YZXStudio 8 Power Bank Review (4x18650)

Whew…finally got mine together!

A word of warning: the installation is super-tight. I had NKON do the welding but the cells weren’t properly in line so I had to remove the cell sleeves in order for them to fit at all! The nickel strips need to be well aligned and correct length too.

Mine is with the new Plus series hardware revison: higher precision current sampling, new QC controller FP6601Q, new soft buttons, QC port now rated for 5A (lower resistance), new ceramic capacitors & inductors. FW is now updatable through USB - you still need STLink though.

More info here: http://www.chongdiantou.com/thread-14260-1-2.html

I also got another today and it’s the new version. But the charging is not working. One of the components has snapped off from the pcb. Kind of a tight spot, but I’ll see if I can fix it with a short piece of wire by first removing it altogether.

Nice! Mine is on the way too, but I still haven’t found who can do the spot welding for me.

I’ll probably have to ask NKON to do it and ship it to me internationally, how much did he charge you?

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Maukka: I have added this review to the YZXStudio index thread: USB power meter/tester thread - YZXStudio, Power-Z, RDTech and more.

That thread is now the first result when searching for “YZXstudio” on google, at almost 10K views it brings lots of unique visitors to BLF.

Nkon asked me 10€ for the welding and it took 6 days before my order was shipped. I just wrote them that I was happy with the welding but I had trouble because the pack was not really flat and glued too - maybe now they will do a better one for you :slight_smile:

I noticed…. It has bumped my older review down a bit :slight_smile:

Do you have more info on firmware update?
I just got 2.03 with Chinese and want to update to English version

Here’s the software instructions, but the new version can be updated via the micro-usb port. You also need the STLink programmer.

Thanks. I have V3 version. Where can I get English firmware for it?

The board works fine now after I soldered a piece of wire to connect the broken off part back to the pcb.

Weird - can’t find resistance measurement anywhere on my Contra SW. There is no setting 16.

Cannot check now, but did you make sure it wasn’t moved to the “Datum” calibration submenu in the 2.03 firmware?

Yes, silly me - its under Datum now. Thanks

Finally got mine today!

The install was tricky because the battery pack assembled by Nkon wasn’t properly done. The first problem was the batteries weren’t glued on a flat surface same as member swaan experienced, second problem was the battery tabs were off centre and they were shorting with the aluminium casing. With some dremel work and lots of krapton tape to avoid shorting everything was installed correctly.

My UI is in English, version 2.03.Some flaws/differences I noticed vs the unit maukka reviewed:
-LVP limited to 2.70V
-The resistance meter is hidden in the calibration submenu and still displaying double the true resistance, as mentioned above.
-Compass function doesn’t work, barometer over reads even when calibrated.
-Automatic charge current detection doesn’t work as consistently as I’d like, with the same QC2.0 charger it would choose 12V 1.5/1.75/2.0A randomly, but if I set it to manual it will always draw 2A.

It doesn’t seem to draw past 2A at any QC voltage, whereas the older yzxstudio 7 will draw up to 2.4A 12V or until the battery charge current hits the 4.56A limit.

Hopefully all these bugs or flaws can be fixed with future FW updates, but so far I’m happy with the construction and performance.

I was expecting Mario Bros power on logo, but got Contra instead. Not bad I guess?

Where did you order?
Which model did you buy?
How long was the shipping time from china to your country?
How much did you pay in $ for the Powerbank/shipping/customs?

Thanks!

Btw, booth of the domains http://franky.com and https://world.taobao.com didn’t work anymore.
Do anybody know more?

http://stores.ebay.com/99centhobbies

This is his E bay store.

So I’m curious, is the updating of this firmware for the batterythe same process as updating the USB battery monitors like in this video?
Thanks,
Scott

Yes.

Nice, maybe it’s time I get a new battery pack since I have plenty of 18650 cells.
My only concern is the way the batteries seem to be wired. I don’t see any balancing between them? Or the pictures I looked at were wrong. I was looking at the 4 cell version.
Does it balance the batteries during charging?
I know it’s not needed as much as for a LiPo pack, plenty of laptop packs don’t do individual cell balanced charging, but charge them in clusters of cells instead.
I think I will get one anyway. It’s probably the one thing I haven’t reviewed or own from YZXStudio.
Scott