This is a very poorly researched article. A few things worth considering:
- 20,000 mAh is the rated capacity. Anyone who has tested 18650 batteries (which are the cells typically used in these battery packs) knows the rated capacity != tested capacity.
- Watthours is more important than amp hours
- Tested watt hours as typical loads is more important than amp hours
- It's very normal to see tested capacity to be roughly 70~80% of rated capacity.
- This commenter said they got "At 18W average, I pulled out 55.4Wh" on the Haribo [0]
- The generally considered "gold standard" for ultra light batteries in this range is the Nitecore NB20000 Gen 3, which regularly tests around 56 Wh.
So yes the conclusion is correct - you get roughly the same amount of capacity for a typical load (18W phone) for a cheaper price and slightly less weight. Very curious what battery cells the Haribo uses.
It's consumerist advertorial, which is why most of it is filler. 'Decent seeming new power bank happens to look cute' isn't that interesting of a sotry, so it has to be spun into a phenomenon that will allow the article to link out to 10 different products.
I'd go a step further and say that amp hours is meaning less since voltage is not specified. The only valid battery capacity unit of measure is watt hours.
While most battery packs use a single 3.7 lithium ion battery, Apple's first gen MagSafe battery pack used two internal batteries in series, throwing off everyone's amp hours only comparison.
Thank goodness SI units are power-of-ten based so converting between watt hours and joules is just a matter of moving the decimal place. Oh, and throwing in an ancient Sumerian constant approximating the number of Earth rotations as it revolves around the sun once.
No, Watt-second-hour = 3.6 kJ, so J to Wh is moving the decimal place couple steps AND dividing by 3.6. The actual units used in circuit designs is mAh, so the decimal has to be moved for another time then divided by 3.7[V] again. That's too much for a smooth-brained man like I am.
Yes, seconds are related to the Earth rotating around the sun. Simplifying slightly, the normal definition of a day relates to how long for Earth to rotate on its axis until the same spot on the Earth points at the sun again.
Compare Mean solar day vs Stellar day vs Sideral day - the difference is less than 5 minutes or so.
I was thinking along the lines of the ancient Sumerians arbitrarily deciding to divide 1 day into 24 hours, and 24 hours into 60 minutes, and 60 minutes into 60 seconds, and how that doesn't have anything to do with how humans came up with the concept of 1 year (the Earth rotating around the sun).
The "(gram)" make no sense here. We commonly use "kilo" as shorthand for kilogram", but kilo is just a prefix indicating 1000 and never indicates "kilogram" when given as a prefix to another unit, and so there's no implied/left out "gram" in 1 kilocalorie.
1 kilogram Calorie is the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by 1 degree. 1 gram calorie is the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree.
I see there's some use of it after having done some searches, so I'll concede it makes some minor sense as a means to disambiguate due to the Calorie/calorie confusion. Especially as "calorie" and "gram calorie" then means the same thing. This is actually the first time I can recall having seen anyone use it, though, and so for me at least it confused matters rather than clear it up...
Though as the difference is at most 0.5%, it's probably won't affect your battery buying experience. :)
Measuring by TNT equivalent is more standardized. "This battery stores 50 grams of TNT."
Ummm, on second thought, maybe don't use that term at the airport, .. or in secure areas, ... or near the police, ... or in public, ... or on social media or anything else tapped by the NSA or other authorities.
We could also talk about lb•AU (pound Astronomical Units), but generally it's best to stick to what's standard so readers don't need to do conversions. Watt hours is great.
It's not terrible... The iPhone 17 has a battery capacity of 63 nano lb·AU. Around 16 million would equal 1 lb·AU.
Another fun one would be milli hundredweight leauge (mcwt·lg). Both hundredweight and league have multiple accepted definitions to make it more "fun". But the range maps quite nicely to everyday things:
I don't think this power bank uses 18650. You could fit 3 18650 in it, but the highest capacity 18650 out there is less than 15Wh and this advertises 77Wh. Even the tested capacity of 55Wh is higher than the before-loss 18650 capacity you could fit in it.
It's not more unnecessary than your comment about the OP article being poorly researched. If the conclusions are true, even if they didn't do the measurements themselves, I find it quite excusable to skip past the detailed specs of the battery.
yea considering they made 6 bullet points all just to say "rated and tested capacities are usually different" reeked of pedantry (although not surprising as we are on a tech site) and IMO did not warrant the label of "very poorly researched article"
you're never going to construct a lightweight pack with cylindrical (18650/21700, whatever) cells.
a real light weight battery construction isn't going to have redundant casings and fuses; it'll be the bare minimum pouch/plate style construction, the bare minimum fuses at main junctions, and as light a protective shell as can be produced to house it all in. It probably won't have a BMS of any kind on board, with the functions handled up-stream from the battery.
While that's technically true for highly specialized applications such as an F1 car such as the one you listed, the parent article is discussing USB compatible consumer battery banks. Consumer battery banks are worth building with cutting edge-but-still-mass-produced cells, multiple layers of redundancies, and integrated BMS.
"Power bank cells are mainly divided into 18650 cells and polymer cells. The most common one on the market is 18650 lithium-ion batteries, with a market share of 70%."
Although that is completely true, pretty much all discussion, speccing, and marketing of batteries and power banks is done in Ah. So the article working in that unit is logical and consistent.
The bit that annoys me always (and what makes Ah a meaningless measurement for power banks) is whether the amp-hours rating is just the internal batteries' spec summed together, or is it as measured at the 5V outlet? Huge difference!
Why your [ultra-light hiker] friend suddenly has [the world's lightest] power bank.
I remember Colin Fletcher, years ago, writing in The Complete Walker about trimming the borders off his paper maps to save weight, which seemed like an insane over-optimization to me. But then, I'm not an ultralight hiker.
I am impressed folks are getting their loads down to 10 pounds though.
Tangent: as a web performance consultant, I've sometimes used "shaving down half the toothbrush handle while carrying a bowling ball in your backpack" as a metaphor for misguided performance optimization efforts.
That insane over-optimization is how folks are getting down to (and below) 10 pounds.
I'm not even remotely an ultralight backpacker, but I do count ounces (no matter what your weight limit is, you can't escape making tradeoffs to stay within it). Your hiking load is a great example of how quickly apparently insignificant quantities can add up. Saving fractions of an ounce multiple times gets you large savings far more quickly than you'd think.
I'm down to around 10 lb base load. And then I hike in the desert where I carry 5 - 7 liters of water (11 - 15 lbs). And food. Saving a pound here and there is totally worth it, but there's a large part of the country where prudent hiking means the majority of your weight is water.
If saving here and there is worth it, why would a hiker carry a 300g battery? Imagine the savings from leaving that boat anchor at home along with whatever obviously non-essential gadget wants to be recharged.
I don't carry a battery, but I do carry a solar panel that weighs around 300 g. I use my phone when backpacking as a GPS receiver, map, flashlight, and eBook reader. Phone + solar panel weighs less than paperback + paper map + flashlight, gives me more flexibility for adjusting plans, and doesn't leave me out of novel after a few days.
I have tried my luck with portable solar panels, and my conclusion is that in most cases, they suck.
For a solar panel to be useful you need:
- At least a few days without access to electricity, otherwise even at max power, you won't get as much charge as a similarly sized power bank
- Good sunlight, preferably in the summer (more daylight)
- No shade, which is the opposite of what you want in hot and sunny summer days
- Correct placement for your solar panel, for example, having it hanging from your backpack will only work if you have the sun in your back
- A large enough solar panel, these tiny panels you sometimes find on power banks are useless
- Compatible devices. Solar panels have a variable power output, not all devices support it, some of them just shut down charging. Your best bet is to use a compatible power bank, but that information is not often specified. Test it beforehand!
My experience with a solar panel is from two week-long music festivals in the summer, which would be almost ideal conditions. My experience was that over the course of a week, I got about the charge equivalent of a 10Ah battery from my solar panel (rated 10W, 300g), so about half the efficiency of that gummy bear battery, for the reasons cited earlier. Maybe I could have done better with a better panel and better planning, but I'd rather have a battery, much more convenient, and cheaper too. I want to enjoy the festival, not babysit my solar panel.
So I'd say you need at least a week without electricity in the best conditions to make a solar panel worth it, preferably more, which I believe is rather uncommon.
Also, I am talking about these portable <1kg solar panels. The large solar panels that go in your car/van are another story.
We did a five day backpacking trip this summer (in Wyoming, with lots of sun) and the solar was great. Kept my wife's iPhone at 80-100% for the trip (some idiot left the usb-c cable for his phone in the car) with mostly only using it after we reached camp. Decided that with two phones we had enough redundancy to leave the paper maps behind. And we used the phone a -lot- for taking photos in addition to navigation.
I've had trips where solar would have mostly failed - 11 days of nonstop rain on the Continental divide trail in Canada, to be specific - but solar has worked for me really well in CA, UT, WY, CO, etc. the places where solar would have failed were pretty obvious in advance, too.
And it doesn't take much direct sun on a 15 or 20W panel to keep two phones and a steripen charged if you're not being crazy with the use.
To make it clear, I am not saying that solar panels don't work, of course they do. What I was questioning is using a solar panel over a power bank of the same weight.
A 20 Ah (77 Wh) power bank weight about the same as a 15W solar panel. That about 3 full (0-100%) charges on a typical smartphone. I think that would have kept your wife phone up the whole trip no problem, and no need to worry about the sun.
On a 11 day trek in the sun, yes, by all means take a solar panel. However, most people I know who do such long hikes usually have access to electricity at some point. But if it is not your case, well, you are the reason why these solar panels exist ;)
> So I'd say you need at least a week without electricity in the best conditions to make a solar panel worth it, preferably more, which I believe is rather uncommon.
That's basically my use case. I have a "15 W" panel. I can get about 5 days from my iPhone for navigation, and most of my trips are 5 - 7 days, so really it's opportunistic charging for reading on my phone after dinner. I can generally get an hour or so of reading from just hanging the panel off the back of my pack, and another two hours from setting it in the sun during my ~1 hour lunch break if it's not so hot out that nothing charges. 300 g for ~3 hours of reading at night, indefinitely, is a good trade for me.
Potentially? I have an iPhone 15 Pro now, which I got both because it was lighter than previous equivalents, and was the first (?) with direct-to-satellite, which I definitely value. I know I can get ~5 days of navigation (but not reading) out of it, which is one of the reasons I don't take a backup battery (the solar panel isn't a single point of failure; but of course the phone still is for nav, so still need a minimal paper map and a compass). I only spend a couple weeks a year backpacking so I wouldn't choose a phone purely based on that; but if I were in the market for an update this cycle I'd consider it.
Edit: Looks like the Air is 165 g, vs 187 g for the 15 Pro; not even an ounce difference. A bit more compared to the 17 Pro (206 g); but I probably just hold on until Russia collapses into a new metastable state and we can get bulk titanium again.
