Sunday, April 12, 2015

Product review: PowerBus - Elivebuy® 20000mah 4 Independent USB Output Power Bank


♦ size: 7 1/4" x 4 3/8" x 1/2"
♦ weight: 18.90 oz
♦ number of ports: 4
♦ flashlight: no
♦ pass through charging: No (i.e. the battery can charge while being charged itself)
♦ cable: 45" charging cable

I love the capacity of this battery! And it surprisingly compact for what you get. This external battery is 20000 mAh. As far as usable capacity it is less as some of the battery capacity is always lost to heat, voltage conversion, and operation of the power bank itself. I always estimate that 30% of the capacity will not be available for the charging of the device. It has four ports.

Even though I love the capacity of this battery but it is not a speedy charger for either my Android Phone or iPadMini tablet. My current monitor shows that my devices were not able to draw more than 1Amp from any ports. I am including the details of the tests at the end of the review for those who are interested in the nitty gritty numbers. I am using this battery to power my MP3 player with external speaker as I listed to audio books when I do my chores. This speaker requires me to swap batteries every day, with EliveBuy I don't have to swap the battery that often.

To see how well different chargers and external batteries charge my mobile devices I use a Nexus phone and an iPadMini to test each of them. I do my tests with the devices charged to the same level, running the same applications and using the same cables to keep everything the same. This allows me to compare them to each other in a fair way. I use the current monitor to see what current is delivered to each device which tells me how well each external battery is working.

I also tested to see if the battery supports pass-through charging (i.e. whether the battery can charge mobile devices while it is being charged). Elivebuy DOES NOT support cjarge through charging.

For Android devices it matters if a cable used to charge the device is a charging cable or a data cable. In a charging cables the two data connections are shorted together (rendering the cable useless for data transfer), but this fools devices to see the cable as an AC power connection and thus the battery accept a higher current for charging. Most of the time external batteries come with a charging cable, but every now I run across a manufacturer that encloses data cables with external batteries. It is not easy to tell what cable you got unless you have a current monitor. I always include this test in my reviews so people can improve the performance of the battery by switching to a charging cable. Elivebuy package includes a charging cable. I ran the same tests with my own proven cable and got the same slow results, only slightly above the USB rate.

Samsung Nexus phone:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Port 1: 0.58A/5.01V (below average)
Port 2: 0.61A/5.01V (below average)
Port 3: 0.73A/5.01V (below average)
Port 4: 0.76A/5.02V (below average)
(for comparison the best charging monitor result for this phone is 1.00A/5V)

iPad Mini tablet:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Port 1: 0.93A/5.01V (average for 1A port)
Port 2: 0.93A/5.01V (average for 1A port)
Port 3: 0.93A/5.01V (average for 1A port)
Port 4: 0.93A/5.02V (average for 1A port)
(for comparison the best charging monitor result for this tablet is 1.70A/5V)

Bottom line, the best feature of this battery is its capacity. If you need a fast charge then this is not the best battery pack to get. I rate 5 stars for my application when the speed of charging does not matter.

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.



Ali Julia review ★★★★★


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