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
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.
I have an Anker powerbank. It will no longer charge using the USB-C port. I have an older Belkin that is certainly less stylish but has a higher capacity and still works perfectly, including charging via USB-C, so I'm not inclined to buy Anker again.
Of course neither of us has a lot of first hand data so it's hard to draw meaningful conclusions.
I moved away from Anker to UGREEN following Anker’s Eufy using unencrypted feeds and sending data to the cloud with no user consent, which was bad, but their gaslighting response to the tech media and overall handling of the situation made me completely lose all trust in them. Maybe they’ve gotten better since, happy to be proven wrong.
UGREEN fit that niche of ‘tech products that are generally of quite good quality’ for me fine. They feel like neither an upgrade or a downgrade to the Anker stuff I still have.
I highly recommend avoiding their cables. Their 100W rated cables fail when connected to to 60W chargers (of thier own brand). I had tons of issues with devices intermittently charging or continuously connecting and disconnecting. Narrowed it down to Anker cables. Replaced them all and have had no issues since.
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.
This is basically good marketing content for Lumafield that sell the CT scanners. Cost to them is almost nothing, just opportunity cost of doing something else on the tool.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
Yeah. I remember seeing the circuit board for official Xbox controllers vs cheap 3rd party ones. The official controllers had about 10x as many components. I don’t know what all that stuff does, but I’m sure it all contributes to the controllers feeling and working better.
I wonder the same thing about chargers. I’ve recently moved from a 3rd party charger for my camera batteries I got on amazon to an official Sony charger. The 3rd party charger seemed to work great - but it was practically weightless. The Sony charger is clearly a way more complex (and more expensive) product. I don’t know if all that complexity is actually worth it. What does it all do? But I assume so.
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’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.
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.
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.
This is a shame, really. I got a few of these power packs and they have a nice design. I'd be happy to pay 2-3x as much and not have my house at risk of burning down.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 58.9 ms ] threadI've watched Big Clive's videos for too long to trust no-name Chinese things with anything involving mains potential or energy storage.
Of course neither of us has a lot of first hand data so it's hard to draw meaningful conclusions.
UGREEN fit that niche of ‘tech products that are generally of quite good quality’ for me fine. They feel like neither an upgrade or a downgrade to the Anker stuff I still have.
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.
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.
I wonder the same thing about chargers. I’ve recently moved from a 3rd party charger for my camera batteries I got on amazon to an official Sony charger. The 3rd party charger seemed to work great - but it was practically weightless. The Sony charger is clearly a way more complex (and more expensive) product. I don’t know if all that complexity is actually worth it. What does it all do? But I assume so.
I also picked up their earbuds, which - for $11, sound and work far better than I expected.