While the FW Laptop only takes in a maximum of 100W, this could be a decent power bank for it, right? Looks portable enough, and can charge other devices as well. The 140W charging means it has a wider device coverage than if it were just a 100W power bank.
Wonder how much additional battery life it translates to in the real world for the FW laptop.
I have an Anker power bank with only up to 45W and it still serves me well. It has a capacity of about 20000mAh and I think it can do 1 and a half full charge of the laptop, I haven’t tried it yet.
Yeah I think most battery packs can charge the Framework battery to vary degress, and that is by design. I believe the reason why the one here (being 140watt) is being talked about is because it can power the mainboard sans a battery.
I wonder if anyone is trying to power a mainboard with a power bank and if they are having success. For my own UMPC I was planning on doing something similar to just simplify the power side of the house.
I looked at the Anker one as well but decided to go with the Storm 2 Powerbank. Has a lot more infos on the display (Battery and Chip Temp, Voltage and Amps, Watts, and a lot more).
Ordered it a few days ago.
Whoa. That looks cool!
This looks like user-serviceable batteries, say like a LiFePo 18650, but the specs don’t actually clarify that.
It would actually be pretty awesome to have a power-bank with “standard” batteries you could just swap out when they get worn out… does that exist?
As to answer that specific question, this looks like a Anker 737 140W and the specs on that page say “24,000mAh”. The specs on the Framework 12th Gen laptop say it’s a 55Wh battery which is not very useful to compare here, because, arghl, Watts and Amperes are not the same.
It you compare it with the battery readings from tlp-stat -b, you could get dreams though:
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT1/charge_full_design = 3572 [mAh]
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT1/charge_full = 3541 [mAh]
… but I suspect we’re actually comparing apples to oranges here: voltage is very likely different, which makes amp-hour specs, in general, pretty useless.
(There should be a law that mandates that any given battery tells you how many joules it’s going to give you. I could accept watt-hours as well. Anyways, I digress.)
A better comparison would be with the Anker’s claim to supply a Apple Macbook Air M1 (2020) with with “1.3 charges”. Given that, according to Wikipedia, that device is supposedly 49.9 W·h (4,379 mA·h), then I’d say it’s pretty likely you would get at least one full charge with the power bank.
TL;DR: My wild guess would be “about one”, give or take 10%.
Most power banks are designed so you can fly with them. That means a maximum battery capacity of 100 Wh.
They are specified in mAh, not Wh, but the conversion isn’t TOO difficult. All the power banks I have seen have a single LiPo cell, or multiple cells that they rate in parallel to provide the mAh rating, so the voltage is 3.6 or 3.7V. (The power bank, especially the new USB-PD ones that can be called on to deliver much higher voltages than 5V, may use the cells in series rather than parallel, but the mAh rating is always calculated as if the cells are connected in parallel.) To do the conversion, first divide the mAh to Ah by dividing by 1000 (aka moving the decimal point over, easy), then multiply by the nominal voltage of the cell.
For example, consider a 25000 mAh power bank. Divide to get 25 Ah. Multiply by a typical 3.7V and you get 92.5 Wh. That’s under 100 Wh so it’s legal to carry on a plane.
That’s the raw capacity of the battery cells in the power bank. Since it has to use a converter to produce the output voltage (5V for traditional USB; 9, 15, 20 for USB-PD, those plus 28 and 48 for the latest PD spec), some of that capacity is lost in conversion. (The Framework normally charges at 20V; the Framework charger supplies 20V at 3.25A.) It will charge at 15V if you have a 45W brick handy, but more slowly.) The charging circuitry in the laptop is also not 100% efficient; combine both losses and perhaps 80% of the energy from the power bank goes into the laptop battery. That means that our hypothetical 92.5 Wh bank would likely only deliver 80 Wh to the laptop battery. Still, that bank would fully charge most laptops, including the Framework, with a bit of power to spare.
As for the original question, I’d say that either of those power banks will be just fine for the Framework. The current Framework can’t actually draw 140W; it charges at 20V maximum so its limit is 100W. (I don’t believe it can charge at that rate, but you might need 100W to charge at full speed while using the computer.) The upcoming 16" Framework might be able to use the full 140W rate from these; we don’t know yet.
I have personally used a ZMI power bank to charge my Framework. (It matches that 92.5 Wh that I used as an example.) It can deliver up to 100W – works great. A full charge of the Framework doesn’t use it up; there is at least enough left to fully charge a phone.
Interesting! Can you share which power bank you’re actually using? I got completely lost in ZMI’s website… their products page is kind of unparseable and while I found that crowdfunding page about this mind-boggling 25Ah battery (complete with 21700 power cells which leads me to believe it could be repaired, or it means basically all of those use more or less “standard” power cells)… but I can’t figure out where or even if I can buy the damn thing…
The one I have is a ZMI No 20: ZMI No. 20: The World's Most Powerful PowerPack | Indiegogo Weirdly, ZMI dot com appears to be gone now, with nothing but a third party link for warranty support. ZMIFI dot com is still there but doesn’t list the No 20.
You can still buy the No 20 power pack on eBay and Amazon, though you’ll have to decide whether you want to get involved with a discontinued product. If you want one anyway, here is the eBay link: 25000mAh USB-C PD Portable Battery Power Bank Charger For Laptop iPhone MacBook 6934263405262 | eBay
The No 20 is a bit on the large and heavy side for its capacity. But it does what it promises, including full 100W USB-PD charging; it likely needs the extra bulk for the power conversion.
I’m curious: how’s the Sharge Storm2? Any good?
Are batteries user-serviceable? I’ve found mixed reviews on this…
So the 18650 cells are not serviceable. You could do it if you really want to but it is not designed to unfortunately. But after using it for over a year now I can say it’s the best powerbank I ever had and I think it’s worth the price. If supports a lot of charging standards for phones and other devices which I have rarely seen in other powerbanks. The 100w output and passthrough works flawlessly and also having a variable DC output is nice for diy stuff. Still have 99% health on all cells. I got mine for 180€ and the regular is 240€ I think. So wait for a sale from shargee if you want it 
Edit: about the people saying you can get this on Ali express or do it yourself → I have yet to see one with this features on Ali. Lots of people saying this about this powerbank, so just my few cents.
All of the features is hard but the non gimmicky ones (well 100W bi directional charging) is relatively easy. A 15ish$ ip2368 board and a <5$ bms will do 100w pd in both directions without problems. But you would need to build a battery which is definitely not for everyone.
I do kinda wish they’d make boards like that with a display and a few usb-a ports that actually worked though (There are a lot of them that look amazing on paper but don’t or barely work).
Given the comparatively pretty astronomical price I can see why people are looking at alternatives XD.
From what I gathered on reddit, those IP5389 actually works, but it’s not as nice as the Sharge, IMHO, as they’re much bulkier. But it looks like they can actually store more power, which is pretty impressive.
I wonder if the screwdriver that comes with it is more durable than recent reports on the FW one …
Just doesn’t come with a Torx tip though.
Feb22 tends to do solid stuff so there is a good chance you are right, I was personally more looking for something like this but one that actually works.