Battery charger / Powerbank

[KurtVD]

A couple of weeks ago I was ordering something on fasttech when I saw this product, which was advertised as a 2-in-1 device: it can be used as a battery charger for 4 18650 cells, or as a powerbank with the capacity of the 4 cells that you put into it. I happened to have a few 18650s from a laptop pack that I didn’t know what to do with, so I ordered it and right now it’s charging these cells. I figured that even if my old 18650 cells aren’t very good (compared to what I use for vaping), as a pack they should still provide a decent amount of energy. And if not, I’ll just use it as a charger...

 

[Dudeman]

I bought one of those 2 years ago when I was using my cell phone as an mp3 player at work. Never had to worry about draining my phone while carrying that thing with me. Thanks for the reminder that I own one. I have a 4 bank charger and 8 batteries. About to dig that sucker out and charge some more batts!

 

[Heartsdelight]

I also have a 4 bay portable charger that can be used as a power bank I got 4 years ago.

My newest is the @XTAR-Justin 2 bay that’s newer.

XTAR PB2 18650 Battery Charger and Power Bank

 

[bombastinator]

My xtar vtc4 dragon also does this.

 

[Jumpin' In...]

View attachment 825467 I also have a 4 bay portable charger that can be used as a power bank I got 4 years ago.

My newest is the @XTAR-Justin 2 bay that’s newer.

XTAR PB2 18650 Battery Charger and Power Bank

I also bought the Xtar PB2 for travel and power outages.

Good form factor for my purposes.

 

[Heartsdelight]

I also bought the Xtar PB2 for travel and power outages.

Good form factor for my purposes.

It’s nice, sleek & small. I would’ve liked the red but they only had black when I got mine.

 

[Northstar6]

Xtar is definitely a good choice.

The Zanflare C4 is a nice 4 bay charger/power bank as well. Nice analyzing capabilities, Nimh battery support, charges almost any sized lithium cell.

 

[KurtVD]

I’m actually moderately surprised that all my six 18650 seem to be in usable shape: I’ve salvaged them from an old MacBook battery pack that went out on me after less than 18 months of use. I kept it because on the forum, it was said that the cells weren’t bad, but the controller was messed up and there was no way to reset it. But it was in a closet for 6 years, so I my hopes weren’t very high: however when I opened it, all of the cells were at 3.3V, and immediately started charging. I’ve since started using them to charge up the new 18650s in my mods, to guess how much capacity is left in them. So far I could about one full charge out of them, and they still display more than 50% left.

 

[KurtVD]

Well, unfortunately my new charger doesn't work reliably all the time. It's charging the batteries ok, but when it comes to using it as a power bank, one of the two output ports usually fails: the current indicator goes up, until it's higher than it should be (according to the manual), then it stops and restarts charging and so on, until I unplug it. It's completely up to chance which one of the two ports fails, and the other one is always working fine. And next time it's probably gonna be the other way around. The state of charge of the cells inside doesn't seem to have any influence at all.
Does anyone have any experience how warranty claims are handled by Fastech? Since it's a 15$ item and it isn't unusable, I don't think I'm gonna ship it back if I have to pay for it. Is there a chance that they're gonna send me another one without me having to ship the old one back?