Why your [ultra-light hiker] friend suddenly has [the world's lightest] power bank.
I remember Colin Fletcher, years ago, writing in The Complete Walker about trimming the borders off his paper maps to save weight, which seemed like an insane over-optimization to me. But then, I'm not an ultralight hiker.
I am impressed folks are getting their loads down to 10 pounds though.
I recall reading about mountain climbing and some experienced climber was joking about the folks who are all about the weight and gear and so forth. He didn't say it was unimportant, but he did say that everything that makes him better than the amateurs, or even amateurs better than other amateurs had nothing to do with gear or weight fixation.
It was the same thing when I got into photography. It's always easy to talk about the easily measurable things. This lens is better than that and so on. Gear is cool and fun...
But the old guy with the beat up camera and not optimal lens shooting next to me ... he will take better photos almost every single shot.
I replaced all my travel electronics to be powerable from USB-C. This saved me from a lot cables and adapters.
Even re-soldered the cable of my electric shaver to use a USB-C PD adapter PCB. As long it's somehow close to the standardized voltages (5/9/12/18/etc.) there will be no problems.
This is great and all, but for me it feels like much more of an achievement when I reach the summit with 30kg+ of mixed gear and child on my back - and there’s nothing quite like the feeling of putting it all down and feeling like you might just float away.
Then again I am the kind of masochist who used to run ultramarathons with a backpack full of rocks just for the jollies.
Is the manufacturer of these things trustworthy? I am especially skeptical of any battery pack manufacturers because of the inherent risk of these things.
Sorry for being off-topic, but why with all the advanced technology today I have to manually copy ounces and pounds into Google to learn how much it is? Instead of adding dark themes and material design, it would be better to add a unit converter.
Also do you really need a power bank for a 2-day trip? In airplane mode a phone can live like 2 weeks.
This is advertising done right. Wish more companies would do this. Instead of spamming me with your brand on every platform, sell a dirt cheap product with your branding. This way the middle man gets nothing, everyone else is happy.
Nitecore is somewhat accepted as the best lightweight battery, but they aren't cheap.
10Ah battery is $60, 5.9oz. the 20Ah is 10.2oz and $100. Unlike the Hasbro, it comes close to its rated specification.
My backpacking trips have definitely not needed 20Ah. For two or three nights I can usually get by with a 5000mah, if I shutdown at night and frequently use airplane mode. And my phones are usually getting on, don't have Greta battery life.
What is your source for the nitecore being higher capacity than the equivalently rated haribo? All primary sources I've seen so far indicate they are comparable at 70-75%
I've made it with 10Ah as well but carrying cameras and such it is nice being able to charge stuff up and also have battery enough to power my headlamp at night. I can understand why people want more charge.
> Ultralight culture seems a little nuts to the uninitiated.
I prefer "Durable, but as light as possible", not the other way around. Most ultralight gear breaks after a few uses or when it is mishandled in anything-less-than-perfect conditions, which, happens a lot outside.
Packs used to have MOLLE/PALS strips and/or external pockets. Packs made now seem to have supersonic flight aerodynamics as the primary design feature… heaven forbid we add 20 grams of stitching/webbing for expansion/versatility.
I was in the market for a 20Ah battery to power my Burning Man totem last month. I ended up buying two off Amazon - a no-name brand and an Anker for 2.5x the price ($65 for 28Ah). The Anker bank was heavier than the no-name and had substantially longer battery life under the same usage patterns.
I don't know a lot about batteries, but what I do know is that they're very important tech and any performance wins would have cascading effects through multiple industries. It's incredibly unlikely that there is new battery tech that is meaningfully better while also not taking the world by storm. It's far more likely that whitelabel/noname brands are just lying about the specs/cheaping out on energy density and hoping consumers don't notice or care.
Batteries are improved all the time. An improvement of 5% in weight is not really a big breakthrough at this point, especially as we do not know the reason; could be the battery, but also lighter casing or something else.
This is a very poorly researched article. A few things worth considering:
- 20,000 mAh is the rated capacity. Anyone who has tested 18650 batteries (which are the cells typically used in these battery packs) knows the rated capacity != tested capacity.
- Watthours is more important than amp hours
- Tested watt hours as typical loads is more important than amp hours
- It's very normal to see tested capacity to be roughly 70~80% of rated capacity.
- This commenter said they got "At 18W average, I pulled out 55.4Wh" on the Haribo [0]
- The generally considered "gold standard" for ultra light batteries in this range is the Nitecore NB20000 Gen 3, which regularly tests around 56 Wh.
So yes the conclusion is correct - you get roughly the same amount of capacity for a typical load (18W phone) for a cheaper price and slightly less weight. Very curious what battery cells the Haribo uses.
Probably not. The community is always hungry for ways to trim weight, any new offering in the field is interesting, but since the battery is one of the most critical items, well, people tend to be conservative and stick to established models.
Most ultralight folks go light so they can cover more ground while being more comfortable. Experienced ultralighters consider how a weight reduction introduces risk against that goal, rather than simply "lighter is always better". Aka, don't go "stupid light".
An ultralighter is basically guaranteed to use their phone for navigation. A surprise battery failure may cut a trip short and possibly risk their well-being, both of which go against the goal.
It's not recommended to use battery models that haven't been extensively tested because there are conditions in the backcountry that you may not think about or be able to test beforehand, such as performance in cold conditions, whether the IPX rating really holds up, whether it's possible to brick the device accidentally by pressing the wrong button combination, etc.