The battery allows you to bring a weight-saving device; your phone.
It can - within reason - replace maps, guidebooks, emergency satellite beacons, a camera, a secondary flashlight, etc.
You can, if you want, go out with your pockets stuffed with high calorie emergency rations and no pack at all. The weight savings will be tremendous, but at a certain point the tradeoff for weight over comfort and utility becomes too silly.
Others have already mentioned it, but once you move from pure survival to adventure/experience, carrying a way to take photos, map/GPS, read, maybe message your partner from a mountain-top, etc is part of that.
Out of curiosity where in the desert do you hike and where would you recommend? I have a particular attraction to being in the American desert but never have hiked it properly.
Southern Utah gives you a huge bang for buck. And you can spread a little further to add fantastic stuff in surrounding states. I'm not American but have flown from Australia several times to hike in Utah and its neighbours.
In 10-14 days, you can do an exceptional loop from Las Vegas taking in:
Bryce Canyon NP
Byway 12
Capitol Reef NP
Goblin Valley
Dead Horse Point SP
Arches NP
Canyonlands NP
Goosenecks SP
Horseshoe Bend
Antelope Canyon
Zion NP
Valley of Fire SP
That's all very accessible (besides The Maze in Canyonlands, which is superb but takes 4x4 and/or solid hiking to get into).
Then when you go back, you can do places requiring a bit more planning like Coyote Gulch (amazing), Buckskin Gulch (also amazing), and secondary spots like Natural Bridges, SR 95, etc. Hundreds of great places in Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, etc, and all before you get to adding anything more remote or long distance.
The "American desert" can refer to an absolutely huge portion of the continent, and many, many different ecosystems. Its a big enough area of land that it is like saying I like hiking in Europe.
I'm partial to Utah's canyonlands, and a lot of the adjacent pinyon forest (still desert) in Northern New Mexico and Colorado, but that's just where I grew up. The Saguaro forests in southern Arizona are also amazing.
If you've never been to the desert in America, a good plan would be to fly to LA, and drive to the Grand Canyon. You will pass through a number of very different desert ecosystems.
I live in southern Utah, between Zion, Bryce, and the Grand Canyon, right next to Escalante. There's plenty of stuff within a day's drive of here; previously mentioned, plus Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Arches, and all the state parks, national forests, etc.
I'm surprised that the gram weenies are carrying a battery at all. Carrying a phone at all must be galling, but you really need it for emergencies (and final pickup).
A guy I knew biked across part of Europe and borrowed a travel book of mine. He bought me a new one when he got back because he would tear out the pages of places he visited in order to lighten his load.
There's a point past which it becomes a number game without any practical utility. But there's a lot of people (especially hereabouts!) that find this kind of thing very enticing. Think of min-maxing D&D builds... it's kind of like that, but your rulebook is basically physics.
I recall reading about mountain climbing and some experienced climber was joking about the folks who are all about the weight and gear and so forth. He didn't say it was unimportant, but he did say that everything that makes him better than the amateurs, or even amateurs better than other amateurs had nothing to do with gear or weight fixation.
It was the same thing when I got into photography. It's always easy to talk about the easily measurable things. This lens is better than that and so on. Gear is cool and fun...
But the old guy with the beat up camera and not optimal lens shooting next to me ... he will take better photos almost every single shot.
The trick to lighter packs for many was weighing everything. Not uncommon to break everything down by grams - which tells you what could be improved. No point in spending $50 on a .5oz spoon, if your pack is coming in at 4lbs. Does help optimize where things could be cut and where the faf is. Lets you focus on what you really want to bring in when you have a breakdown of everything you bring. I really like lighterpack.com for my trip planning.
Very easy to bring crap you don't need as well. Always surprised me how much an extra hoodie or something would add to what was on my back. Also there is a 'stupid' light, where shaving grams is silly. Was shrinking down my hammock tarp and discovered my setup was not great when the wind shifted direction.
When it comes to power bricks, smaller things like this is great for the normal laptop bag or purse. This is cheap enough that I'd send it off to be black holed with all the other bricks I lend my kid.
This is so true it's not even funny. I keep a spreadsheet for each trip, and among other things, I record which of the items I actually used on the trips. It was very surprising to me how many things I thought I used and therefore needed, but when reviewing the records, I never (or very rarely) actually used.
For me, a not-particularly-lightweight hiker with a 10kg base weight, that list includes:
- a knife
- a first-aid kit with some niche stuff like big gauze pads, electrolytes, strapping tape, etc.
- quarter of a roll of toilet paper
- a compass and whistle
- a paper map
- spare laces
- 3L of water, unless water is guaranteed to be available (2L is more standard)
- spare calories in case I'm delayed
- emergency beacon (except my phone does this now)
I could sacrifice these and be fine most of the time, but I've needed nearly everything except the whistle, the full quarter-roll, and the emergency beacon.
I assume that quarter of a roll of TP has the cardboard inner taken out
Disclaimer: had to run an multi-stage ultra in the sahara, weighed everything, finished with 1xpacket of carbs+hydration that was right at the bottom of the bag, was upset with myself that I didn't use it for the last day. That's like almost 200 calories I could have used to keep myself warm at night (the desert gets cold at night).
Multiple nights, and often in less-travelled areas of Australia where there's no guarantee other people will find us if something goes wrong. It would be a bit insane carrying 10kg base weight on a day walk unless you had kids.
That weight is the maximum and (in addition to everything above) includes a 70L pack, tent, sleeping gear, poles, rain gear (the weather is treacherous here), a stove, thermals/scarf/beanie for the cold (some places in the Victorian Alps like to dump snow on you in the middle of summer), a hat and sunscreen, spare socks, a toothbrush that I haven't cut in half and toothpaste that hasn't been dried out, light source and batteries, water filter, battery pack on longer trips, dry bag if we're doing a deep river crossing, etc.
I take out what I won't need, swap in less rugged gear when there's lower risk, and usually end up somewhere between 6kg and 9kg base weight. I could probably shave off another kg or even two, but at some point I'd be sleeping under a tarp in Victoria's famously horizontal rain or ditching safety gear.
I assume overnight - so shelter, sleeping system, clothing, and cooking. I do like my comfortable hammock, quilt, underquilt, and cuben tarp. That comes in at about 3.5lbs total. Going tent, that is closer to 4lbs for tent (~2lbs), pad, and quilt. If I go bivy + tarp, shelter comes in around 15oz with cord.
I don't have a fancy pack. My old crown vic is about 2lbs.
I like my hot coffee and meals, so usually bring some sort of cooking and water filtration. 600ml pot, some sort of stove (stick, alcohol, or hexi), spoon, ursack, pot grabber, and befree - and I'm over a pound.
Ounces start to add up fast. 6-7lbs with just the basics does not pack any clothing or food. Both tend to burn the folks I hike with. Always the poor soul who packed in 3lbs of gorp or three sweaters. There is nothing magical about 10lbs. Plenty of people in the ultralight community could look at my pack and say I had an extra 2' of dental floss as well as no business to hike with cards and a kindle. It does set a target where you may not be able to just pull out gear that does not consider weight. Personally, I like to try to target about 8-12lbs + food/water. I don't know how some of the other guys we hike with pull off their 30+ pound packs. I'm not strong enough to do what they are doing.
I do pack in a small med kit. Typically 3-4 Advil, a couple aspirin, tylenol, a tums, one anti-diarrhea, and one sudafed (meth grade). I also bring in a couple waterproof bandaids, a single serving antiseptic, and a small square of leukotape. Most of that never gets used, and is packed over and over. You can spot the med kit in this picture in a small pill pouch.
I'll pack in a second mini-bic. One that stays in my pocket, one for our group to constantly loose throughout the trip. Same for that extra TP packet. I'd rather have it with, then find myself in the woods running short. Got a whistle in there too that I don't think I've ever used on the trail.
Most of my hikes, I'll plan to be at the site before dark. I'll still bring a reasonable headlamp.
Yes, there are. Not many, but I take a first-aid kit, shortwave radio, and signalling devices (I tend to be in the wilderness far from civilization). I've never used them and hope that I never will.
Even on run of the mill international vacations, my wife and I always casually debrief on what we brought too much of, what we didn't use, etc. Traveling light is nice, even when you're not backpacking.
I'm very good at packing per my spreadsheet and then adding a few extra things at the trailhead because there's room. Mobile tripod, extra (heavy) pocket knife (just in case!), another paracord, etc.
No, it's likely a bag, a hammock, a small gas bottle with burner and pot, and perhaps sleeping bag, tarp and some gadgets and eating utensils, plus an extra set of clothes. I.e. the core equipment you're going to reuse indefinitely. Perhaps they weigh in things like reusable bottles and the like too.
Personally I'm not into paying a premium for "ultralight" and similar so I might have misinterpreted something when glancing at people that seem to be. For me part of the hiking experience is getting used to carrying weight and living off equipment that would work in a crisis or adjacent to armed conflict, i.e. my basic gear clocks in at about twenty kilos or so, though that's enough to feed and 'house' about four people. Two field kitchens, teepee-style storage tent as well as a large pyramidal tent for sleeping, field spade, handheld radio units for the family/team, fishing equipment, &c. Usually I carry ~10 liters of water, a liter of ethanol, food, spare clothes and whatnot on top of it.
I find that lowering weight into the single digits doesn't give me that much extra range consistently over several days so I'd rather set up camp close to the area where I'd need it and leave some weight behind while I take on the more demanding trail or climb. At the end of the day it's going to be an endurance activity rather than a sprint anyway, at least for a non-athletic button pusher in his forties, like me.
Clearly people that mostly roam areas close to cities or that have joint issues or similar would have reason to make other decisions.
With ultralighters, food and water aren't usually counted in the weight.
I'm no ultralighter, but I rarely carry water aside from a 16oz bag to sip on while I'm heading towards my destination. Water is crazy heavy. I make sure that the route I'm taking, and my destination, have water nearby that I filter and drink.
To clarify, it depends on where you are. In the US, federal land comes in different tiers of protection. National Parks are tourist destinations, generally requiring you to stay on trail, take nothing, leave nothing, etc. National Wilderness Areas allow you off trail, but no motor vehicles. National Forests allow a pretty varied level of recreational usage, often including non-commercial rockhounding, and may allow off-road vehicles (depends on the forest), and then Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land is basically a free-for-all, allowing pretty much any recreational activity and even commercial activity with the appropriate permits.
Out here in the west, you'll find a LOT of land in all 4 categories, not to mention state-level parks, which at least here in California allow some rockhounding near streams and beaches.
Stolen? I have mining claims. What's stolen? To boot, these are in areas nobody hikes because it's too dangerous for hikers. These are in actual mining districts.
Is it really so bad? My son and I have hiked out to fairly remote places and dug up some rocks to find fossils. I know there are more there and very few people are likely to visit the spot, let alone to find fossils in the dirt. We leave very little trace at all. Is this actually frowned upon?
