I ordered 2 x LiitoKala Lii 202 Dual Slot USB Battery Chargers from gearbest around $6 each, price looked to good to be true considering they can also be used as a standalone USB battery bank but the reviews as per usual were amazing on Gearbest, also a few people recommending them on BLF.
First thing I noticed upon getting them is the USB 5V output facility can only be supplied from the battery in SLOT 2/right hand side, not a train smash but a bit disappointing if you want to leave a device charging overnight etc, you will probably not charge a flat phone from one 18650 cell.
Second thing is in use the 5V output is rubbish, if you put one of those USB power meters(read voltage/current) inline before the load(cellphone) it auto switches off as if its not seeing any load, same thing happened with all 3 different USB power meters I have, never had that happen before with any USB battery bank. Also the USB output constantly switches on and off, my Samsung Note 4 gives the power connect/disconnect beep every min or so when its connecting, same thing with my tablet and there it just switches clean off after a few minutes. I have had the same experience with both chargers and 4 different batteries.
Using it as a 18650 charger is also not great, connected to a high quality samsung usb wall charger with 5V 2A output it charged the left slot to 4.13v and right slot to 4.2v.
After I read your post, I did setup a test as a picture below, it works fine with my Samsung S5 but I replaced my phone with a portable charger because I needed my phone to take pictures.
PS: You may need to press “Mode” button to make it starting to work!
I have one single slot and 2 of the double slot. Seems one of the double slot just went bad, very little use. I got it to charge LiFe, which I was trying just a bit ago. It starts, then all 2 charging blue lights go on and it stops. This is on a battery that is below 3.0v.
So I tried it one Li-on. Same thing.
Currently seems to be working properly on a couple NiMh.
2nd charger is working OK….it seems. Will continue testing.
They are really cheap chargers. I would be surprised if there was not quality problems.
It appears they are designed to auto detect when a device is connected as it switches on the instant you connect something to the USB output, pressing Mode when it switched off mid charge did switch it back on again but only to switch off soon thereafter. Both of the chargers get noticeably warm on the corner of the USB output when used as a batterybank.
Testing the 2hnd unit and doing the same thing as the first regarding the usb output, the rht slot charging 18650 cells to 4.16v on this unit.
Crazy but the Allmaybe Ec2 Smart Battery Charger sells for $22 on Amazon, gets good reviews at that price as well, more expensive than the equivalent Nitecore charger? :
Yeah, there is a thread on here somewhere that details a very simple fix for that situation.
It seem it is common. Luckily neither of mine are afflicted with it.
Thanks for the links guys, I'm not good soldering SMD components, probably butcher the board so I'll perhaps rather not attempt it.
It's total BS that they supply these chargers like this, obviously a common issue and they clearly don't QC the boards at all.
I'm getting a little tired of Chinese brands, why not take the extra 5mins to make a properly functioning product, why go 98% of the way only to then down tools.
I have one of these, power bank function is about useless on the single bay and double bay function. Also one the left slot it charges to 4.2 on the right it caries, some cells only go to 4.16 other times it goes to 4.19. No method or reason to it.
