We all know the features of a laptop and the things we can accomplish with it. To enjoy these exciting features of your system, your PC battery has to stay powered on for 24hours.
But the real fact and sad news is most laptop batteries rarely last for 2 hours.
If you’re in an emergencies period and you need to accomplish some task with your system, or you work from home, and the electrical power is out of reach,
Once your laptop battery runs down, the pc dies as well.
For this reason, having your own laptop power bank as a power storage backup ensures your PC stays alive, which makes them your perfect companion.
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Over the years, the popularity of power banks has increased but given a large variety of options that come in different shapes and sizes to choose from the market and knowing which laptop power bank is worth spending your buck is the overwhelming part.
This article will help guide you on what to look for when buying a laptop power bank.
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Identifying The Capacity Of The Laptop Power Bank
Knowing the capacity of any laptop power bank is one of the main features to look out for when buying a Laptop Power Bank, which helps indicate the amount of electrical power energy it can store.
So, figuring out the power bank watt-hour (which we’re going to be focusing on in this post) and your load watts will give you an idea of how many hours the Laptop power bank will last.
But Looking at different laptop power banks today in the market are rated with different confusing electrical units such as mAh, watt-hour, kilo-watthour;
If you’re a non-electrical engineering person, you’ll be confused about what these terms mean.
Sometimes manufacturer brands use these unit terms to confuse users into buying their products, but in this post, even if you’re a non-tech person, You will be able to follow up and understand everything to help you figure out a quality laptop power bank.
The first few things you need to understand are the Voltage, Amps, Milliamp-hour, and Watt-hour.
In simple definition;
When you talk about voltage (V), you think of it as Power.
For Amps (A), you think of it as Current.
When you hear about Milliamp-hour (mAh), is the total battery current capacity in thousand units.
And when you talk about the Watt-hour (Wh), in simple terms is how many hours the power bank will last on the load.
So let’s say on the body of a Laptop Power Bank they wrote 20,000mAh, 12.8v, 256-Wh, 20amps.
How do you determine how many hours it will last on a laptop at constant charging?
Most Laptops are rated at 60 watts.
So the simple math is:
Divide the Load Watt by the Watt-hour will give you how many hours it will last.
For example:
(Laptop 60W, Laptop Power Bank 256-Wh)
256/60 = 4.26
Therefore the power bank will last 4hours, 26Munites.
Other Means to tell if a Laptop Power Bank Will Last
What if the manufacturer didn’t state the Watt-hour of the Laptop power bank;
All you have to do is multiply the Laptop power bank Voltage by Amps will give you the Watt-hour and then divide by the Load Watt (Laptop 60w) will give you the (Hours)
Note, the same calculation still applies to Phone power banks, Battery Bank for solar, etc.
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Check For The Input & Output Current Rating
Most PC Laptops require a 19v input power to charge an average standard laptop.
So make sure the laptop power bank output voltage is about 19v.
If your Laptop uses type c, be sure to check and know the input rating of your Laptop and the output rating of the laptop power bank to avoid damaging your system.
In Summary
There are other features to look out for when buying a laptop power bank, example potable size, light weight, colour etc but the first and most important feature that really makes a good laptop power bank is the capacity and how long the power bank will last.
So that’s it for this article; I hope that helps, thanks for reading.
Author:
Elvis Ogbonna is the founder of Naija Tech specialized in building Laptop Power Banks, Home Power Storage Backup (Alternative to Generator) and helping Nigerians to get Interruption electricity.