I like to keep my orientering skills sharp, so use a compass and map to navigate. I take my phone with me and it can serve as backup navigation, but I usually just keep it powered off and sealed in a waterproof bag.
(Mildly amusing, I first read 'printed handkerchiefs and bananas'. Like paint your map on the skin of your apple, or the shell of your hardboiled eggs.)
Probably not. The community is always hungry for ways to trim weight, any new offering in the field is interesting, but since the battery is one of the most critical items, well, people tend to be conservative and stick to established models.
Most ultralight folks go light so they can cover more ground while being more comfortable. Experienced ultralighters consider how a weight reduction introduces risk against that goal, rather than simply "lighter is always better". Aka, don't go "stupid light".
An ultralighter is basically guaranteed to use their phone for navigation. A surprise battery failure may cut a trip short and possibly risk their well-being, both of which go against the goal.
It's not recommended to use battery models that haven't been extensively tested because there are conditions in the backcountry that you may not think about or be able to test beforehand, such as performance in cold conditions, whether the IPX rating really holds up, whether it's possible to brick the device accidentally by pressing the wrong button combination, etc.
A common recommendation is the Nitecore nb10000[1] for 10k of battery, and if you want 20k then bring two. (One of the Anker 20k models is also popular.) Bringing two 10ks is ~0.3 oz heavier than one 20k (per manufacturer specs), but it gives you charging parallelism (shortening down your recharging time by N hours, if your trip requires that you recharge midway) and device redundancy, both of which help you move faster with more reliably.
Related, it is also recommended to only use a battery bank that you have personally used for a few full charge cycles beforehand, to smoke out manufacturing defects.
Airplane mode + 10k battery lasts ~6-12 days, depending on the person and the phone.
There are roughly 1 or 2 thousand attempted "thru" hikes per year, who hike from southern to northern border of the USA over the course of 3-5 months. Far more "section" hikers, who will do a 1-4 week segment of a larger trail.
Such folks often resupply food and recharge their battery banks every few days.
To be fair, we'd generally call it backpacking rather than hiking. But the premise of the article was backpackers, so I didn't bother distinguishing.
That has always been a thing. If you’re hiking for several months you have to stop somewhere to buy food tens of times. Most places that sell food (e.g. towns with supermarkets) have electricity.
I'm in Australia, where most hikes top out at a week (there are a few longer ones now). I have also noticed that on the more popular/developed hikes that have shelters sometimes now provide USB charging ports.
> Ultralight culture seems a little nuts to the uninitiated.
I prefer "Durable, but as light as possible", not the other way around. Most ultralight gear breaks after a few uses or when it is mishandled in anything-less-than-perfect conditions, which, happens a lot outside.
My ultralight gear has been sufficiently durable for my backpacking and hiking, even off trail. I'm not hunting or repairing trails but stuff lasts a while. The only exception I've found is inflatable pads which get punctured but no more often than bicycle tire inner tubes and they can similarly be patched with some effort.
The tagline for the sleeping pad category is "Find the best backpacking and camping sleeping pads for comfort and support. NEMO sleeping pads are lightweight, packable, and built for your next adventure." Comfort is definitely a concern.
The pads do list their insulation value, but so do non-ultralight sleeping pads.
The reason is that the insulation value is incredibly important to comfort. From experience, a sleeping mat that is thick, but with bad insulation will lead to a way less comfortable night than a thin one with good insulation.
Sleeping bags don't provide much insulation on the bottom because they are compressed under your body (the insulation from a sleeping bag typically comes from air trapped in the fill). Any insulation between you and the cold ground has to come from the sleeping mat. That's why it is important to get one that is cushioned enough for your body as well as being insulated enough.
R values aren't an ultralight camper thing, they are an informed camper thing.
I spent time in India as a kid sleeping on the hard floor of my grandmother's home. Maybe my sense of comfort is different IDK, but I don't consider a pad essential on a warm night
I am from British Columbia and camping is a very popular activity. Sleeping on a hard floor is not a problem at all. Sure most would probably prefer a mattress and some padding but even with limited gear usually one could at least roll up a t-shirt or a sweater and tuck that under your neck and head and get comfortable on a hard floor.
But unlike India British Columbia is a completely different climate. We can go from very comfortable sunny warm days to very cold nights. The last time I went camping it was May and the days were nice but the night dropped down to like 5c. I have teens and told them all to pack lots of warm clothes, told them it will be cold at night, made them bring extra blankets. But in the end they still did not have enough and in the middle of the night were so cold. So I gave them 2 of my blankets and some of my clothing. This left me absolutely freezing. I had to finally get up at 1am and make a fire. I struggled to warm up and even had to go start my car and put on the heat for a bit. I put a large rock on the fire and got it hot. I put the rock into a cast iron pan I brought and put it onto a couple sticks in my tent so it would not burn the floor. I had to keep that rock close to me all night and I still was cold and miserable.
So yes on a warm night, and we have those here in BC, a pad is not essential at all. But for the other 10 months of the year if you don't have the right gear you will be cold and miserable. Being directly on the ground is like sleeping on a cold water bed (yes I am that old). It feels refreshing at first but then you fall asleep and wake up with your core temperature stolen and cold.
I often camp in the southwest US, it's pretty dang warm in the summer nights! I don't even sleep inside my sleeping bag on those nights, just lay on top of it
I’m from the US but a “floor sleeper” and have never camped with a pad like these even in near-freezing temperatures. I’m sure it helps but these days I get the impression from people around that they just like gear, don’t like being uncomfortable, and any other benefit is just a bonus to rationalize spending money. Maybe I’ll try it some day and be a convert, until then…
You sleep on a hard surface? That is really difficult for me as a side sleeper. I have slept on hard surfaces out of necessity and my hips and knees are hurting by morning. Do you use a pillow or is your head on the hard surface too?
I started doing it as a kid in order to break my reliance on side sleeping and help general posture. These days I'm less strict but benefit from being able to find a comfortable position anywhere. I'd recommend not resting your head on a pillow but using firm cushioning under your neck; that will very slightly lift and relieve pressure from your head and keep head/neck/shoulders adequately separated. A straw cushion (common in Japan, maybe elsewhere) is nice but a tightly rolled hoodie is almost as good.
Sleeping on a hard surface to avoid side sleeping - noted. Sleeping on my back will lead to snoring which is not appreciated by those around me. I will try the pillow replacement suggestion, though.
Probably more health zeitgeist of the '90s than any real concern. Your bed, body type, and sleep style might make one more appealing than the other.
I was a restless sleeper though and had/have extreme difficulty getting to sleep often; learning to sleep on my back helps. Expressed another way, if my brain says I have to be on my side for comfort, and I have to achieve comfort to sleep, then if that comfort isn't achieved no sleep for me. Getting my brain to accept "and now we lie down for sleep" without thinking about comfort let me be actually comfortable in more positions/settings.
How do you stay warm camping in near freezing conditions? I think pads are more so for insulation to the ground then comfort. Yes they add comfort but a cold ground will suck the heat out of you so fast. How would you describe your typical tent bed time set up?
Setup is just a thin rain mat, tent, sleeping bag, and inside dressed mostly in wool. If traveling with a parka and it's clean/dry, I might wear it inside but suppose it could be laid underneath as a pad. With colder but not sever temperatures coming up I might give that a try and see what difference it makes.
You sleep on the ground in near-freezing temperatures? That's impressive, if true. I find it difficult to sleep if I lack insulation from the ground. An air-mattress isn't enough for me when it's 10-12 degrees celcius outside, provided my 20 yo sleeping bag is not meant for these temperatures.
For my setup my nemo pad + bag is smaller packed volume than an equivalently warm bag without pad. I mostly motocamp so packed volume is at premium. My nemo pad packs down to about the size of a soda can in my saddlebag.
I think a lot of ultralight items are jugdged by measurable properties primarily (which makes the whole subculture very nerd-compatible, I guess). Ofc that doesn't mean you don't care at all for things like comfort.
A solid pad in Ultralight often also doubles in the backpack as a replacement for what would be the frame in traditional backpacks, so it's dual use (or triple, if you consider using it as a sitting mat when taking breaks.
Also, sleeping bags typically compress under your body and lose isolation because of that, so with a pad you can use quilt-style sleeping bags (they wrap around the top and sides but not bottom, which makes them again lighter).
I feel like advances in manufacturing and materials science have really made some massive strides in the past 10 years or so—my sub-2lb 2p tent feels just as durable as my 7lb backpacking tent from the late 90s did.
Jury is still out on my new lightweight tent vs my 34 year old Eureka that still gets used when weight doesn't matter.
My Big Agnes is treated as if it is tissue paper where the Eureka somehow survived containing teens wrestling inside. I hope my BA lasts the rest of my life.
I will agree with the advances in materials, they are amazing - I just think we've made some amount of trade-off in durability.
In my experience, the third main variable here is cost. Light gear can be durable, but that usually costs a lot more because it uses expensive materials like titanium.
Packs used to have MOLLE/PALS strips and/or external pockets. Packs made now seem to have supersonic flight aerodynamics as the primary design feature… heaven forbid we add 20 grams of stitching/webbing for expansion/versatility.
The max weight is a bunch of bullshit on the ultralight gear.
Last time I moved I showed up the day before my stuff did, I slept on a camp cot I had bought for which I was 90% of the max weight. I used it on a carpeted floor for one night, it bent in two places. If I’d put the damned thing across a root it would have looked like a pretzel the next morning.
The author of tfa refers to r/ultralight, but fails to note the capacity reported there. Then he writes (or generates) an "article" that might be advertisement, making emphasis on price and fleetingly mentioning the brand products. It doesn't feel sincere.
Liz is a lady, and I am confident she did not AI generate this article. Aside from it clearly having her authorial voice, here is another piece she has written:
This is a white-label product, they likely just used lighter plastic or a cheaper frame (cost savings? white color?) and accidentally made it attractive for hikers.
The weight difference to the Nitecore pack being mentioned is only ~15g.
While the price is only 1/5 of the Nitecore packs.
This seems off, either nitecore is putting a very heavy premium on their products while not using obvious weight saving options, or the Haribo pack simply will not deliver on capacity
If a video game company can fund building a fusion reactor, maybe a stealth breakthrough in energy densities coming from a sweet company is just how things roll these days!
I'll find out if this is true. Hiking buddy of mine pointed it out on Friday, so got one on the way. Was $18 when he called it out, $23 by the time I ordered. Apparently they have a bunch of random stuff like this. They must have some outdoorsy folks in marketing.
Thru hikers just kind of find this stuff. They are obsessed with weight and recommendations spread quickly through word of mouth on the trail and on forums.
And sometimes there are items that flare up and get popular before disappearing, leaving stragglers to scour second-hand lists. I remember people talking about CostCo ultralight quilts and similar.
