BLAVOR Solar Charger Power Bank, PD 18W Fast Charging 20000mAh Battery Pack with 4 Foldable Panels, Portable Solar Powered USB C Charger with Camping Flashlight Compass Carabiner for Cell Phone

This is a convenient power pack that tries to build everything in one. USB power, compass, a camping light, and a mini flash/strobe light. It is rugged and the attached solar panels can be easily folded up and secured with a button. Unlike many cheaper solar power packs out there, this one actually supports USB-C Power Delivery up to 18W.Here's my take on this item:Design: I think this item is well designed and they have made pretty good use of the space available to make sure the item is not too bulky yet ruggedized to handle bumps while you are on the road. The ports are nicely tucked inside a rubber cover so you don't have to worry about the ports getting wet when it is on your backpack and it is raining outside (it comes with a carabiner clip with a keychain ring to attach to both the unit and your backpack - see picture).Ports - On the USB ports, they support a wide range of different charging protocols: Apple 5V/2.4A, Samsung 5V/2A, BC DCP 5V/1.5A, QC2 5/9/12V, QC3, FCP, MTKPE 1.1 PE2.0. Although one of the ports is labeled blue, the black one also supports QC2/3 (there is no difference between the ports). That said, only one port can be used at any given time for quick charge based protocols to engage, otherwise, both ports would be available at 5v only (most likely because they share the charging circuitry on the USB ports).The bidirectional USB-C port supports PD3.0 5V/9V/12V PDOs at 2.4A/2.0A/1.5A, respectively. Also, it supports Apple/2.4A and BC DCP 5V/1.5A. This is nice because most battery packs around this range would only support a dummy USB-C port that operates at 5v only and would not allow Google Nexus devices to charge beyond 5v. Having PD fixes that issue.Note that since the ports are tucked inside the rubber cover, there isn't a lot of clearance for direct plug-in USB devices that are wide-sized. In those cases, you may need some kind of USB extension or right-angle adapter for the plug to fit properly. Most devices, however, use a standard USB cable to connect so this shouldn't be an issue for most devices (you can see that I have to plug a tester on top of another tester because that second tester was a bit too wide to fit into the mouth of the rubber casing).Charging - Charging is fairly straightforward. You have the option of using either the Micro-USB port or the USB-C port. When using the Micro-USB port, you are limited to 5v/2.4A unless your chargers support the Huawei FCP 9v protocol (although many times the battery pack ends up charging at around 2.7A or so if your charger has good voltage regulation and the voltage remains high). Most chargers that are made in China to support QC2 generally also support FCP, although pure QC2/3 chargers will not trigger 9v charging. This is the same when using the USB-C port, although the battery pack would request PD @ 9v as well as FCP when it is available. When charging at 9v, the amperage is limited to 2A @ 18W.Maximum Discharging Current - Testing the maximum current at the various voltage levels offered by this battery pack without significant voltage losses, I got 5V/3A, 9V/2A, 12V/1.5A. This is pretty much within the stated specifications, except that I was able to exceed the 5V/2.4A rating slightly until the 3A mark.Load voltages - Under no load, the voltages were recorded as 5.08v/9.12v/12.11v. This is good since they were a little higher to allow for some cable resistance. As you can see, the battery pack was able to maintain a very stable voltage even at load (4.97v/3A, 8.92v/2.06A, 12.01v/1.51A).Flashlights - The flashlight in front does a pretty good job in illuminating the way in front of you, as you can see in the pictures I have attached with the dark kitchen. The small flashlight was directional, so it illuminates in the immediate vicinity in front of you, but not around you. The camping light, on the other hand, is much brighter and my first reaction when I turned that on was - wow! On high brightness, the kitchen looked as if I turned the lights on, whereas on low/medium brightness it's only slightly dimmer than the high brightness (see pictures). This makes this a very good tool while working in a dark garage, or simply keeping in your car in case of an emergency.Auto on/off: The battery pack turns off after 30 seconds of low/no load (by reducing the output voltage to ~2v). This means you do not have to manually turn on the battery pack to start charging anything that you start plugging in since the device senses this and restores power at the appropriate level. This offers convenience, although at the trade-off of some standby power.USB passthrough charging: This battery pack supports true passthrough charging. If a 9v input is already engaged, it disengages and falls back to a 5v input source. The battery pack then passes the 5v input from the charger to its output ports while simultaneously charging itself. Because of the true pass-through function, the output