15 June 2008

New toys - Maplin Mobile Power Pack


I found a neat device in Maplin the other day. It's meant to be a power pack for recharging things like your phone or your iPod. It's very slim and has a mini-B USB plug which is used for charging the pack and also as an outlet to charge your phone etc. The specifications say that it's 2000mAh, which given the output is 5v, is not bad at all.


But was it really giving 2000mAh at 5V? Well, there's only one way to find out...


Aha! It's 2000mAh at 3.7v.... Just as I thought. Then there's a boost circuit to bump it up to 5v. So, I make it at about 1480mAh at 5v (actually it would be somewhat less due to it not being 100% efficient). Still, that's not a bad little power pack.

It also comes with a very small mains charger - which also has a mini-B USB connector on it.

They're on sale at the moment for £9.99, which is pretty good for a mains 5V supply, and 5V battery source. I bought three, since I knew that their real purpose in life was not in fact to recharge iPods, but really....to power prototyping boards!

See Maplin's website for the N62FX