Mine came in at 288g, which is a bit more than the 280g that the article mentioned. The nightcore NB10000 w/cable comes in around 167g. Will see this week how it does from a battery performance perspective.
Man it drives me crazy when people/products use Ah instead of Wh as a way to specify battery "capability".
Without knowing more details about the battery, "20Ah" alone does not convey enough information to determine how long the battery could power a given load for. If I need to power a 100 watt lightbulb, will a 20Ah battery power it for an hour? 10 hours? 10 days? No way to know.
Wh is the unit of stored energy, Wh is what I want to see. Even the official Amazon product page for it doesn't list a Wh figure.
I think they really just do it because generally everything you will connect to the battery, for the most part, will be using the same voltage, and it’s just easier to do your math and in your head. Remember, most people can’t just calculate a 20% tip in their head without having to think about it for a while or use an app.
Also, in this particular instance, phone batteries are measured in miliamp hours, so it makes the thing I actually want to know, how many times can it charge my cell phone, really easy to figure out.
But as somebody who tinkers with inverters and such, I agree, it is annoying. It is still generally not that hard to do in my head, and trivial with a calculator. But I’m with you.
That's wrong, if they only specifiy Ah, then they usually imply cell voltage (3.7V avg.) and not the 5V you're drawing over USB.
Even if you assume you're charging a phone with that, you first need to subtract 25-40% total losses. And then consider that phone batteries are LiHV with 3.85-3.9V nowadays.
10 years ago most of these battery packs were relative to the 5V output voltage, so they advertised lower amp-hours. That stopped making sense with fast charging at higher voltages so they restandardized on 3.7V.
But watt-hours would make infinitely more sense for all batteries.
Huh, I didn't get that memo so have been played a fool assuming 5v until now. Advertising mAh
corresponding to a different unadvertised voltage than the output is just misleading advertising.
Then the fact we’ve “standardized” on mah as the unit is just another in our long proud tradition, same reason we still use “Watts” as the main measure of light output, even when it has to be made up for use on LED bulbs.
Not necessarily, no. If you have multiple batteries in series for a higher voltage pack, then it'll be less for the same amount of energy stored. But then the marketing for these packs will happily abuse the units to get the biggest numbers.
Internal voltage is chemistry dependent. In other words, cell manufacturer invariant. It's 3.7V for NMC, 3.2 for LFP, 2.3 for LTO, 3.0 for Na-ion.
Technically speaking, the pack voltage as well as Ah rating should be that of the pack and not cumulative total of the pack; two NMC 18650 in series should be 7.4V 2600mAh, not 3.7V 5200mAh. But denoting as if all cells are in parallel allow this figure to be maximally inflated and so that's what manufacturers do.
High voltage charging etc are not relevant. Though, high voltage assembled battery packs should be marked in that high voltage amp-hour ratings.
The technical reason why amp-hour rating exist is because there are parameters dependent on amperage than energy or voltage, such as thickness of the wire to be used in the device or cycle life of the cell. Voltage of a battery also kind of change proportionate to remaining energy in it, and values like 3.7 for NMC or 1.5 for Alkaline is a 50%, averaged, state.
There's a technical reason for it: the voltage sags when the battery is discharged quickly. Ah is relatively constant, but Wh decreases significantly with faster discharge rates, so it can't specified as a single figure.
That's a bit cursed mental model tbf... The voltages of batteries, in the first place, is function of state of charge. 100% = 4.2V, 0% = ~2.7V, 50% is 3.7V(by volume or something. 2.7 is also technical absolute minimums, cutoff voltage is usually more like 3.2V. Please don't abuse the battery in the ranges between 3.2 to 2.7V, let alone below).
Charge/discharge current capacity is constant throughout, at least so battery manufacturers say, at 1-20x the amp-hour capacity depending on the cell. Usually 5x or less.
Since energy = voltage x current, instantaneous W capacity is higher at first, reducing as it becomes supply side limited rather than load side limited.
But all those is irrelevant to why everyone uses mAh, it's because products with biggest numbers sell fastest. Marking capacity in Wh is noble, but it's a clearance worthy sin if you ask the shelves.
If you want to quadruple your amp hours without modifying the hardware, just treat 25% of the voltage gradient of each battery as your unit of measurement.
Alternatively, since this is USB-C, and we assume the marketing copy is honest, use the max voltage USB-C can deliver: 20v.
So, draw 20V from this device and measure the amp hours it outputs.
Battery capacity is always measured in amp hours not watt hours, because it’s telling you more than just capacity. The rating is a measure of how many amps the battery can emit continuously for one hour. You can estimate how long the battery will last at different loads, but it won’t match up 1:1 because of efficiency differences depending on how fast the battery is discharged, and if it has a chance to recover between discharges. Basically watt hour measurements are path dependent, and using a fungible unit like watt hours obscures the meaning of the measurement.
> The rating is a measure of how many amps the battery can emit continuously for one hour.
This is absolutely not true at all. 'Ah' is a measure of capacity and 'amps' is a measure of current. Batteries typically have three measurements: nominal voltage, capacity (Ah or mAh), and rated continuous current (amps).
> watt hour measurements are path dependent
Watt hour is a normalized measurement of the battery's capacity. For example, it lets me compare a 12v/100Ah LifePO4 battery versus a 3.7v/3Ah Li-ion 18650 battery in terms of each batteries capacity (in this case 1200Wh versus 11 Wh).
Batteries have different capacities at different C rate discharge. 1C is the amperage listed as the battery amp hours, but at higher discharge, batteries have a lower capacity. Some batteries handle higher discharge better than others (closer to the rated capacity). You can of course estimate the battery capacity in watt hours, but it’s not how the battery is classified (eg in a data sheet)
Sort of. C rate discharge is just another (confusing) way of state CDR. You might as well just say the CDR in amps. C rate is really just to give a comparison on battery chemistries to illustrate how performant different chemistries can deliver power at a normalized value (to illustrate how the battery chemistry could in theory scale up)
For example, 1C is rated continuous discharge amps, which means a 1C rated battery will provide 1 * Ah. So if a 20,000 mAh battery is rated for 20,000 mAh @ 1C, it will (in theory) discharge 20,000 mAh at 20A in one hour.
> You can of course estimate the battery capacity in watt hours, but it’s not how the battery is classified (eg in a data sheet)
You're right but this is irrelevant because real life usage highly varies. Data sheets are just guides.
Ah does not mean it has to be discharged over exactly one hour in some test. It's simply a unit just like kWh. And most batteries are not optimised for one hour discharge. There's batteries with insanely high C-rates for delivering a lot of power quickly, discharging in 10 minutes. And some with really low that can standby for years. They'll still indicate the Ah capacity the same way.
The C rate still comes from the amp hour number on the battery. I’m aware you can discharge faster or slower than that, but the capacity measured will not be the same
I can see why you would think that, but no, that’s not the case. My RV battery is 200aH but can discharge at 380 amps and drain itself in well under an hour. (That’s a peak rate which it cannot sustain for long enough to discharge itself but it can still be well above 200 the entire time.)
Most lithium batteries can drain themselves much faster than an hour.
I understand that. What I’m saying is that the capacity is different depending on how quickly you drain it. Different battery construction can mitigate this effect to a higher or lower degree, but the battery is rated for 200A discharge in one hour. At 380A you will get less total watt hours out of the battery than you would at 200A, ie it will discharge in less than the 31.5 minutes you would otherwise expect.
If your 100W light bulb is a USB bulb running at 5V (to make the math a bit easier), with 20 Ah you’ll get 100Wh, ergo it’ll run your bulb for a hour. You just need to specify the voltage. There are numerous online calculators to do this math for you.
...by that logic if my 100W bulb is running on 10V, with my same 20Ah I'll get 200Wh, so I'll get a bulb of the same wattage, with the same battery, running twice as long? Magical double energy!
...this is why we should measure the total energy in Wh, not Ah.
It is there somewhat for no-name brand. For product that is actually supposed to pay something for a brand it feels low. Unless these are promotional items that fall from back of the truck...
Did the crowdfunding mention breaking a new barrier in battery technology?
Batteries are made out of components, they have a capacity, volume, weight and price. It doesn't make sense that a cheap battery with low weight has a higher capacity than the existing expensive product.
I assume they're using Ah at the cell level (3.7v nominal), and then maybe rounding up slightly.
(This is the absurdity of using Ah to measure the capacity of consumer-oriented power banks. They usually output 5v over USB A or a variable voltage over PD, but measure current at the cell level. Of course this fact or the precise voltage is rarely stated anywhere.)
True and the plastics used aren't typical low weight, the attached cord also weighs (which many power banks don't have). I doubt it even uses a GaN DC-DC converter. There's no way this could be lighter than one designed specially for lightness if the capacity was real.
To be fair, as others have mentioned, claiming internal battery amperage compared to output amperage is a common enough fudge that they're not materially lying.
Makuake is supposed to be a crowdfunding site but it's more of Groupon now. Lots of "projects" are just rebadges from AliExpress, profiting from the fact that English proficiency of Japanese consumers as well as appetite for foreign sold product is effectively zero, virtually unexisting those websites.
The picture on Amazon says 10Ah. Not interested until there is independent verification. The Haribo licensing lends some legitimacy, but way too many fly by night companies selling a fraction of what they advertise.
I replaced all my travel electronics to be powerable from USB-C. This saved me from a lot cables and adapters.
Even re-soldered the cable of my electric shaver to use a USB-C PD adapter PCB. As long it's somehow close to the standardized voltages (5/9/12/18/etc.) there will be no problems.
I'm not trying to be gatekeepy or anything, but in 2009 (not so long ago), I did an "ultralight" 40-day on-and-off-road motorcycle trip without any electronics. A few years before that, I did a 10 week "backpacker without a backpack" trip with no electronics. This is still very possible.
The weight savings, the "escape from electronics" bonus... It's not nothing.
In some places it's no longer possible to travel without a smartphone. For example, where I live you can't buy a ferry ticket without an app. So if I want to travel to another island with a motorcycle, I'll have to bring a smartphone.
Cell phones are a crutch. Us real hikers/backpackers/outdoorians don't need such hand holding as "doing it on easy mode". You look danger in the face and call for help, I look danger in in the face and I say "you ready?". We are not the same.
Fully committing to USB C was a wonderful move. It's much easier to pack for the day, but also for hiking, cycling and motorcycle trips. I wired my motorcycle panniers to have USB C chargers inside them.
And if soldering is beyond your optimization ambition, there's aliexpress where you can find small USB-PD adapters for most electric shavers. It's little niche innovations like this that drive my ordering flow, not saving a few cents.
For those that want to travel light the Panasonic MultiShape[1] is great as you can share one rechargeable base with multiple tools. It is annoying as it's not USB, but inexpensive cables are available[2] and work great.
Can you talk more about this? I have a waterproof Braun one and I was thinking of making. USB-C dongle for it so that I don't have to crack the case and ruin the waterproofing.