A common recommendation is the Nitecore nb10000[1] for 10k of battery, and if you want 20k then bring two. (One of the Anker 20k models is also popular.) Bringing two 10ks is ~0.3 oz heavier than one 20k (per manufacturer specs), but it gives you charging parallelism (shortening down your recharging time by N hours, if your trip requires that you recharge midway) and device redundancy, both of which help you move faster with more reliably.
Related, it is also recommended to only use a battery bank that you have personally used for a few full charge cycles beforehand, to smoke out manufacturing defects.
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 58.8 ms ] threadI remember Colin Fletcher, years ago, writing in The Complete Walker about trimming the borders off his paper maps to save weight, which seemed like an insane over-optimization to me. But then, I'm not an ultralight hiker.
I am impressed folks are getting their loads down to 10 pounds though.
It was the same thing when I got into photography. It's always easy to talk about the easily measurable things. This lens is better than that and so on. Gear is cool and fun...
But the old guy with the beat up camera and not optimal lens shooting next to me ... he will take better photos almost every single shot.
I replaced all my travel electronics to be powerable from USB-C. This saved me from a lot cables and adapters.
Even re-soldered the cable of my electric shaver to use a USB-C PD adapter PCB. As long it's somehow close to the standardized voltages (5/9/12/18/etc.) there will be no problems.
Then again I am the kind of masochist who used to run ultramarathons with a backpack full of rocks just for the jollies.
Also do you really need a power bank for a 2-day trip? In airplane mode a phone can live like 2 weeks.
10Ah battery is $60, 5.9oz. the 20Ah is 10.2oz and $100. Unlike the Hasbro, it comes close to its rated specification.
My backpacking trips have definitely not needed 20Ah. For two or three nights I can usually get by with a 5000mah, if I shutdown at night and frequently use airplane mode. And my phones are usually getting on, don't have Greta battery life.
Weight is of course a major consideration, but its not the primary reason im not bringing batteries on a hiking trip.
I prefer "Durable, but as light as possible", not the other way around. Most ultralight gear breaks after a few uses or when it is mishandled in anything-less-than-perfect conditions, which, happens a lot outside.
Packs used to have MOLLE/PALS strips and/or external pockets. Packs made now seem to have supersonic flight aerodynamics as the primary design feature… heaven forbid we add 20 grams of stitching/webbing for expansion/versatility.
I was in the market for a 20Ah battery to power my Burning Man totem last month. I ended up buying two off Amazon - a no-name brand and an Anker for 2.5x the price ($65 for 28Ah). The Anker bank was heavier than the no-name and had substantially longer battery life under the same usage patterns.
I don't know a lot about batteries, but what I do know is that they're very important tech and any performance wins would have cascading effects through multiple industries. It's incredibly unlikely that there is new battery tech that is meaningfully better while also not taking the world by storm. It's far more likely that whitelabel/noname brands are just lying about the specs/cheaping out on energy density and hoping consumers don't notice or care.
Seems like this article is skipping something important. What's the point of a light battery if it won't hold enough charge?
- 20,000 mAh is the rated capacity. Anyone who has tested 18650 batteries (which are the cells typically used in these battery packs) knows the rated capacity != tested capacity.
- Watthours is more important than amp hours
- Tested watt hours as typical loads is more important than amp hours
- It's very normal to see tested capacity to be roughly 70~80% of rated capacity.
- This commenter said they got "At 18W average, I pulled out 55.4Wh" on the Haribo [0]
- The generally considered "gold standard" for ultra light batteries in this range is the Nitecore NB20000 Gen 3, which regularly tests around 56 Wh.
So yes the conclusion is correct - you get roughly the same amount of capacity for a typical load (18W phone) for a cheaper price and slightly less weight. Very curious what battery cells the Haribo uses.
[0] - https://old.reddit.com/r/Ultralight/comments/1li5rxw/20000ma...
EDIT: Doesn't seem to be. Similar design, but two USB cables on that one. Not sure I trust the capacity.
Most ultralight folks go light so they can cover more ground while being more comfortable. Experienced ultralighters consider how a weight reduction introduces risk against that goal, rather than simply "lighter is always better". Aka, don't go "stupid light".
An ultralighter is basically guaranteed to use their phone for navigation. A surprise battery failure may cut a trip short and possibly risk their well-being, both of which go against the goal.
It's not recommended to use battery models that haven't been extensively tested because there are conditions in the backcountry that you may not think about or be able to test beforehand, such as performance in cold conditions, whether the IPX rating really holds up, whether it's possible to brick the device accidentally by pressing the wrong button combination, etc.
A common recommendation is the Nitecore nb10000[1] for 10k of battery, and if you want 20k then bring two. (One of the Anker 20k models is also popular.) Bringing two 10ks is ~0.3 oz heavier than one 20k (per manufacturer specs), but it gives you charging parallelism (shortening down your recharging time by N hours, if your trip requires that you recharge midway) and device redundancy, both of which help you move faster with more reliably.
Related, it is also recommended to only use a battery bank that you have personally used for a few full charge cycles beforehand, to smoke out manufacturing defects.
[1]: https://nitecorestore.com/products/nitecore-nb10000-gen-2-qc...
[2]: https://nitecorestore.com/products/nitecore-nb20000-gen-3-du...
How do two independent power banks achieve this?