It is obvious that energy to weight ratio is one of the most important characteristic of power banks. Reputable manufacturers will optimize for this, and if they are particularly good at it, they can ask for a premium.
If a generic powerbank beats the big names, sells for cheaper and is associated with a brand that has no reason to be associated with powerbanks, then it is very likely that the weight savings come from omitting something important rather than an optimized design. If the specs are true that is.
I've watched Big Clive's videos for too long to trust no-name Chinese things with anything involving mains potential or energy storage.
Of course neither of us has a lot of first hand data so it's hard to draw meaningful conclusions.
No comment on Anker quality, but the "feels well made" feeling is something that has been known and gamed (for example, by including dummy weights in devices) in the hardware industry since forever. It is relatively unrelated to things you as a consumer may actually care about (like adherence to safety standards or amount of engineering effort put into the longevity of a product).
Yup but for Anker devices you have a lot of nerds picking them apart on Youtube. If Anker were to engage in shady practices, the uproar and resulting shitstorm would be on a scale that could tank the entire company.
IMHO, Anker is one of the last remaining (funny, the company isn't that old) "brands" in the original sense.
And like UGREEN, it was noticeably better than the other Chinese no-name brands.
https://www.geekwire.com/2025/after-years-of-backlash-amazon...
>To avoid commingling, sellers have long had the option to apply a unique, seller-specific Amazon barcode — known as an FNSKU (Fulfillment Network Stock Keeping Unit) — to every product. This ensures their inventory is tracked and shipped separately.
... is that really all that was necessary all along? I can see that being a problem for, like, 10 cents worth of stuff, but a lot of the commingling complaints have been around expensive items. It's not zero cost of course, but for your average $30+ thing it doesn't seem very difficult to justify.
I'd rather go with a brand that does proper costly recalls over one that just lets everybody keep the dangerous products around.
I bought a UGREEN bank on a recommendation and it was a buggy mess. It discharged more than it should when charging and when plugged in it rapidly charged to 100% which was sus. Graphical menu was weird and displayed ambiguous graphic messages to avoid text. These things feel like time bombs.
Might be worth a shot.
Those chargers have nice specs too. They support PD PPS (programmable power supply).
If the surface area to volume ratio is high enough, however badly it is made doesn't matter - it's not gonna catch fire anyway.
If that's the case, there is no safety issue with the headphones - a 0.5mm safety margin either end of a battery which is only 6mm long is insane anyway - and I don't fault the engineers for looking for other ways to get equivalent safety without compromising in capacity.
A few years ago, Haribo was in a serious crisis [1] - they didn't catch up on competition when it comes to new trends such as vegan candy, and a few years prior they had dismissed their marketing face Thomas Gottschank [2]. The closure of the Saxony plant also seriously soured relations with local politicians [3]. Some of all of that is attributed to the death of Hans Riegel in 2013 [4].
I don't have any particular insights into Haribo, but what I do know is that (especially struggling) brands tend to go towards making money off of the brand by licensing out rights... some of such deals tend to go well for everyone involved (see e.g. anything Lego touches), some run okay-ish (e.g. that's how you end with a "CAT" rugged phone made by Bullitt [5] - the things were rugged, but the performance was abysmal), and some end up in a massive clusterfuck like the Haribo batteries.
[1] https://taz.de/Haribo-Werk-im-Osten-vor-Aus/!5755771/
[2] https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/leute/thomas-gottschalk-tren...
[3] https://www.rnd.de/promis/werksschliessung-in-sachsen-thomas...
[4] https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/haribo-chef-ha...
[5] https://www.heise.de/news/Outdoor-Smartphones-Bullitt-Group-...
But yes, those folks. Check the product shot in the article for their logo.
Lumafield is a CT company: https://www.lumafield.com/
I think they are becoming a lot more prevalent in labs, these days. They aren't the monster devices that many of us may be (unfortunately) familiar with.
You realize they stopped selling them, right? They don't do this for "nothing to worry about."
The article doesn't state by how much it increased.
>You realize they stopped selling them, right?
I don't think Amazon is an authority on battery safety and are airing on the side of safety than making an actual judgements on the safety of it.
This is a really strange response. How would you go about quantifying this when you don't care to add to their profit by buying a bunch of them, and can't get the product anyway because it was pulled for safety reasons?