You're budgeting for the weight of a safety razor?
Surely the hunting knife you use to kill your dinner when combined with the mirror you use for starting your forraged twig fires, that would be the ultimate solution.
...or just not shave for a few days. I guess you could do that too.
Is the manufacturer of these things trustworthy? I am especially skeptical of any battery pack manufacturers because of the inherent risk of these things.
This is advertising done right. Wish more companies would do this. Instead of spamming me with your brand on every platform, sell a dirt cheap product with your branding. This way the middle man gets nothing, everyone else is happy.
Sorry for being off-topic, but why with all the advanced technology today I have to manually copy ounces and pounds into Google to learn how much it is? Instead of adding dark themes and material design, it would be better to add a unit converter.
Also do you really need a power bank for a 2-day trip? In airplane mode a phone can live like 2 weeks.
Taking photos and videos does kill the battery quite quickly if you take a lot through. So does depend on what you use your phone for during your trip.
28.4 grams. The rounding adds up quickly, and there’s comments here about people trimming borders off of paper maps. That .4 matters. Also, 16oz to 1lb.
Also matters when your buying things for recreational purposes. Especially when only buying points.
the point of knowing the rough conversion is to be able to do head-math to get a close number. I use 30 a lot of the time, b/c most of the time a close estimate is all I need.
if you're cutting off the borders of your map, by all means, use a calculator
Looks like a guy there measured it and it is 14.7 which is more than I thought it would be.
> So at a nominal 3.7 volts that’s around 14700mAh, which is around 73-74% efficiency. That’s fairly standard. If you perform the same tests with other batteries rated at 20k mAh, you’ll generally see a similar usable capacity.
I was thinking of getting the Haribo one because I like to camp and climb mountains, but I found an old Ravpower battery bank (RP-P819) my Mom got all of us maybe a decade ago and it is 16,750 mAh on the label and weighs 308.5g. I'm not worried about ultralight enough to make that into e-waste and get the Haribo. I guess technology hasn't changed that much with regard to battery packs. The age of the plateau continues.
Or just write it as 20 Ah (not you, the reddit poster). I suspect people have no concept of SI prefixes. They know that k = one thousand but are unaware that milli is one thousandth.
In a typical hike, not only do I care about weight and capacity, but also recharge speed from AC.
I often will be stopping at a cafe for lunch, and in the 45 mins I'm there I want my phone to charge from 15% to 90%, and I also want my battery to recharge from 15% to 90% to give me another 3 days hiking before the next recharge stop. That involves carrying a dual-output USB adaptor where both outputs are fast charging, two cables, a battery bank and my phone.
Thats a lot of stuff to carry, when someone would ideally make a single AC adaptor with a built in battery and cable such that when plugged in to AC it recharges both itself and an attached phone, and when unplugged from AC it discharges itself into the phone.
With clever design, some of those bits of electronics can be combined and casings and heatsinks shared making the whole setup smaller, lighter and cheaper. By integrating the battery charging logic into the AC adaptor, the temperature of the adaptor and output towards the phone can be used to adjust the charging speed to maximize use of the flyback transformers saturation current.
Canoe camping is nicer than backpacking. I’ve done both and I’ll never prefer backpacking again. Much easier on the body to canoe, you can hold 200 pounds of gear, ice, cot, cast iron cookware, guitar, huge power bank.
Backpacking is spartan and uncomfortable by comparison. And with canoe camping, much more primo sites and much fewer people around.
Well, yes, that was my thought. I mean my own employer had some company branded power banks that they gave out to employees. They're crap! But they were requested by the Sales team to hand out as swag at trade shows and whatnot, so they probably didn't put much more thought into it than "Find supplier that can create small power banks, slap company logo on them. Do it cheaply."
I have to think the Haribo power banks were on the same lines, although it's a bit strange that they're actually being sold on the company's Amazon storefront.
Perhaps it was a rushed tradeshow/employee perk gone awry. Something like:
Tradeshow coming up very quickly, previous merch supplier has let the sales team down.
Mid-level Haribo employee responsible for merch finds a supplier willing to rush through everything, because let's face it, Haribo are probably going to pay their bills.
MoQ is 100 units, which is 1 lot.
Sales person intends to order 2000 units, better to be safe than sorry and run out. Accidentally orders 2000 lots of units with 100 units per lot. This isn't noticed until they're already printed and then it's, as they say in the legal profession, no takesie backsies.
Haribo suddenly have a lot more power banks than they have booth visitors, and employees combined.
Rather than store them indefinitely, they sell them off at cost and shift them quickly though Amazon. This drastically cuts down on warehousing space of small lithium (explosive) packs that the candy people have to store.
And kids and grown-ups love it so, with 20,000mAh wherever they go.
Indeed, but it is odd that it’s apparently only these Haribo batteries with this design. I’d expect them to be white-label products that many companies resell with their own branding.
As someone who does backpacking, a few reasons for bringing power sources:
- A satellite communication device. You don't use them for internet access, but it does allow me to send my location and a small message so I can let an emergency contact know where I've made camp for the night (and a lack of a message means I'm in trouble). It also enables me to contact search and rescue if I know I'm in trouble.
We did have to use it once when my sister lost her footing and fell of the side of a mountain and shattered her leg. (full recovery, thankfully)
- GPS receiver. I've shifted to using my phone as my GPS unit (with Gaia GPS). Trail GPS units have been subjected to planned obsolescence in a bad way, many will only be supported for a few years now, after that you can't load maps into them anymore. Might as well use your phone and Gaia works offline. Although you do learn that modern cellphones really, really hate being offline for weeks on end and random things start breaking down.
The latter was super important this year. With the budget cuts to park services this year in the US, many of our back country trails are in worse disrepair than they usually are. There were multiple days where the only way I knew I was still on the trail was to follow the dot on my GPS and look for the occasional cut log...
I use my phone for navigation and camera. I also use it to read before bed. The powerbank recharges the phone on multiday trips. The powerbank can also charge satellite communication devices and headlamps when needed. This is pretty common for many backpackers.
As with most other activities, the point varies for different people. For some, it's a way to test their preparedness against the elements. And for some of those, the game is to do that in as small and light a package as possible.
I was in the market for a 20Ah battery to power my Burning Man totem last month. I ended up buying two off Amazon - a no-name brand and an Anker for 2.5x the price ($65 for 28Ah). The Anker bank was heavier than the no-name and had substantially longer battery life under the same usage patterns.
I don't know a lot about batteries, but what I do know is that they're very important tech and any performance wins would have cascading effects through multiple industries. It's incredibly unlikely that there is new battery tech that is meaningfully better while also not taking the world by storm. It's far more likely that whitelabel/noname brands are just lying about the specs/cheaping out on energy density and hoping consumers don't notice or care.
Yeah, my assumption is a ton of people are getting for half the advertised capacity, and if they looked at actual 10Ah batteries this would be in line with their energy density.
Batteries are improved all the time. An improvement of 5% in weight is not really a big breakthrough at this point, especially as we do not know the reason; could be the battery, but also lighter casing or something else.
This is great and all, but for me it feels like much more of an achievement when I reach the summit with 30kg+ of mixed gear and child on my back - and there’s nothing quite like the feeling of putting it all down and feeling like you might just float away.
Then again I am the kind of masochist who used to run ultramarathons with a backpack full of rocks just for the jollies.
What does it feel like to put it all on again to go down? That is the absolute worst for me. I’ve had lug all sorts of heavy gear to some crazy uphill locations for photo/video shoots, and none of that is designed to wear comforatably on your back. Downhill back to the truck after going up hill and then doing the shoot has on more than one occasion made me think “I’m too old for this”
Just “here we go again”, with a few squeaks and pops from various body parts, as I’m not quite the unblemished young thing I once was. These days the luggage also likes to yank my hair and kick my kidneys, and occasionally violently lurch to one side or the other without warning, which definitely makes matters exciting.
Empathise on the gear-lugging - I have Sherpa’d full size solar panels up a pathless and sheer mountainside, and it was not fun - although again standing up there with two tonnes of hardware going “heh, I hand lugged all this here” was gratifying.
I've done the same many times with the 30+ kg of gear and kid, even once going up to resupply a friend on a multi-week trip. It's good fun for your quads. Helps to put some of the heavier gear in a pair of those large waterproof roll-top bags and sling them across your chest, gets your centre of gravity more neutral.
I mean, if you find it easy enough to reach the summit with 30kg+ of mixed gear, then surely there's another more difficult summit that would be just as much of an achievement without?
Nitecore is somewhat accepted as the best lightweight battery, but they aren't cheap.
10Ah battery is $60, 5.9oz. the 20Ah is 10.2oz and $100. Unlike the Hasbro, it comes close to its rated specification.
My backpacking trips have definitely not needed 20Ah. For two or three nights I can usually get by with a 5000mah, if I shutdown at night and frequently use airplane mode. And my phones are usually getting on, don't have Greta battery life.
What is your source for the nitecore being higher capacity than the equivalently rated haribo? All primary sources I've seen so far indicate they are comparable at 70-75%
This is a very poorly researched article. A few things worth considering:
- 20,000 mAh is the rated capacity. Anyone who has tested 18650 batteries (which are the cells typically used in these battery packs) knows the rated capacity != tested capacity.
- Watthours is more important than amp hours
- Tested watt hours as typical loads is more important than amp hours
- It's very normal to see tested capacity to be roughly 70~80% of rated capacity.
- This commenter said they got "At 18W average, I pulled out 55.4Wh" on the Haribo [0]
- The generally considered "gold standard" for ultra light batteries in this range is the Nitecore NB20000 Gen 3, which regularly tests around 56 Wh.
So yes the conclusion is correct - you get roughly the same amount of capacity for a typical load (18W phone) for a cheaper price and slightly less weight. Very curious what battery cells the Haribo uses.
[0] - https://old.reddit.com/r/Ultralight/comments/1li5rxw/20000ma...
It's consumerist advertorial, which is why most of it is filler. 'Decent seeming new power bank happens to look cute' isn't that interesting of a sotry, so it has to be spun into a phenomenon that will allow the article to link out to 10 different products.
> Watthours is more important than amp hours
I'd go a step further and say that amp hours is meaning less since voltage is not specified. The only valid battery capacity unit of measure is watt hours. While most battery packs use a single 3.7 lithium ion battery, Apple's first gen MagSafe battery pack used two internal batteries in series, throwing off everyone's amp hours only comparison.
> The only valid battery capacity unit of measure is watt hours.
I would also accept Joules. But yes, the unit should be a unit of energy.
You are probably making a joke, but just in case and for those that don't know, a joule _is_ a watt hour.
1 joule is 1 watt-second to be precise. So 1Wh is 3600 joules.
So that's why it doesn't align with existing industry units and always requiring conversions...
