If you are looking for a USB power bank, you’ll be disappointed. This battery pack is a bit different. It has far fewer USB ports than you would normally expect, they have fewer settings, and most importantly, if you use any of the other types of outputs your use of the USB ports is restricted.
This is noteworthy, as it absolutely is possible to destroy electronics that were connected carelessly.
But with this warning out of the way, this is an amazing and rather unique product. The battery capacity far exceeds what TSA regulations allow on a plane, but that’s exactly what makes it perfect for week long back country trips. Weight is passable considering the capacity. And the variety (but not the number!) of connections is amazing.
While not highlighted in the product description, this power bank comes with a patch cable that has barrel connectors on both ends, and it even ships with a good selection of adapter plugs that connect to this patch cable. This means, there is a very good chance, you’ll be able to plug in most of your DC-powered devices. And if you have an incompatible socket, suitable thirdparty adapters are available inexpensively all over Amazon. But most people won’t even need them.
The power bank can either output common USB-C voltages if using a USB-C cable and/or USB-C PD trigger (e.g. 5, 9, 15, 20V). But it can also manually be configured to output a choice of voltages between 12V and 24V DC (namely 12, 16.5, 20 or 24V). This means, many common devices will simply work out of the box. Just be extra careful when selecting the voltage to not exceed the maximum that your device can handle. And don’t plug anything into any of the other outputs that are wired in parallel (e.g. don’t use barrel connector, USB-C and cigarette lighter simultaneously).
Also, and this is important to know, with this power bank the positive pole is always in the center of the barrel connector. This is the most common configuration for consumer devices, but some small number will make the center negative. If you plug those into the power bank, they’ll instantly get destroyed. So, again, carefully check the specification.
Overall, this is an extremely useful and powerful tool that doesn’t really have many alternatives on the market. But with all these powerful features comes the warning to watch what you’re doing. For instance, when plugging in a pricey CPAP device, instead of using the built-in barrel connector and manually configuring the voltage, I recommend getting a USB-C PD trigger cable instead. Look for ASIN B08NTTK8S9. I don’t trust myself to push the right buttons in the middle of the night, and making a mistake can easily fry the CPAP by giving it too much voltage.
Another advantage of using a trigger cable is that it prevents the auto-poweroff feature of the battery. Some reviewers were complaining that they couldn’t connect devices that draw very little power (e.g. a CPAP that is in standby mode), but a trigger cable avoids that issue.
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