Poundland 4000mAh power bank

You're not missing much! I lived in TX & CA for years before moving back to the yUK, and most Dollar Store/Dollar Tree stuff is the same imported budget Chinese fare.. I see you can buy a similar looking unit off eBay for $1.69 - it might not be exactly the same and the capacity might be exaggerated, but, as I always tell my friend Alex regarding low-value items on eBay "it's either genuine or its free" (well, free after you've refused their offer of a 50% refund, then 70% then 80%). They never ask you to return the item.. http://www.ebay.com/itm/274747895554

Gordo

So, I went to Poundland the other day and bought one of these, fully intending to open it up & harvest the battery (it's hard to get batteries shipped from the UK mainland to Northern Ireland). But, it's rather neat and I'm going to keep it as a UPS for Raspberry Pis etc. The old version cuts the output when charging, so much less useful in that respect..

Gordo

The older ones are fully upgradeable with tagged 18650 cells, so theoretically it could be retrofitted with 2.6Ah cells to make it a 7800mAh pack, with the extra features of always-on 5V and a flashlight.

Big Clive

I bought 2 of the old ones just a couple of weeks ago at 5 quid each, now I am miffed because of your revalation that mine is not the full 4000mah and the new one is. I was in Poundland today and they are still selling the old version ! bah humbug.

Mike Hughes

I have two 20.000mAH powerbanks. One 'noname' (company gift) the other from Conrad.nl (Intenso). Then noname version weighs about 140g (flat pack battery) and I haven't been able to get more than just under 6AH out of it.- Hmmm. The Conrad version weight nearly 400g (probably 6 or 8 18650 cells looking at the size and wight, I haven't opened it yet as it is within warranty) and gives me around 19AH (acceptable i guess.) Just shows what kind of crap is to find 'out there' (and that quality is possible (for a price)

Zeedijk Mike

I bought one this morning. Charged it up and lo and behold, 4200mAh. Can't argue with that for a fiver. Thanks Clive.

That’s a pretty nice power bank. I wish we had Poundland over here in the US. Our dollar stores are usually pretty shitty.

[I've not watched the video yet, but…] might it just be passing the incoming 5V through to the output? Hopefully there's no significant loss of output when the input 5V is lost/removed. I've used some USB power banks that will supply power while being charged like this, but where the output turns off very briefly when the input is removed. It's only for a split second, but it's long enough to cause Raspberry Pis to reboot, making it kinda useless as a RPi UPS 😕

Andrew

Might be useful as a raspberry pi UPS.

Wim

Hey Clive, how does it use the one inductor for charging and supplying 5v output at the same time, is that even doable?

Mike Wynne