Thank goodness SI units are power-of-ten based so converting between watt hours and joules is just a matter of moving the decimal place. Oh, and throwing in an ancient Sumerian constant approximating the number of Earth rotations as it revolves around the sun once.
No, Watt-second-hour = 3.6 kJ, so J to Wh is moving the decimal place couple steps AND dividing by 3.6. The actual units used in circuit designs is mAh, so the decimal has to be moved for another time then divided by 3.7[V] again. That's too much for a smooth-brained man like I am.
Do seconds have anything to do with the Earth rotating around the sun? I thought a second just has to do with the Earth’s rotation on its axis.
Also, I wonder how usable a unit of time that was not based on a day would be, since so much of our life revolves around that cycle.
Yes, seconds are related to the Earth rotating around the sun. Simplifying slightly, the normal definition of a day relates to how long for Earth to rotate on its axis until the same spot on the Earth points at the sun again.
Compare Mean solar day vs Stellar day vs Sideral day - the difference is less than 5 minutes or so.
Thanks, I see now from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_time
I was thinking along the lines of the ancient Sumerians arbitrarily deciding to divide 1 day into 24 hours, and 24 hours into 60 minutes, and 60 minutes into 60 seconds, and how that doesn't have anything to do with how humans came up with the concept of 1 year (the Earth rotating around the sun).
I prefer to use British Thermal Units (BTU) for my battery capacity.
I use calories… then I can plan my meals and electronics together.
I know it's a matter of taste but personally I prefer to use the Calorie instead of the calorie ;)
(Context: 1 Calorie = 1 kilocalorie = 1000 (gram) calories; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie)
> 1000 (gram) calories
The "(gram)" make no sense here. We commonly use "kilo" as shorthand for kilogram", but kilo is just a prefix indicating 1000 and never indicates "kilogram" when given as a prefix to another unit, and so there's no implied/left out "gram" in 1 kilocalorie.
1 kilogram Calorie is the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by 1 degree. 1 gram calorie is the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree.
I see there's some use of it after having done some searches, so I'll concede it makes some minor sense as a means to disambiguate due to the Calorie/calorie confusion. Especially as "calorie" and "gram calorie" then means the same thing. This is actually the first time I can recall having seen anyone use it, though, and so for me at least it confused matters rather than clear it up...
Today I learned there are multiple BTU definitions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_thermal_unit lists Thermochemical, 59 °F, 60 °F, 39 °F, and International Steam Table.
Though as the difference is at most 0.5%, it's probably won't affect your battery buying experience. :)
Measuring by TNT equivalent is more standardized. "This battery stores 50 grams of TNT."
Ummm, on second thought, maybe don't use that term at the airport, .. or in secure areas, ... or near the police, ... or in public, ... or on social media or anything else tapped by the NSA or other authorities.
We could also talk about lb•AU (pound Astronomical Units), but generally it's best to stick to what's standard so readers don't need to do conversions. Watt hours is great.
It's not terrible... The iPhone 17 has a battery capacity of 63 nano lb·AU. Around 16 million would equal 1 lb·AU.
Another fun one would be milli hundredweight leauge (mcwt·lg). Both hundredweight and league have multiple accepted definitions to make it more "fun". But the range maps quite nicely to everyday things:
AA battery - Around 5 mcwt·lg
Phone battery - Around 20 mcwt·lg
Laptop battery - Around 200 mcwt·lg
Car 12v battery - Around 1,000 mcwt·lg
EV battery - Around 100,000 mcwt·lg
The package says 3.85v so certainly this is a lipo.
I don't think this power bank uses 18650. You could fit 3 18650 in it, but the highest capacity 18650 out there is less than 15Wh and this advertises 77Wh. Even the tested capacity of 55Wh is higher than the before-loss 18650 capacity you could fit in it.
> This is a very poorly researched article
So, yeah, pot, kettle, all that.
I think you're right, however, 18650 batteries do carry, on average, more energy density per volume and weight.
> but the highest capacity 18650 out there is less than 15Wh and this advertises 77Wh.
10x 2000 mAh 18650 batteries in parallel gives you 20 Ah @ 3.7V.
> So, yeah, pot, kettle, all that.
Totally unnecessary comment but thanks.
> Totally unnecessary comment but thanks.
It's not more unnecessary than your comment about the OP article being poorly researched. If the conclusions are true, even if they didn't do the measurements themselves, I find it quite excusable to skip past the detailed specs of the battery.
yea considering they made 6 bullet points all just to say "rated and tested capacities are usually different" reeked of pedantry (although not surprising as we are on a tech site) and IMO did not warrant the label of "very poorly researched article"
you're never going to construct a lightweight pack with cylindrical (18650/21700, whatever) cells.
a real light weight battery construction isn't going to have redundant casings and fuses; it'll be the bare minimum pouch/plate style construction, the bare minimum fuses at main junctions, and as light a protective shell as can be produced to house it all in. It probably won't have a BMS of any kind on board, with the functions handled up-stream from the battery.
here's something close, although with plenty of weight compromise for reliability and safeties' sake. : https://global.honda/en/tech/motorsports/Formula-1/Powertrai...
While that's technically true for highly specialized applications such as an F1 car such as the one you listed, the parent article is discussing USB compatible consumer battery banks. Consumer battery banks are worth building with cutting edge-but-still-mass-produced cells, multiple layers of redundancies, and integrated BMS.
A lot of battery packs do not use 18650s but rather pouches, which are a lot smaller at the cost of some stability.
>18650 batteries (which are the cells typically used in these battery packs)
Absolutely not. Pouch cells are what most powerbanks have.
"Power bank cells are mainly divided into 18650 cells and polymer cells. The most common one on the market is 18650 lithium-ion batteries, with a market share of 70%."
https://www.benzoenergy.com/blog/post/type-of-cells-used-for...
Looks like the article you've shared is from 2019 (at the bottom of their page?).
Things changed a lot since then. Most power banks these days use just lipo pouches.
> Watthours is more important than amp hours
Although that is completely true, pretty much all discussion, speccing, and marketing of batteries and power banks is done in Ah. So the article working in that unit is logical and consistent.
The bit that annoys me always (and what makes Ah a meaningless measurement for power banks) is whether the amp-hours rating is just the internal batteries' spec summed together, or is it as measured at the 5V outlet? Huge difference!
I would assume it’s whichever gives the highest number which is usually going to be the internal voltage.
For instance I have a 20000mAh power bank which also has a 74Wh capacity printed on, a conversion factor of 3.7V matching li-ion chemistry.
Not to mention with PD neither the neither input not output voltages are limited to 5V.
you don't have to go that far. probably that demographic won't even carry a power bank to begin with.
typical li-po pouch, bet it's 2*10Ah pouch connected in parallel.
Why your [ultra-light hiker] friend suddenly has [the world's lightest] power bank.
I remember Colin Fletcher, years ago, writing in The Complete Walker about trimming the borders off his paper maps to save weight, which seemed like an insane over-optimization to me. But then, I'm not an ultralight hiker.
I am impressed folks are getting their loads down to 10 pounds though.
Tangent: as a web performance consultant, I've sometimes used "shaving down half the toothbrush handle while carrying a bowling ball in your backpack" as a metaphor for misguided performance optimization efforts.
To turn it back around-- your entire codebase is on the hiker's back. They feel its aggregate weight with every step.
It's all literally in the hot path.
When bugs show up in the form of back pain, "pre-optimize everything" sounds like a sensible option to me.
Ok, but I'd still say start with the low-hanging fruit.
That insane over-optimization is how folks are getting down to (and below) 10 pounds.
I'm not even remotely an ultralight backpacker, but I do count ounces (no matter what your weight limit is, you can't escape making tradeoffs to stay within it). Your hiking load is a great example of how quickly apparently insignificant quantities can add up. Saving fractions of an ounce multiple times gets you large savings far more quickly than you'd think.
I'm down to around 10 lb base load. And then I hike in the desert where I carry 5 - 7 liters of water (11 - 15 lbs). And food. Saving a pound here and there is totally worth it, but there's a large part of the country where prudent hiking means the majority of your weight is water.
If saving here and there is worth it, why would a hiker carry a 300g battery? Imagine the savings from leaving that boat anchor at home along with whatever obviously non-essential gadget wants to be recharged.
I don't carry a battery, but I do carry a solar panel that weighs around 300 g. I use my phone when backpacking as a GPS receiver, map, flashlight, and eBook reader. Phone + solar panel weighs less than paperback + paper map + flashlight, gives me more flexibility for adjusting plans, and doesn't leave me out of novel after a few days.
I have tried my luck with portable solar panels, and my conclusion is that in most cases, they suck.
For a solar panel to be useful you need:
- At least a few days without access to electricity, otherwise even at max power, you won't get as much charge as a similarly sized power bank
- Good sunlight, preferably in the summer (more daylight)
- No shade, which is the opposite of what you want in hot and sunny summer days
- Correct placement for your solar panel, for example, having it hanging from your backpack will only work if you have the sun in your back
- A large enough solar panel, these tiny panels you sometimes find on power banks are useless
- Compatible devices. Solar panels have a variable power output, not all devices support it, some of them just shut down charging. Your best bet is to use a compatible power bank, but that information is not often specified. Test it beforehand!
My experience with a solar panel is from two week-long music festivals in the summer, which would be almost ideal conditions. My experience was that over the course of a week, I got about the charge equivalent of a 10Ah battery from my solar panel (rated 10W, 300g), so about half the efficiency of that gummy bear battery, for the reasons cited earlier. Maybe I could have done better with a better panel and better planning, but I'd rather have a battery, much more convenient, and cheaper too. I want to enjoy the festival, not babysit my solar panel.
So I'd say you need at least a week without electricity in the best conditions to make a solar panel worth it, preferably more, which I believe is rather uncommon.
Also, I am talking about these portable <1kg solar panels. The large solar panels that go in your car/van are another story.
We did a five day backpacking trip this summer (in Wyoming, with lots of sun) and the solar was great. Kept my wife's iPhone at 80-100% for the trip (some idiot left the usb-c cable for his phone in the car) with mostly only using it after we reached camp. Decided that with two phones we had enough redundancy to leave the paper maps behind. And we used the phone a -lot- for taking photos in addition to navigation.
I've had trips where solar would have mostly failed - 11 days of nonstop rain on the Continental divide trail in Canada, to be specific - but solar has worked for me really well in CA, UT, WY, CO, etc. the places where solar would have failed were pretty obvious in advance, too.
And it doesn't take much direct sun on a 15 or 20W panel to keep two phones and a steripen charged if you're not being crazy with the use.
To make it clear, I am not saying that solar panels don't work, of course they do. What I was questioning is using a solar panel over a power bank of the same weight.
A 20 Ah (77 Wh) power bank weight about the same as a 15W solar panel. That about 3 full (0-100%) charges on a typical smartphone. I think that would have kept your wife phone up the whole trip no problem, and no need to worry about the sun.
