I've been had!

Posted in Electronics, Reverse Engineering - February 12, 2014 - 0 Comment

I got a “5600mAh” power bank from Aliexpress. It’s an electronic item direct from China at low, low prices, so I assumed it was going to not measure up in some way or other, but until I got it, I didn’t know how.

Overall, the build quality isn’t bad. The case is molded plastic, and snaps together. It’s nice looking and feels solid. The power management PCB in it seems to have good quality solder joints. Not too shabby, and I don’t expect it to catch fire or anything.

The batteries, on the other hand, are where it falls down. The device has two cells in it, 18650 size, 1200mAh each (if their labels are to be believed). They are in parallel, which gets me a total of 2400mAh. That’s slightly more than half of the advertised capacity. Since 5600 isn’t an even multiple of 1200, there’s no way they could get 5600mAh using these batteries, even if they did want a product that could live up to their claims.

For ~$9, I don’t think it’s worth making a fuss over, but now I know what to expect from this device.