Xiaomi powerbank16000 dissassembled

I ordered one of the 16Ah Xiaomi Powerbank for around 25$. This price is very reasonable for the advertised specs:

Five brand 18650 with 16000mAh
Top notch charging, boosting and protecting circuits with chips from TI
Nice design
Real capacity on the 5V side given as 10200mAh
Two USB outputs which can handle 2.1A each but 3.6A max for both

The bank I got was defective, only one USB Port worked the other one only had 3.5V for a couple of seconds before it switched itself off.
Also the blinking never stopped after some charge and discharge tests so I will get a replacement in some weeks…
The Port who worked gave me around 2A output current and a total discharging capacity of around 10Ah(combined discharge with phone,iPad and resistor). Charging was a bit tricky with my htc phone charger it didn’t worked with the cable provided, with an iPad charger I got barely a bit more than 1A…I will test this again with the new one when I have it.


So long as we all a are curious how things look inside:
Here is a nice disassembling review with a lots of info and pics.
In his version he got LG batteries also the specs on the white plate are different.

I got these:

Panasonic NCR18650BE
The bank was very good for disassembling because it is screwed, the whole internals can be pushed out after unscrewing the top and bottom plates. They have a firm and secure fit but are also easyly to slide in/out. Even without the plates the housing is sturdy, this is easyly the best Powerbank I have hold in my hands, it is elegant and sturdy. The electronics seem fine and 18650 are my preffered form of lithium batteries. The whole size is like 6x18650 plus the length of the USB socket, the electronic uses the space of one battery, nice form factor.

Electronic topside:

Electronics bottom side:

My new 18650s:

If you look close you can see a damage on a current path near one of the screws, maybe that was the problem with this device…

i think these are very good batteries inside

Great review. So it goes without saying that the cells can be user replaced? Are these protected cells by any chance?

These cells are all spot welded in parallel, in the bank they are “protected” by the circuit board. That means that the charging and discharging electronic look that the cell stays always in a safe region. Also there is a ntc for over temperature monitoring.So after dissassembling they are not protected.
So the cells can not be user replaced, or to be more precise it is not intended to be done.
—-

But
I could easyly desolder the whole “battery pack” from the circuit. So it is in some way possible, and I would be quite confident that I could solder new batteries inside this thing…but this makes no sense these batteries will be good for hundreds of cycles and if you buy new batteries(5$ per cell times 5 are the banks price)you could also buy a new bank and recycle the old one.

Is that a Philips-head screw that’s so big it seems to contact traces on both sides of the screw head when it was screwed down?
Not sure which picture you mean

Seems, um, to be a caution that someone’s sloppy in building these.

Topside picture upper left. I tried to solder a bit on it but it didn’t worked properly…anyway five new cells for me :bigsmile:

> Topside picture upper left

Looks like they used screw heads type “E” (flat on top, conical underneath) — definitely the wrong thing for circuit boards.

They should have used A, B, C, or D shape — head flat on top so it pulls the board tight rather than wedging the hole, crunching down over a wider area as it’s tightened and possibly cracking the board.

Maybe I missed it but did you say which seller you purchased from? Lots of fakes out there and some sellers who want a faulty unit returned (which would cost more than the product.)

Thanks

They used type A screws. Maybe I will find some time and try to inspect the circuit a bit more and try if that was the problem. I guess these are handassembled and someone slipped the screwdriver. They were quite hard to unscrew with a small screwdriver with metal handle.
——

I ordered from banggood.
AFFILIATE LINK TO PRODUCT
The smaller10000 Powerbank can be purchased from the xiaomi shop directly, but this didn’t worked for my city because they have a dumb drop down menu which didn’t list every city for my zip code.

You can easyly identify fakes once you have it, there is a 20digit number on the packaging which you first have to scratch free. You can enter it on the xiaomi webpage and than they confirm if it is genuine and how often your code has been checked until now.

Thanks for the teardown :beer:

Is there still a valid discount code for these?

The picture in the BG listing is the 3.75v version, but I guess it could be random as to what you end up getting.

Midyear6
It is a 6% code which is currently working.

Thanks, that knocks off a couple of $$

Wow! In classic power banks all we can expect is XXX fire battery but panasonic cells in this makes this buy almost as must.

An excellent review!

My replacement arrived last week and it is the other one with the LG batteries inside.



It even is marked as LG on the label. :slight_smile:

It works perfect I cycled it a dozen times with different loads and stuff and I am amazed.
Battery protection kicks in on a bit over 3V and it charges them to 4.35V. Discharge capacity over 10Ah.
The only thing Someone could not like is it does not charge on a 1A USB power supply it pulls down the voltage and then stops charging.

I have not found a test of this battery yet but HKJ did a test on one which is named the same with a green wrapper. LGABE11865 Review

I (of course) got some fake Xiaomi 16000mAh power bank also.
The sign was clear from I opened the package with 3x power banks in it. They had not the security tag that you can scratch and check on Xiaomi website.
The plastic wrapping on every power bank was open at the seal.
The front had “big” holes to the lights, The colors of the USB ports was wrong. Then I opened one up, and I found 5 pink batteries without any marking at all. I also took of the plastic wrapper of one to see if there was any other wrapper under, but it’s just a metallic battery.
I took the PCB and the “chips” has no markings, except a little one with the marking: SS84.
And you can see how little my PCB is compared to the real Xiaomi power banks. It missing the whole right side.

Here is my pictures. Somebody know what type of batteries thees are? No marking except a date 2015.07.03
I’m currently have put 4 of them on my BT-C3100 to test them, but of course, it’s fake. What do you bet the battery capacity will be? It’s around 3-5 hours before the testing is over.

looks like samsung ICR1865026F:

Same color, I will check (I have the 26 F M batteries), but they are totally unmarked. And then my test will show max 2600mAh = 13.000mAh.
But if it’s samsung 26F, it’s not so bad deal. But of course, how safe to use it? With that small PCB board compared to the real ones. No safety there I bet.

Any cell can “look like” a 26F: https://www.fasttech.com/products/0/10012801/2157400-18650-battery-sleeve-pvc-heat-shrinkable-tubing

The OP did not receive a counterfeit - he received a defect. The girlfriend has the earlier version of this and she loves it!

That genuine samsung wrapp really scares :) But I got lot of genuine ones from FT and they are probably the best bang for buck... Why would anyone buying xxx fire cell when they can get genuine samsung?