On a 11 day trek in the sun, yes, by all means take a solar panel. However, most people I know who do such long hikes usually have access to electricity at some point. But if it is not your case, well, you are the reason why these solar panels exist ;)
> So I'd say you need at least a week without electricity in the best conditions to make a solar panel worth it, preferably more, which I believe is rather uncommon.
That's basically my use case. I have a "15 W" panel. I can get about 5 days from my iPhone for navigation, and most of my trips are 5 - 7 days, so really it's opportunistic charging for reading on my phone after dinner. I can generally get an hour or so of reading from just hanging the panel off the back of my pack, and another two hours from setting it in the sun during my ~1 hour lunch break if it's not so hot out that nothing charges. 300 g for ~3 hours of reading at night, indefinitely, is a good trade for me.
Assuming you could afford it, would the new iPhone Air be a consideration in your ultralight base load going forward?
Potentially? I have an iPhone 15 Pro now, which I got both because it was lighter than previous equivalents, and was the first (?) with direct-to-satellite, which I definitely value. I know I can get ~5 days of navigation (but not reading) out of it, which is one of the reasons I don't take a backup battery (the solar panel isn't a single point of failure; but of course the phone still is for nav, so still need a minimal paper map and a compass). I only spend a couple weeks a year backpacking so I wouldn't choose a phone purely based on that; but if I were in the market for an update this cycle I'd consider it.
Edit: Looks like the Air is 165 g, vs 187 g for the 15 Pro; not even an ounce difference. A bit more compared to the 17 Pro (206 g); but I probably just hold on until Russia collapses into a new metastable state and we can get bulk titanium again.
The battery allows you to bring a weight-saving device; your phone.
It can - within reason - replace maps, guidebooks, emergency satellite beacons, a camera, a secondary flashlight, etc.
You can, if you want, go out with your pockets stuffed with high calorie emergency rations and no pack at all. The weight savings will be tremendous, but at a certain point the tradeoff for weight over comfort and utility becomes too silly.
Perhaps you save all the other grams, so you can 'afford' to bring the battery?
Others have already mentioned it, but once you move from pure survival to adventure/experience, carrying a way to take photos, map/GPS, read, maybe message your partner from a mountain-top, etc is part of that.
Out of curiosity where in the desert do you hike and where would you recommend? I have a particular attraction to being in the American desert but never have hiked it properly.
Southern Utah gives you a huge bang for buck. And you can spread a little further to add fantastic stuff in surrounding states. I'm not American but have flown from Australia several times to hike in Utah and its neighbours.
In 10-14 days, you can do an exceptional loop from Las Vegas taking in:
That's all very accessible (besides The Maze in Canyonlands, which is superb but takes 4x4 and/or solid hiking to get into).Then when you go back, you can do places requiring a bit more planning like Coyote Gulch (amazing), Buckskin Gulch (also amazing), and secondary spots like Natural Bridges, SR 95, etc. Hundreds of great places in Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, etc, and all before you get to adding anything more remote or long distance.
The "American desert" can refer to an absolutely huge portion of the continent, and many, many different ecosystems. Its a big enough area of land that it is like saying I like hiking in Europe.
I'm partial to Utah's canyonlands, and a lot of the adjacent pinyon forest (still desert) in Northern New Mexico and Colorado, but that's just where I grew up. The Saguaro forests in southern Arizona are also amazing.
If you've never been to the desert in America, a good plan would be to fly to LA, and drive to the Grand Canyon. You will pass through a number of very different desert ecosystems.
I live in southern Utah, between Zion, Bryce, and the Grand Canyon, right next to Escalante. There's plenty of stuff within a day's drive of here; previously mentioned, plus Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Arches, and all the state parks, national forests, etc.
The topic reminds me of the .NET core peanut butter improvements:
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/performance-improvemen...
I'm surprised that the gram weenies are carrying a battery at all. Carrying a phone at all must be galling, but you really need it for emergencies (and final pickup).
Better not forget to take a shit in the morning ever, or all your efforts are wasted.
A guy I knew biked across part of Europe and borrowed a travel book of mine. He bought me a new one when he got back because he would tear out the pages of places he visited in order to lighten his load.
There's a point past which it becomes a number game without any practical utility. But there's a lot of people (especially hereabouts!) that find this kind of thing very enticing. Think of min-maxing D&D builds... it's kind of like that, but your rulebook is basically physics.
I recall reading about mountain climbing and some experienced climber was joking about the folks who are all about the weight and gear and so forth. He didn't say it was unimportant, but he did say that everything that makes him better than the amateurs, or even amateurs better than other amateurs had nothing to do with gear or weight fixation.
It was the same thing when I got into photography. It's always easy to talk about the easily measurable things. This lens is better than that and so on. Gear is cool and fun...
But the old guy with the beat up camera and not optimal lens shooting next to me ... he will take better photos almost every single shot.
The trick to lighter packs for many was weighing everything. Not uncommon to break everything down by grams - which tells you what could be improved. No point in spending $50 on a .5oz spoon, if your pack is coming in at 4lbs. Does help optimize where things could be cut and where the faf is. Lets you focus on what you really want to bring in when you have a breakdown of everything you bring. I really like lighterpack.com for my trip planning.
Very easy to bring crap you don't need as well. Always surprised me how much an extra hoodie or something would add to what was on my back. Also there is a 'stupid' light, where shaving grams is silly. Was shrinking down my hammock tarp and discovered my setup was not great when the wind shifted direction.
When it comes to power bricks, smaller things like this is great for the normal laptop bag or purse. This is cheap enough that I'd send it off to be black holed with all the other bricks I lend my kid.
> Very easy to bring crap you don't need as well.
This is so true it's not even funny. I keep a spreadsheet for each trip, and among other things, I record which of the items I actually used on the trips. It was very surprising to me how many things I thought I used and therefore needed, but when reviewing the records, I never (or very rarely) actually used.
Those items get cut from future loads.
I'm not a backpacker, but I presume there is stuff you normally don't use, but don't want to be without. Some amount of first-aid supplies, etc.
For me, a not-particularly-lightweight hiker with a 10kg base weight, that list includes:
- a knife
- a first-aid kit with some niche stuff like big gauze pads, electrolytes, strapping tape, etc.
- quarter of a roll of toilet paper
- a compass and whistle
- a paper map
- spare laces
- 3L of water, unless water is guaranteed to be available (2L is more standard)
- spare calories in case I'm delayed
- emergency beacon (except my phone does this now)
I could sacrifice these and be fine most of the time, but I've needed nearly everything except the whistle, the full quarter-roll, and the emergency beacon.
I assume that quarter of a roll of TP has the cardboard inner taken out
Disclaimer: had to run an multi-stage ultra in the sahara, weighed everything, finished with 1xpacket of carbs+hydration that was right at the bottom of the bag, was upset with myself that I didn't use it for the last day. That's like almost 200 calories I could have used to keep myself warm at night (the desert gets cold at night).
Are you (overnight) camping or only day hiking with all of this kit?
Multiple nights, and often in less-travelled areas of Australia where there's no guarantee other people will find us if something goes wrong. It would be a bit insane carrying 10kg base weight on a day walk unless you had kids.
That weight is the maximum and (in addition to everything above) includes a 70L pack, tent, sleeping gear, poles, rain gear (the weather is treacherous here), a stove, thermals/scarf/beanie for the cold (some places in the Victorian Alps like to dump snow on you in the middle of summer), a hat and sunscreen, spare socks, a toothbrush that I haven't cut in half and toothpaste that hasn't been dried out, light source and batteries, water filter, battery pack on longer trips, dry bag if we're doing a deep river crossing, etc.
I take out what I won't need, swap in less rugged gear when there's lower risk, and usually end up somewhere between 6kg and 9kg base weight. I could probably shave off another kg or even two, but at some point I'd be sleeping under a tarp in Victoria's famously horizontal rain or ditching safety gear.
Not op but my backpacking (overnight) kit contains similar.
When people talk about "10 lb base loads" I assume they are talking about overnights? 10 lb base loads for day trips would not be impressive.
I assume overnight - so shelter, sleeping system, clothing, and cooking. I do like my comfortable hammock, quilt, underquilt, and cuben tarp. That comes in at about 3.5lbs total. Going tent, that is closer to 4lbs for tent (~2lbs), pad, and quilt. If I go bivy + tarp, shelter comes in around 15oz with cord.
I don't have a fancy pack. My old crown vic is about 2lbs.
I like my hot coffee and meals, so usually bring some sort of cooking and water filtration. 600ml pot, some sort of stove (stick, alcohol, or hexi), spoon, ursack, pot grabber, and befree - and I'm over a pound.
Ounces start to add up fast. 6-7lbs with just the basics does not pack any clothing or food. Both tend to burn the folks I hike with. Always the poor soul who packed in 3lbs of gorp or three sweaters. There is nothing magical about 10lbs. Plenty of people in the ultralight community could look at my pack and say I had an extra 2' of dental floss as well as no business to hike with cards and a kindle. It does set a target where you may not be able to just pull out gear that does not consider weight. Personally, I like to try to target about 8-12lbs + food/water. I don't know how some of the other guys we hike with pull off their 30+ pound packs. I'm not strong enough to do what they are doing.
Definitely overnights, but also long distance. Ultralight only makes sense once you get into long distance trails IMO.
I’ll happily carry 10-15lbs on a casual weekend with some friends, but when I did the PCT my baseweight was down to 6lbs once I passed the Sierra.
Turns out if all you do is hike all day, for months at a time, you really start thinking about pack weight.
To each their own I guess... I carried a 4 lb banjo on the Camino de Santiago and it was hands down the best thing in my pack :-)
Sometimes also wet weather gear.
Hmm, my records show I only used the bear spray on 1 out of 10 trips.
I do pack in a small med kit. Typically 3-4 Advil, a couple aspirin, tylenol, a tums, one anti-diarrhea, and one sudafed (meth grade). I also bring in a couple waterproof bandaids, a single serving antiseptic, and a small square of leukotape. Most of that never gets used, and is packed over and over. You can spot the med kit in this picture in a small pill pouch.
https://imgur.com/N5en41d
I'll pack in a second mini-bic. One that stays in my pocket, one for our group to constantly loose throughout the trip. Same for that extra TP packet. I'd rather have it with, then find myself in the woods running short. Got a whistle in there too that I don't think I've ever used on the trail.
Most of my hikes, I'll plan to be at the site before dark. I'll still bring a reasonable headlamp.
Yes, there are. Not many, but I take a first-aid kit, shortwave radio, and signalling devices (I tend to be in the wilderness far from civilization). I've never used them and hope that I never will.
I was talking about the other stuff.
Even on run of the mill international vacations, my wife and I always casually debrief on what we brought too much of, what we didn't use, etc. Traveling light is nice, even when you're not backpacking.
