Battery Backup Power Cell - what to buy

[deejayburnout]

Good evening Peeps

I have been toying with the idea of getting one of those mobile phone battery Backup Power Cells.

Not wanting a big on, maybe 10000 mah. That would charge my Note 3 about 2.5 times.

Anyone recommend a good brand or specific one? Do you also have any experience with them. Do they last as long as they say they do.

Been looking on eBay for some but a lot of them seem cheap, and are solar charged.

Cheers

[AETAaAS]

Avoid the cheap eBay ones, their capacity is usually considerably less than advertised. I once bought a 4500mAh one for £20 and it couldn't charge my phone even once. Even allowing for efficiency losses, it was pretty poor showing. Two companies I trust are Anker and TeckNet.

There is a TeckNet 9000mAh one on Amazon for £18 (bought one recently but larger ones are available). http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00FBD3MVA/
Ankers are more expensive but my experience with their cells has been nothing but positive. http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00DMXMA78/

My advice; get the TeckNet, be happy for a number of years and then replace. All these batteries start losing capacity at one point or another so it's hard to justify very large outlays.

[josephlck]

I currently use an EasyAcc one iChoc. For me, portability and an integrated usb cable were a real priority. No point having a spare battery if you don't carry it/have the cable for it! It isn't quite as big as you want however.

Anker make good ones too (had one which I lost). If the integrated USB cable weren't so important to me, I would have gotten another Anker. The other factor to bear in mind is you want to make sure it can output a decent current. Realistically, you want 2A or you will have to wait ages to get a decent charge.

[Alieno]

You can give a look to the maplin website, they have some good ones for reasonable prices. I recently bought a 5000A one and it charges up my Thinkpad tablet II to a full charge without any problem and I paid it something like £15. Could get better for that price but it needs to be something reliable that won't damage your devices really

[herulach]

I've had a floureon 7800mah one for about 18 months. Does my nexus 10 with enough left over for my phone, so capacity won't be miles off. Does get hot though. The capacity will be the (already optimistic) ideal capacity of the cells so accounting for a general crapness in convertor circuitry I wouldn't bank on more than 75% of that as useful power. I have a big one so we can have both tablets running off it during long plane rides, but since the nexus 10 will happily do 9 hours+ of local video with the wifi off then if it was just me I'd only bother with a little one to boost my phone.

[mightymouse]

I have three generic (chinese oem) battery backup so no named brands and they work fine. One small one for portability, medium one for when I go farther and a massive 10kmah one for long journeys. I havent had any issues with any of them but I do know that it really depends on the output. The smallest one outputs 1A, while the other two have one 1A and one 2.1A each. So for your note you may want to get a 2.1A version. All three were purchased from ebay

[unifex]

I actually have a pretty damn good experience to relate here...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/TeckNet%C2%A...ecknet+battery

This 7000mah battery I have on my desk right now (phone charge while uber thunderstorm) I've taken it travelling to india/china/thailand/malaysia/europe on 3 trips, it's got wet when strapped to the top of a bus, dropped down a reasonably sized cliff, and I trickle-charged it off a pack of solar panels every day for about a month, all to no ill effect.

only downside for OP is that you want 2.5 charges, that's what I think the 7000 advertised but realistically it's one solid 100% charge and one 60-70% charge. I wouldn't want any more weight of battery in my pack though, if you're never going to take it far afield then a heavier one might do.

If you're going to do solar you need to do the research. I had a 3 pack of 3 panels, each just under an A5 piece of paper in size. If allowed to sit still in direct sunlight (rotated throughout the day) they would charge my 7000 battery to nearly full in 1 day. Not sustainable in most conditions, but pretty perfect if you're living somewhere safe you can leave solar cells+battery lying around with no power on tap.

[deejayburnout]

I just bought a TeckNet® POWER BANK iEP387 7000mAh from Amazon as Unifex's review has me sold. I am away camping next week so this should keep my Nexus 7 topped up for me while sitting around doing nowt.

Thanks for the input guys

[jaybrokers12]

I have an ERD power bank but I am not satisfied with its performance.

[stephen0205]

xiaomi power pack 10400mah , worth every penny, looks apple built

[deejayburnout]

Just a update on my year old thread.

My tecknet battery had started to swell recently. Not sure why but it has been used alot recently to keep my wives PS 4 controller charged.

Lucky I found this for sale on Amazon this morning http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B011...irL&ref=plSrch

Quick charge 2.0 and slightly more capacity. Review of it are good and looks like a steal at this price.

[matematika]

Also XIAOMI has had some good reviews you can get it for 8£ from
http://www.banggood.com/Original-XIA...-p-977406.html

it takes about a week or two, but it charges my Moto X 2014 (2300 mAh) 4 times easily and is quite small and neat compared to my previous bank which started as 7200mAh but deteriorated pretty fast...