Poundland USB Power Bank + Upgrade
Price: £1
Manufacturer: Signalex (Poundland)
Model: IP023
Power: 1 X 18650 lithium battery
Capacity: 1200mAh
Output: 5V 1A
Input: 5V 0.8A
Accessories: USB to micro USB cable and lanyard
A USB power bank for a quid? No!
I'm not going to do any kind of 'indepth' review on this device purely because others have already covered it.
The general consensus is that the idea is good but the execution is terrible.
Big Clive has done a great tear down and test video of this device.
Clive manages to cover everything aspect of this power bank in a much more scientific way than I ever could.
5V in and 5V out
So basically it pretty poor. The supplied lithium battery capacity is nearer to 1000mAh than its stated 1200mAh imposing limits on how long the battery will last before fading.
As the battery is the most crucial part of the device it kind of defeats the object.
The Simple Modification
I made the decision to buy more than one power bank whilst I was in Poundland.
Afterall, at only a £1 a piece they cost virtually nothing.
So I bought this black unit for the express purpose of tearing it to bits to see what was going on in there.
Using only a Spudger with the minimum amount of force I managed to pry open the plastic cover. It was a little too easy to open if I'm being honest but nevermind.
Flimsy setup
What lay beneath was this simple circuit with a crappy 18650 lithium cell attached! The battery does indeed say '1200 mAh' on the side sleeve but as others has pointed out it's more likely below 1000mAh .I wondered if I could swap with battery out with something else?
It so happened that I had an abundance of decent Sanyo 2400mAh cells lifted for a good laptop battery. This pink coloured Sanyo cell does hold a charge and is reliable. It has powered a 5W LED torch in the past for hours on end with no issues.
If I could be bothered to get my soldering iron out then a little bit of soldering here and there could improve this bank considerably.
A new battery with double the power!
Both battery terminals had to keyed or roughed up with the edge of a screwdriver before soldering to avoid the wires coming over off as soon as it's soldered.
The new Sanyo cell and Circuitry were carefully placed back in the holder and the cover put back on.
The power bank appeared to operate as normally.
The operation was a success
I now have double (if not more) the capacity in this power bank and to celebrate the fact I adjusted the wording on the box.!
Perhaps this device is worth £2 now? ha ha
Don't need that blue piece of crap!
It's early days in the testing of this upgraded unit. I haven't had the time to run some decent experiments yet but what I can say so far is that this bank will happily charge my WLN/Zeadio slim UHF rig no problem. - and not just the once either...
(more in a later post...)
Was it worth the extra effort?
Ordinarily upgrading the battery in these devices is probably not worth the effort unless you have some better 18650's knocking about in the house. It wouldn't be worth paying £5+ for a half decent cell to chuck in this device. The electronics leave a lot to be desired and its quite possible a better power bank could be bought from somewhere else for less cost and hassle?
As the Sanyo batteries cost my nothing to start with it was only my time that was being used. Worth it for me to utilise the Poundland innards anyway.
Next time..... 1200mAh bank V the upgraded 2400mAh bank