voltage is no longer regulated by the battery pack, but rather than the voltage source (e.g. charger). For that reason, the output voltage can drop to around 4.5v when the battery pack is charging from the source at high currents. Adding device load while the battery pack is charging is additive to the input current, and if you have a very good charging cable (e.g. a 1ft USB-C to C 5A cable), the current can reach 5v/3A when the other device is plugged in (the enclosed USB-A to USB-C 2.0 cable charges at around 2.2A when I tested). The battery pack also seems to have a protection function that prevents the pass-thru voltage from getting too high due to a malfunction of the charger. In this case, it looks like the battery pack shuts off charging when the output port reaches approximately 5.45v (using a charger source of approximately 6.40v while charging at around 2.67A). This is a good mechanism to prevent your device from frying if the charger somehow malfunctions and continues to provide 9v QC even when the battery pack did not ask for it.Capacity Testing: The discharge test yielded a real capacity of approximately 65.04Wh (~88% efficiency) at 5v/2.3A. This is quite efficient given the high current. On the other hand, charging at 5v/2.7A required about 94.92Wh of energy (~78% efficiency) without any supplemental sunlight. I am assuming this is due to the converter being less efficient at higher currents, although I plan to be putting this in the back of my car to gather sun while it is out so charging efficiency isn't a big problem to me.Solar Charging: The charger's solar indicator (the green light that is next to the battery status indicator) is quite sensitive, and turns on even at the slightest of sunlight. However, it is important to note that the panels all together can only produce 1.2A of current under intense sunlight (theoretically 6W max). Assuming the panels produce 82% of the theoretical maximum, and another 80% of that energy is used to charge the battery, that means the panels are adding about 3.94W of power to the batteries under intense sunlight.Assuming the energy required is 25% above the nominal capacity value (92.5Wh), this means approximately 23.48 hours of intense sunlight is required to fully charge the battery from empty to full.If you were to leave the battery pack in a sunny place all day long without moving it (assuming ~5.5 hours of intense sunlight), this would mean it would take slightly more than 4 days to charge it under these conditions.If you are on the go and moving between shady and sunny areas, you may only be exposed to intense sunlight (or equivalents of) for about 1.5 hours or so. In this case, the time to fully charge a depleted pack increases from 4 days to a bit more than 2 weeks.And since cloudy days yield very little current (generally 5-10% of the power generated compared to the intense sunlight power), you pretty much have to wait forever for this to charge. Assuming the average cloudy day yields approximately 8% of the power relative to a sunny day, that would mean 0.3152 watts, or 293.45 hours of equivalent light to fully charge. Even assuming you can get 7 hours of this equivalent light, the battery pack will still take over 40 days to fully charge.Now, this is not to say solar charging is useless, but you should have a realistic expectation that the panels are there to supplement the energy provided by a charger while you are on the go, versus replacing the need of charging the pack from the wall completely (unless you want to throw this in the sun and not move it for a few days). If you are thinking that just throwing this near the window on a cloudy day would allow you to charge your phone forever given the infinite potential given by sunlight, then you are probably buying the battery pack for the wrong reason.If I were to go camping with the battery pack and charge my OnePlus 6T fully once a day (which has a 13.69Wh battery) and leave home with the battery pack completely charged, the battery pack would charge my phone a little bit over 4 times/days (assuming a charging efficiency of 88%). Assuming I am getting 1.5 hours of intense sunlight during camping, this extends the charging to almost 7 times/days. This means under the right conditions, this battery pack should last you approximately a week while you are camping if you are going to be charging your phone fully approximately once a day, of course, your mileage may vary (depending on your phone specifications, whether you use the flashlight or the camping lights, the sunlight intensity of where you are going to, etc).12v trigger cable: Since this power pack supports QC2 12v mode, you can use a QC DC trigger cable to activate the 12v output for powering small devices. As you can see, I was able to power my 12v LiitoKala battery charger to charge some AA NiMHs. However, you may find this much more useful to power stuff like a cable modem or a router during a power outage. Most modems or wireless routers generally use approximately 6W of power each at 12v, so using a DC splitter with such trigger cable would allow you to power both the modem and the router while staying under the 18W limit. (note that you cannot use 2 trigger cables at once since the battery pack drops to 5v only if both ports are used at the same time.)Overall, this is an awesome battery pack for camping and emergencies. The camping light is bright and could have a lot of utility even when used inside the home. For about $50, this is pretty good value even if you think of this as some kind of bright solar light. :)

