Test/review of Xtar PB2S Charger & power bank

Thanks for the review, HKJ :+1:

I’ll have to think about whether to buy the powerbank, though.

It charges cells correctly, accepts protected 18650s and has a much better quality USB output than most combination devices of this type, but none of my cells are rated for charging at 2A.

I wish Xtar had built a 1A charging option in, perhaps as a little switch in a recess under one of the cell slots.

My cells are protected, but the 5mA discharge at 2.4V cell voltage doesn’t fill me with joy, either.

Some of my cells don’t trip until they hit 2.2V - 2.3V, which is fine at high load when you can rely on the cell voltage rebounding to avoid damage, but it’s far too low at 5mA discharge when it hardly rebounds at all.

Not good if I deplete the powerbank whilst travelling and it’s a few days before I can charge it again.

The nice thing about this power bank/charger is that you can easily remove the cell when they are empty to avoid any problems.

It would, of course, have been better without that 5mA draw and instead doing a total disconnect from the batteries when they are below 2.8V.

1 Thank

Good point :person_facepalming: :slight_smile:

Now that I think about it, I generally use 18650s, so I could fit a little piece of plastic or silicone sheet in as an isolator if I didn’t want to have some other container for the depleted cells.

Did i miss something in the review?

What is the standby current when left with batteries in place and no external power?

Around 0.1mA, but there is a curve showing that at 2.5V on the battery it increases to 5mA.

Thank you.

HKJ: the low current hidden mode works ok? Or does it have noise in the output?

Oh, that’s interesting! I went looking for more info about the low current mode, and the ZeroAir review:

has a picture of the user manual. Quoting from that:

I have a couple of small devices that would be useful for :slight_smile:

Calvin from Illumn shared that with us weeks ago.

I’ve been looking forward to this test, and appreciate the insights it provides.

XTAR did much to address the weaknesses of the PB2, and while not perfect, what other product out there can offer the combination of capabilities it has? Or better it? From a widely distributed, reputable brand name?

Serious question.

I had missed that low current mode, the review is now updated with it.

No worries…

Interesting to see the behaviour at that hidden low mode…. Waiting for the update.

Btw… Thanks for all your hard work

I have updated, there is no new curves only a few points extra in the power bank section.
What it does is disable the low current shut off.

Thank you Sir!

HKJ
So if I wanted to use a solar panel to recharge the battery’s once the solar panel quit charging due to clouds or whatever it would need to be powered cycled to resume charging?
Thank you

No, I show it in this chart:

The “brown out voltage” at the bottom is how low the output from the solar panel vent.
The cyan dots shows what happens during the low voltage and the red dots show what happens when the voltage returns to full again.

On the PB2S the red dots are at full current all the time. It do not matter if it was a small or large voltage drop, it will resume full current again when it is over.

That is another good point about it… Still expensive… Hope it gets lower price

Thanks for the extensive testing, did you do some USB PD tests as well (or anybody with this device)?
Mine sadly has USB PD issues (voltage drop and eventual reset) and I wanted to know if this is sort of common. Sadly I don’t have a QC compatible device at hand, I’ll try to get one.

I did run a load sweep:

And a test at 5V 2A:

I did not detect any high voltage support on the USB-C connector.

Hmmm… Maybe Xtar will release an updated version??