Omnicharge - Overpriced powerbank with good marketing?

I like the form factor but I’m afraid you’ll get a working prototype and not a solid and lasting device. Maybe v2.

Snake oil. Nothing else.

I really like it and it’s cheaper than the competitors that offer AC output.

Well like every other product on kickstarter or indiegogo or pages like that - it will change your life!, according to the sellers of the product. I think apple introduced this kind of marketing ‘We have a product like every other one but ours is better and innovative’ while they charge you twice the price because of the marketing campaign. As you might have noticed I am not really fond of all that marketing stuff :stuck_out_tongue:

20,000mah or 74WH is very little energy when transformed into 110VAC and then back to DC, they claim it can be used to charge “drones” but it won’t even fully charge a phantom 3 quadcopter battery once (4,400mah 15.2V). One could simply carry a spare battery and a regular 20,000mah powerbank…

Probably worth the $139 if you need all the gimmicks but the retail price of $250 is stupid.

I’m amazed at the success of this project at 1.7M, the pro version probably costs $50 to manufacture at most, it only uses 6x18650 after all.

the ac feature will be nearly worthless.it may run the loads demonstrated but not long enough to be useful.
by the pics the cells are in parallel.thats a real tall order for even 4 18650b to do.
more effective design would eliminate the ac inverter,condense the rest to a narrower board,and fill the extra volume in the case with more batteries.oh wait that already been done.common and cheap too.
so i will declare it snake oil too.but with an explanation.

Now production seems to start in november and shipping during christmas month :slight_smile:

(4) Patented Power Protection System™.

What is patent nr I could read about that?
Mike

I’d love to know the efficiency of their inverter, most of the ones in the 100W range I have used are pretty terrible. The rest is just an ordinary power bank, with Qi being the only unusual feature. But again efficiency suffers with that.

I’ve had mine since April and it’s absolutely fabulous. From the six Sanyo NCR18650GAs (~74Wh) it’ll provide from 63 to 70Wh depending on the output voltage and current draw.

I get the best efficiency from the QC3.0 USB port at 12 volts at 1 amp and worst at 5V 1A. 20V 2A from the DC output jack nets me 67Wh. So the DC-DC efficiency is good to superb depending on the load.

Sadly I haven’t tested the efficiency from the inverter output, since my AC power meters really don’t seem to like the stepped sine output, which also happens to be 60Hz even though my 230V (actually higher than this) version should be 50Hz. Omnicharge tells me this is fixed in the future versions. I could test how long an incandescent bulb works powered from the AC output to get a ballpark figure.

I’ve also been using the HVDC output successfully with SMPSs, which get rid of the buzzing noise.

The only thing I’ve found wrong with it is that it won’t do passthrough charging if the power output from the AC output is high (about >40W).

So how did you get one before official production started?
And is it usable as UPS below 40W AC output?
And how about USB UPS functionality?

Mine is the original Omnicharge Pro which doesn’t have USB-C but a DC input for charging which also acts as an adjustable voltage output. I find this much more useful. Works great as an UPS with low loads on all outputs.

Ran a 60W incandescent bulb from the AC output. It ran for an hour and five minutes, which means the discharge current per battery was a bit above 3 amps. By HKJ’s measurements the 18650GA has a total capacity of 11.35Wh at 3A discharge, which would make the total pack 68.1Wh. So the output energy is 1.083h*60W=64.98Wh and the efficiency is almost unrealistically high at 95%. I suspect that the lamp got a bit dimmer during the last 5 minutes. Should test for that too, but all in all the inverter seems to work very well. There was however very slight flickering of the bulb throughout the test.

edit: measured the bulb from a wall socket and the power consumption was 55 watts. This would put the efficiency at about 87% but as I said, the Omnicharge output voltage is a bit high at 250Vrms and the frequency is 60Hz. The voltage will affect the power, but I didn’t check how much it drops under that 60W load.

Well dang, count me impressed! Suddenly this thing sounds a bit better, still not worth the cost for me personally, but it does give me motivation to find a better inverter and make my own.

I don’t think it’s worth the current retail price either. I think I paid about $140 all custom fees included in the original IGG campaign. Not cheap but it’s still my favorite powerbank together with the 8. generation YZXStudio 4 and 8 cell ones.

Did another test while logging output voltage and brightness of the 60W bulb. Absolutely rock steady 240 volts, 245mA, 58.8 watts for the first 62 minutes. Slight decline after that and the power cut off at 65 minutes at 211V 227mA 48W. Total energy 63.1Wh which equals about 93% efficiency.

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