Today at Atelier Kaz - ex-Honda R&D, F1, Indy/CART engineer

Now-a-days, you can get all sorts of lithium ion battery products.




I use Anker 2nd Gen Astro 6400mAh battery for charging the mobile phone while on the go.
Very small and light yet you can charge your mobile phone for about 3 times.


There are lots of similar products for jump starting the car and I was hoping to find something from Anker or from one of the Japanese battery manufactures but so far, nothing available at reasonable cost. It's a battery and with current technology, it won't last forever at this stage so not much point in investing too much for something to be thrown away.

After some research, although there were mixed feedback, decided to give it a try on the product from a US manufacture called Powerall.




There are lots of un-authorised dealers and even counterfeit products on the market so based on the Powerall website (www.thepowerall.com), purchased it through US amazon.com with ASIN No. B00D42AFS8.
It comes in frustration-free packaging.

You can get almost exactly the same product from Powerall with carrying case included through other vendors on amazon or webshops but for my application, I'm 100% sure that I won't be carrying all these adaptor connectors and thus, no need for the carrying case.
Also, being as a battery products, there is always a chance of initial defects so wanted to stay with the item sold and delivered by amazon.


Battery technology advances every day so what I learnt in the past are outdated but my understanding on the lithium ion battery is as follows.
Same goes for your mobile phone battery.

• Fairly efficient considering the volume/electric-current ratio. It can output huge amount of current even from small body size.
• It doesn't like to be at 100% fully charged or completely drained down to 0% and staying in these two states for prolonged time especially under high temperature. Therefore, if you are charging your mobile phone, never leave it on charge over night while you are sleeping. You will shorten the life of battery unless your system has automatic shut down circuit.
• It has much shorter life than the ordinary lead acid car battery. With lithium ion, after about 500 discharge/charge cycle, the actual full battery capacity would be about 50 – 60% of the brand new state. If you charge your mobile phone every day, after about 1 - 1.5years, you will notice that your mobile phone battery won't last long compared to when it was new.

Items inside the box. I won't be using all these adaptor connectors in the clear bag. One thing to be noted. The AC adaptor is 2pin style as it's from US and not in the UK 3pin one. Not a problem as you won't be charging this device regularly. In fact, once charged, you only need to do it again in about 3 months time.




Strong 1W LED light with three different lighting mode. Continuous, flashing and SOS modes.

2 x USB ports with max output upto 2.1A so you can charge your mobile phone, pad, etc. Not sure it has max constant current control circuit for different devices like Anker's IQ port.

5 x indicator lights showing the charge status. As expected, it was delivered in partially charged status. It was showing 4 lights on arrival but took this photo after discharging it for a while.




Jump battery port hidden under the protection cover. It was bit difficult to lift this cover and probably not easy for someone with long nail.
Also, later, I found that disconnecting the jump cable blue connector from this port required fair amount of force so not easy for some of the owners.




As a standard procedure for this kind of battery products, wanted to fully discharge it first before fully charging it so decided to connect two mobile phones and then other devices.
In fact, I already repeated this full discharge/charge cycle 3 times immediately after the delivery and the device holds the chage over long period so the one I received seemed to be fine..
If the product is faulty, most of the time, it will show up during this multiple discharge/charge process.


After it went down to about 10% capacity, one blue indicator light started flashing and low voltage protection circuit kicked in so time to recharge the device.
At this low voltage status, it measured 8.34V at the jump start terminal.
When it was fully charged, it measured 12.33V at the same terminal.
The AC adaptor (charger) spec is 12.6V at 1.5A rate on the label but actual measured figure was 12.9V.

As I didn't want to keep it at fully charged status, drained it down to 11.9V immediately.






The jump start cable.
4 x schottky diode in parallel. Each rated at 2 x 20A so 160A rated. Hope it's fine for short period of 200-400CCA for jump starting the car.