one should drop to £22 again soon looking at 3 camels.

http://uk.camelcamelcamel.com/Anker-PowerCore-20100-Capacity-Technology-Black/product/B00VJSGT2A

I have one, it's absolutely bloody fantastic.

You legend! Will definitely hold out for that. I've never seen that website before - does it only track amazon? Ideally I'd prefer to buy off Ebay but if needs must that's a nifty site.

Cheers

techno12

Even though it's Chinese this one is excellent..

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/review/power-banks/xiaomi-10000mah-power-bank-review-3619461/

Only cost me £7.50 and I use it most weeks, it's very small for the capacity and feels solid and high quality. Xiaomi are the "Chinese Apple" apparently

KingS6

Limefuel are supposed to be good, scarce in the UK though.

paddyrg

Strider590 wrote: »

Be careful, very often when they "give up" it's because the cable got damaged or was just some cheap nasty cable where the contacts went high resistance. A resistance of more than a few ohms can cause a large enough voltage drop to stop most devices charging at all.

Oh absolutely this, get a proper quality cable at the same time. To get the best from your device, get a hefty (if short, short is good) cable. Let the juice flow unimpeded!

basill

tommysaver wrote: »

You legend! Will definitely hold out for that. I've never seen that website before - does it only track amazon? Ideally I'd prefer to buy off Ebay but if needs must that's a nifty site.

Cheers

Anker gear always seems a little more expensive from Ebay, for Anker at least Amazon is the best place to buy.

While you are there treat yourself to some new cables as well, great quality. Much better charge rate using these compared to other cheapy cables I had around.

If you are an Android user there are a number of Apps including Ampere that show charge rate and can be used to weed out rubbish cables and chargers!

Strider590

basill wrote: »

If you are an Android user there are a number of Apps including Ampere that show charge rate and can be used to weed out rubbish cables and chargers!

Ok as rough guide, but the problem is that mobile phones do actively control the charge current.

They look at the voltage in (not the voltage at the charger end) and depending on what that is (this is where voltage drop and cable resistance comes in) they self limit the charging current.

So if it sees 5v it might set the current to 1500mA, if it sees 4.9v it might set it to 800mA, if it sees 4.8v it might set it to 400mA and straight away you can see that voltage drop in the charging cable is more than halving your charging rate AND this is all dynamic, so it's constantly adjusting the charge rate depending on the voltage it can see at the phone end of the cable.

So these apps can help, but they don't really tell you what's going on.