I live in my car by choice and I needed something to help me not drain my car battery all the time and still keep my tech life going. I've been using this power bank for almost 4 months now and Im pretty pleased. The last one I got without solar cells needed replacing in less than a month so I got this one with my quickly processed refund. I've used it to power many devices including many phones, various Bluetooth headphones, my vape and e-pens, and whatever my friends need charged too. It's got enough capacity to charge my 4500mAh Note, ~3700mAh Pixel, 3500mAh vape and then charge one of them again before the powerbank needs charging again. It's a godsend. Charge the power bank by day, charge my devices at night.Omg speaking of night... I'm so glad it has 2 flashlights. One in front of it that's directional, and an enormously brighter one on the bottom. The bottom one will illuminate like 30 feet away. It's like 3/4 the intensity of a vehicle headlight from the 2000's decade. Not this newly-adopted halogen hodgepodge (j/k, halogens rock and I'm just jealous I don't have em 😅).One of the most useful things about this bank is that you can use it to charge other devices even while it's charging itself. This works with both Solar and external charging inputs simultaneously. For example, sometimes if I'm chillin at a park and the battery is low, I'll put the power bank on my dashboard [Mind you I live in the US Pacific Northwest where median weather is not hotter than 80°F (26°C) from Summer til Fall]. I'll also plug my DC inverter's USB-C charger into the power bank to charge even faster. Since I can't plug in a usb micro and a usb-C device at the same time (unless they both have really really really thin frames around the prong) it leaves two USB type A female inputs to charge whatever else I need to.I have tinted windows in my car and I'm still able to get it receiving solar charging anywhere in the backseat. This thing has indicator lights on it that tell you when it's charging and it's nice to see that even on cloudy days, the sun breaks through and this thing's solar cells are sensitive enough to pick it up - albeit at a slower rate than normal.It's fallen off the dash as I drove off many, many...many times (it's so compact up there I forget lol) and it's still held up to the test. I would use the carabineer clip to secure it to my dash mount but I unclipped it and flung it somewhere so it's lost. Pretty sure my clumsy family need these.The instruction manual says to keep it out of direct sunlight - which is true of any electronic device. My advice to you is to charge in the brightest amount of shade you can and keep an eye on how the sun is moving (one inch every 8 minutes?). If you have to charge anywhere in direct sunlight, make sure you have sufficient, actual cooling in complete circulation around the device (example is suspend the bank using bottle caps and turn a fan on and direct the air at the device). This will keep it from overheating and you calling the company for a repair or replacement that could've been avoided.Good luck my sunchasing brethren.

Hello,Here is my honest opinion regarding the Blavor PN-W12 Pro Solar Charger Power Bank that I purchased.I purchased the unit for the sole purpose of having a portable means of power, charging, and lighting in the event of an emergency.I particularly like the fact that the Solar Charger has four solar panels as opposed to some single panel models which helps charge the internal batteries faster when using sunlight to charge the unit.I love that the solar panels are stitched into a leather-like case, which does away with cheap plastic hinges that are typically prone to breaking, and snaps shut on one edge of the bank.The caveats I noticed are the following:1) Craftsmanship of the Orange Colored Plastic Corners look like they were not molded properly and I noticed uneven cuts on the edges like when something came out of a mold and the edges were not cut straight and excess plastic was not cut off. (It's just cosmetic but I guess I'm picky)2) Carabiner and Keyring are of low quality and look like they are easy to break and fall apart. Also, one accidental strong and heavy twist during hiking or other activity could break the plastic hanger. It would have been better to have a polyester strap or similar material with a good quality carabiner instead of a keyring which should minimize the chances of breaking the plastic hanger. Once the hanger breaks, you won't be able to hang it on your backpack, carry bag, etc.3) The built-in Compass is not very accurate.Other than what I mentioned, it's a very well built unit and I'm glad I purchased it!