- It smelled fishy right from the start.
It is obvious that energy to weight ratio is one of the most important characteristic of power banks. Reputable manufacturers will optimize for this, and if they are particularly good at it, they can ask for a premium.
If a generic powerbank beats the big names, sells for cheaper and is associated with a brand that has no reason to be associated with powerbanks, then it is very likely that the weight savings come from omitting something important rather than an optimized design. If the specs are true that is.
by VBprogrammer
14 subcomments
- I stick to Anker for cables, batteries and chargers. I'm sure they've had their own issues but everything I've bought feels well made. The only one I've had an issue with was a USB-C to everything else adaptor which weirdly stopped working after a week or two. I was surprised to find that their support was based in the UK (Cardiff if memory serves) and very efficiently processed a return and replacement.
I've watched Big Clive's videos for too long to trust no-name Chinese things with anything involving mains potential or energy storage.
- The more interesting thing is that they were actually pulled. Did the manufacturer send a recall notice? (And if so why didn't they send a statement). I can't imagine Amazon themselves taking any action since they allow other junk to stay up
by curiousObject
0 subcomment
- Why these batteries got all the attention - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45322135
- Well.. it was probably too good to be true. I'm a hiker - and was in on that first wave of purchasers. For $24, the 2000mAh battery was pretty light for what it is - 10.16oz. (more capacity for what I usually need) In comparison, I think my nitecore NB10000 is around 5.98oz for around $50, which is one of the better ones out there. On the cheaper side, the INIU 1000mAh is around 5.96oz for about $26 which does OK. I see amazon already pulled the page to order the haribo battery pack.
I also picked up their earbuds, which - for $11, sound and work far better than I expected.
- FWIW, the Haribo charger seems to be rather well made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xT_t5nvFcoY (26:50, by ZeroBrain, a German YouTuber that disassembles electronic devices)
by londons_explore
0 subcomment
- I'd be interested to know if a headphone battery can suffer thermal runaway.
If the surface area to volume ratio is high enough, however badly it is made doesn't matter - it's not gonna catch fire anyway.
If that's the case, there is no safety issue with the headphones - a 0.5mm safety margin either end of a battery which is only 6mm long is insane anyway - and I don't fault the engineers for looking for other ways to get equivalent safety without compromising in capacity.
- Batteries that undercut the market price have serious flaws... who would have thought!
by urbandw311er
0 subcomment
- The thought of a runaway thermal reaction in a cell that’s sitting in your ear, albeit a small one, is pretty sobering.
by asimpleusecase
0 subcomment
- I’ve seen airline training videos about in flight battery fires. But I’ve never considered the risk of ear buds catching on fire. Normally, you should feel them heating up before they catch but they might just blow, that would be very sore. Also if you’re sleeping with buds in you could end up with a fire before you woke up.
by joecool1029
0 subcomment
- FWIW, I have one of the Haribo products, the 65W 3-port GaN charger. No battery to fail. I’ve run the charger standard enumeration test with a ct-3 and it supports everything except for VOOC. I’ve also load tested it with an adjustable usb load tester and it matches all the specs as advertised. It seems like they probably use the same controller as the Anker 3 port charger, but would need to see the teardowns. Otherwise, I’ll continue to recommend it.
by daemonologist
1 subcomments
- Pouch cells is interesting - I would've expected cylindrical cells in all but the smallest of battery banks. The lack of heavy steel casings might explain the high gravimetric density which was attractive to hikers.
by skeeter2020
0 subcomment
- I would avoid anything exceed 100 watt-hours (which this does) as you can't fly with it. I do a lot of backocuntry bike trips so flying isn't the primary concern, but I'm not going to own multiples. Anker and other reputable brands tend to design around these type of use-cases which helps.
- I love the summary at the top. Cool thing to have.
by frumiousirc
2 subcomments
- I'm curious how the cost of performing these CT scans compared to the profit reaped by Haribo while the batteries were selling.
- This reminds me of when pvs-studio would post every single analysis they would make of popular C++ projects. It was a fun novelty back in the day. Just like these scans, which now are boring and overplayed.
- How or why does a candy company decide to electronics? That's the mystery I need an answer to. What's next, Durex pizzas?
- Gummy bears?
- not sure what is more interesting, the detailed information on lithium battery construction, or how they got a CT(cat) scanner, or the idea of having an industrial
cat scanner around.
those batteries were bizarely cheap and there was prior suggestion that these(others) were
actualy fake with empty space or filler, which isn't the case, and all in all they just need to up the precision of there automated processes.
nice piece of journalism.
by charcircuit
1 subcomments
- Has anyone reported issues with this battery, from what I've seen online everyone has been happy with its performance. Maybe the uneveness called out by the article is not enough to matter. Not following the industry standard is not necessarily the tipping point of everything going wrong.
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