Hi,
I'm new here, just registered to relate my recent experience with a battery pack after reading this thread.
I was looking for a solution that would allow me to do 1 or 2 nights of camping away from a power source.
After I stumbled on this thread and read about the problem with the IntoCircuit Power Castle 26000 battery, I decided to try out one of the other battery packs mentioned in the opening post: The Anker Astro Pro2. I got the
2nd Gen version, the older version is no longer available on Amazon.de (I live in the Netherlands).
The Gen2 looks really neat, high quality finishing and has a nice power level display but no power plug conversion tips , which immediately proved to be a problem as the cable didn't fit my CPAP. In any case, using DIY cabling, my CPAP (an old but trusty and lightweight GoodKnight 425, tested without the heated humidifier) wouldn't run. The display would light up but that's it.
Since I didn't trust the cabling 100%, I bought a multimeter and measured all of the points you can measure in a situation like this. Current just wouldn't flow. Meanwhile, the battery itself seemed fine: charging my phone using the 5V usb port was not a problem, nor was powering a 12V car headlight bulb. So I sent it back to Amazon, sad to see it go as it looked pretty neat and was hoping to get a good solution out of it for only 60 euro's.
Was going to try the PowerAdd next but I'm a bit torn now with all the mixed experiences reported here. As an alternative, I might go for a Li-Ion battery pack instead, they weigh more than the modern Li-Polymer batteries but are less complicated.
Was thinking about two of
these, in parallel witha pigtail cord as described by Game Padre in
this topic on here...