Better than a power station? Lighter, cheaper micro power system

[Music] hey everyone this summer I've been playing around with the idea of a micro power system that will charge all of my USB devices super fast from a tiny package the heart of the system is the Anker 737 power bank that is 84 Watt hours of power I can charge it up quickly with this 40 watt solar panel 140 watt wall charger or 65 watt car charger together this is small enough that I can Chuck it into my backpack or bring it anywhere because it only weighs 5.1 pounds in this video I'll show you how it all works and talk about why I think for most people this is a better option than a small Power Station if you're looking for an affordable first step to prepare for power outages or to keep in your car for when things go sideways and I wanted to mention this is not a sponsored video I paid for all these products myself this is just something that I was obsessed with and I wanted to try out let's get into it I've always liked the idea of these little power banks with integrated fold out solar panels because it's a slick all-in-one solution problem is these are all junk they have a slow USB charging weak output wildly inflated ratings and the peony solar panels take roughly a week to recharge with the sun I wanted something that was Compact and simple to use like this but with way better specs this fall I bought the Anker 737 power bank when it went on sale for 99 it's the most advanced example of a new generation of power banks that fit many of the features we've seen in larger power stations into a truly portable package that only weighs 1.4 pounds it is a crisp color screen that shows the state of charge input and output power for each USB port the time to empty your full and all kinds of stats like the temperature and cycle count inside it has a 24 000 milliamp hour NCM battery that translates to 84 Watt hours so it's small enough to bring on a plane when traveling and still have plenty of power for larger devices now I wish this had a longer lasting lfp battery but since this is designed to be ultra small and lightweight this is one place where I'll give it a pass the killer feature is this supports the newest Power delivery 3.1 spec so it can output a blistering 140 Watts over USBC and also recharge just as fast so this is on another level power delivery 3.1 can support voltages from 5 to 20 volts at up to 5 amps so you can power all kinds of devices with a simple USBC connector it charged my iPhone 14 pro at a 20 watt rate and it only used 18 of the battery so it should recharge it four to five times best of all it can power my MacBook Pro 15 inch at 100 watts and the new Macbook 16 inch can charge at a whopping 140 Watts since it supports PD 3.1 just keep in mind the battery isn't big enough to fully recharge either it can divvy up the power across multiple devices I was able to charge three high power devices at once which is pretty incredible you can also recharge while outputting power now you can use any USBC power brick you may already have around from your phone tablet or laptop but if you really want to push this to 140 Watts you'll need to invest in a newer PD charger I went ahead and picked up this PD 3.1 wall charger from iho for 48 dollars on sale that's rated at up to 140 watts of output and is the size of my MacBook Pro brick plugging it in I saw a steady 130 to 140 watts of output and it's charged from zero to eighty percent in under 32 minutes and charged all the way to 100 in just 52 minutes charging that fast is amazing if you're in a hurry but keep in mind that's almost a 2C charge rate which will degrade the batteries faster so I like that this brick has three different charge speeds across its ports 140 Watts 100 Watts or 30 Watts so I can dial in the charging speed the slower you charge and discharge the longer the NCM cells will last to charge it for my car I picked up this ugreen 69 watt PD charger with three ports for 22 dollars on sale and it recharged the 737 in about two hours there's some manure high power chargers on Amazon but honestly they sketch me out because there are way too many reports of blown fuses and melted Chargers the cigarette plug in your car isn't great so you really don't want to push your luck Priscilla charging some newer folding panels support PD output so you can connect a higher power solar panel to the 737 through the USBC PD Port even though it doesn't have a solo charger built in I wanted a panel that was big enough to easily recharge in one afternoon of sun for an 84 watt hour battery a 30 to 40 watt panel is about right now I spent way too much time researching every small solar panel on Amazon to find the ones that had PD support and then I tested a bunch with the 737 I'll do a follow-up video comparing all the panels I tried so be sure to subscribe to know when that drops in the end this 40 watt panel from Flex solar was my favorite match for the 737 because it has high quality etfe panels provides up to 40 watts of PD output and is small enough to slide into a backpack since it's the size of a piece of paper and only about 1.8 inches thick it weighs 2.86 pounds and strikes a really good balance between size and output it only cost me 69 on sale under real world conditions I measured up to 28 watts of power Which is less than the PD output rating of 40 but it put out the most power in the smallest package of the panels I tested it's worth mentioning that you need to buy USBC cables that support the right PD version because they have chips inside them to negotiate the voltage and power I picked up these anchor cables for 12 on sale that are rated at 140 Watts PD 3.1 so there's no limitations don't skimp on cables because it can really hurt your charging speeds at this point I assembled a pretty great micro power station with data Rich display wall car solar charging and it only weighs 5.1 pounds so how much does this cost well all in it cost me 248 dollars by waiting and getting things on sale the 737 goes on sale every few weeks for 99 so just be patient because I think at its full retail price it's not a great value so why buy this instead of a regular Power Station well look small power stations like the blue 80 eb3a ecoflow River 2 have been so popular because they're entry-level products and generally cost around 300 bucks my main concern is with such a small battery the AC inverter and DC output aren't very practical because run times are super short what's the point of buying this to run your 60 watt CPAP machine when camping if it only makes it halfway through the night on AC power what's the point of having a 600 watt inverter in the eb-3a when you'll only get 25 minutes of run time and what's the point of running a DC compressor fridge when it will die eight hours into your weekend campout since small power stations are best for charging USB devices that's also The Sweet Spot for power Banks like the 737 it's worth asking if power banks are a better choice especially for the money they're also way more portable completely silent and a better value small power banks are quite expensive when you factor in the cost of a matching solar panel for example the river 2 with its 110 watt panel costs 640 dollars and weighs 18 and a half pounds the eb-3a with 120 watt solar panel costs 620 and is 23 and three quarter pounds this micro power station costs around 250 dollars and weighs 5 pounds so it's one-third to a quarter of the weight and much smaller sure the capacity is roughly one-third but for charging USB devices that's probably enough and if you want more power you can pick up a second 767 and have double the storage more USB ports and it would still be much cheaper and smaller than the power station for backpacking where weight is super important you can scale this back to a 10 000 milliamp hour power bank paired with a 15 watt solar panel like this sun Jack that's small and light enough to throw into a backpack since it only weighs a few pounds so am I saying power stations are bad of course not I'm just saying there's a new opportunity to think differently about our options for 100 to 300 watt hour units this is just the beginning anchor just released a range of new power banks with PD and displays just like the 737 have you seen any cool PD products I should check out how would you customize this to make it even better let me know in the comments all right everyone until next time foreign

Channel: Todd Parker

Views: 201,577

Keywords: anker 737, portable power station, small solar panels, USB PD power station, USB PD solar, Ecoflow River 2 alternative, Bluetti EB3A alternative, best small power station, best portable solar generator, CPAP powerbank, Anker, Anker prime, prepping, power outage preparedness, charge phone during power outage

Id: HfGPtwc8osg

Length: 8min 41sec (521 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 04 2023