I'm very good at packing per my spreadsheet and then adding a few extra things at the trailhead because there's room. Mobile tripod, extra (heavy) pocket knife (just in case!), another paracord, etc.
I’ve met people on trail with 5-6 pound baseweights. Crazy world out there.
does that include food and water?
No, it's likely a bag, a hammock, a small gas bottle with burner and pot, and perhaps sleeping bag, tarp and some gadgets and eating utensils, plus an extra set of clothes. I.e. the core equipment you're going to reuse indefinitely. Perhaps they weigh in things like reusable bottles and the like too.
Personally I'm not into paying a premium for "ultralight" and similar so I might have misinterpreted something when glancing at people that seem to be. For me part of the hiking experience is getting used to carrying weight and living off equipment that would work in a crisis or adjacent to armed conflict, i.e. my basic gear clocks in at about twenty kilos or so, though that's enough to feed and 'house' about four people. Two field kitchens, teepee-style storage tent as well as a large pyramidal tent for sleeping, field spade, handheld radio units for the family/team, fishing equipment, &c. Usually I carry ~10 liters of water, a liter of ethanol, food, spare clothes and whatnot on top of it.
I find that lowering weight into the single digits doesn't give me that much extra range consistently over several days so I'd rather set up camp close to the area where I'd need it and leave some weight behind while I take on the more demanding trail or climb. At the end of the day it's going to be an endurance activity rather than a sprint anyway, at least for a non-athletic button pusher in his forties, like me.
Clearly people that mostly roam areas close to cities or that have joint issues or similar would have reason to make other decisions.
With ultralighters, food and water aren't usually counted in the weight.
I'm no ultralighter, but I rarely carry water aside from a 16oz bag to sip on while I'm heading towards my destination. Water is crazy heavy. I make sure that the route I'm taking, and my destination, have water nearby that I filter and drink.
Ounces equal pounds and pounds equal pain.
Pain equals gain.
Most ultralight hikers optimize for low weight, I optimize for low weight and maximum leftover space to haul a ton of weight back.
https://imgur.com/a/ezPqNG1
Cuz trust me, you don't wanna leave that behind when you find it.
Leave only footprints, take only pictures! Leave no trace. Everything you take is stolen from the next.
yours will be an unpopular view, for good reason. however it is funny imagining you hiking back with a backpack full of stolen rocks.
To clarify, it depends on where you are. In the US, federal land comes in different tiers of protection. National Parks are tourist destinations, generally requiring you to stay on trail, take nothing, leave nothing, etc. National Wilderness Areas allow you off trail, but no motor vehicles. National Forests allow a pretty varied level of recreational usage, often including non-commercial rockhounding, and may allow off-road vehicles (depends on the forest), and then Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land is basically a free-for-all, allowing pretty much any recreational activity and even commercial activity with the appropriate permits.
Out here in the west, you'll find a LOT of land in all 4 categories, not to mention state-level parks, which at least here in California allow some rockhounding near streams and beaches.
Stolen? I have mining claims. What's stolen? To boot, these are in areas nobody hikes because it's too dangerous for hikers. These are in actual mining districts.
Is it really so bad? My son and I have hiked out to fairly remote places and dug up some rocks to find fossils. I know there are more there and very few people are likely to visit the spot, let alone to find fossils in the dirt. We leave very little trace at all. Is this actually frowned upon?
I mean, maybe that makes sense if you carry 50+ pages of maps, but carrying a whole book of maps on a single expedition doesn’t.
Paper is very heavy. Even if you just carry a single map, you could likely save much of an ounce by trimming the borders.
If you are bringing your phone anyway, might as well use that for your mapping needs?
You can have a backup paper map inked on your skin.
I like to keep my orientering skills sharp, so use a compass and map to navigate. I take my phone with me and it can serve as backup navigation, but I usually just keep it powered off and sealed in a waterproof bag.
I have previously wondered about printed handkerchiefs and bandanas that functioned as backup maps. Invest in my kickstarter!
https://truenorthmapco.com True North makes a great bandana sized map of the BWCA areas.
That's a great idea!
(Mildly amusing, I first read 'printed handkerchiefs and bananas'. Like paint your map on the skin of your apple, or the shell of your hardboiled eggs.)
And then there are things such as maps printed on silk...
... and tyvek (no idea if that wins on weight, but they're disproportionately durable)
Probably not. The community is always hungry for ways to trim weight, any new offering in the field is interesting, but since the battery is one of the most critical items, well, people tend to be conservative and stick to established models.
Most ultralight folks go light so they can cover more ground while being more comfortable. Experienced ultralighters consider how a weight reduction introduces risk against that goal, rather than simply "lighter is always better". Aka, don't go "stupid light".
An ultralighter is basically guaranteed to use their phone for navigation. A surprise battery failure may cut a trip short and possibly risk their well-being, both of which go against the goal.
It's not recommended to use battery models that haven't been extensively tested because there are conditions in the backcountry that you may not think about or be able to test beforehand, such as performance in cold conditions, whether the IPX rating really holds up, whether it's possible to brick the device accidentally by pressing the wrong button combination, etc.
A common recommendation is the Nitecore nb10000[1] for 10k of battery, and if you want 20k then bring two. (One of the Anker 20k models is also popular.) Bringing two 10ks is ~0.3 oz heavier than one 20k (per manufacturer specs), but it gives you charging parallelism (shortening down your recharging time by N hours, if your trip requires that you recharge midway) and device redundancy, both of which help you move faster with more reliably.
Related, it is also recommended to only use a battery bank that you have personally used for a few full charge cycles beforehand, to smoke out manufacturing defects.
[1]: https://nitecorestore.com/products/nitecore-nb10000-gen-2-qc...
[2]: https://nitecorestore.com/products/nitecore-nb20000-gen-3-du...
> it gives you charging parallelism (shortening down your recharging time
How do two independent power banks achieve this?
I believe the parent means you can charge the powerbanks in parallel.
OK; I had never considered hikes where there's a charging point along the way. I guess that's becoming a thing now.
Airplane mode + 10k battery lasts ~6-12 days, depending on the person and the phone.
There are roughly 1 or 2 thousand attempted "thru" hikes per year, who hike from southern to northern border of the USA over the course of 3-5 months. Far more "section" hikers, who will do a 1-4 week segment of a larger trail.
Such folks often resupply food and recharge their battery banks every few days.
To be fair, we'd generally call it backpacking rather than hiking. But the premise of the article was backpackers, so I didn't bother distinguishing.
That has always been a thing. If you’re hiking for several months you have to stop somewhere to buy food tens of times. Most places that sell food (e.g. towns with supermarkets) have electricity.
I'm in Australia, where most hikes top out at a week (there are a few longer ones now). I have also noticed that on the more popular/developed hikes that have shelters sometimes now provide USB charging ports.
> Ultralight culture seems a little nuts to the uninitiated.
I prefer "Durable, but as light as possible", not the other way around. Most ultralight gear breaks after a few uses or when it is mishandled in anything-less-than-perfect conditions, which, happens a lot outside.
My ultralight gear has been sufficiently durable for my backpacking and hiking, even off trail. I'm not hunting or repairing trails but stuff lasts a while. The only exception I've found is inflatable pads which get punctured but no more often than bicycle tire inner tubes and they can similarly be patched with some effort.
What do you use those pads for I wonder?
You put them under your sleeping bag and they make your sleep way warmer than if your sleeping bag is directly on the tent floor.
https://www.nemoequipment.com/collections/sleeping-pads
That the purpose of the sleeping pad is characterized as thermal performance and not comfort is proof that I am not capable of the ultralight mindset.
The tagline for the sleeping pad category is "Find the best backpacking and camping sleeping pads for comfort and support. NEMO sleeping pads are lightweight, packable, and built for your next adventure." Comfort is definitely a concern.
The pads do list their insulation value, but so do non-ultralight sleeping pads.
The reason is that the insulation value is incredibly important to comfort. From experience, a sleeping mat that is thick, but with bad insulation will lead to a way less comfortable night than a thin one with good insulation.
Sleeping bags don't provide much insulation on the bottom because they are compressed under your body (the insulation from a sleeping bag typically comes from air trapped in the fill). Any insulation between you and the cold ground has to come from the sleeping mat. That's why it is important to get one that is cushioned enough for your body as well as being insulated enough.
R values aren't an ultralight camper thing, they are an informed camper thing.
"Something to sleep under, something to sleep on, and something to sleep in. Plus cordage."
Very different philosophy behind this kit (durability and flexibility), but here's a good intro.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kin_bjAYk0Q
EDIT: I forgot he also has a more "ultralight" full backpack kit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFj_ULMjcNQ
I spent time in India as a kid sleeping on the hard floor of my grandmother's home. Maybe my sense of comfort is different IDK, but I don't consider a pad essential on a warm night
I am from British Columbia and camping is a very popular activity. Sleeping on a hard floor is not a problem at all. Sure most would probably prefer a mattress and some padding but even with limited gear usually one could at least roll up a t-shirt or a sweater and tuck that under your neck and head and get comfortable on a hard floor.
But unlike India British Columbia is a completely different climate. We can go from very comfortable sunny warm days to very cold nights. The last time I went camping it was May and the days were nice but the night dropped down to like 5c. I have teens and told them all to pack lots of warm clothes, told them it will be cold at night, made them bring extra blankets. But in the end they still did not have enough and in the middle of the night were so cold. So I gave them 2 of my blankets and some of my clothing. This left me absolutely freezing. I had to finally get up at 1am and make a fire. I struggled to warm up and even had to go start my car and put on the heat for a bit. I put a large rock on the fire and got it hot. I put the rock into a cast iron pan I brought and put it onto a couple sticks in my tent so it would not burn the floor. I had to keep that rock close to me all night and I still was cold and miserable.
So yes on a warm night, and we have those here in BC, a pad is not essential at all. But for the other 10 months of the year if you don't have the right gear you will be cold and miserable. Being directly on the ground is like sleeping on a cold water bed (yes I am that old). It feels refreshing at first but then you fall asleep and wake up with your core temperature stolen and cold.
Is any night in the mountains a "warm" night in the same way it is in the populated parts of India?
I often camp in the southwest US, it's pretty dang warm in the summer nights! I don't even sleep inside my sleeping bag on those nights, just lay on top of it
I’m from the US but a “floor sleeper” and have never camped with a pad like these even in near-freezing temperatures. I’m sure it helps but these days I get the impression from people around that they just like gear, don’t like being uncomfortable, and any other benefit is just a bonus to rationalize spending money. Maybe I’ll try it some day and be a convert, until then…
You sleep on a hard surface? That is really difficult for me as a side sleeper. I have slept on hard surfaces out of necessity and my hips and knees are hurting by morning. Do you use a pillow or is your head on the hard surface too?
I started doing it as a kid in order to break my reliance on side sleeping and help general posture. These days I'm less strict but benefit from being able to find a comfortable position anywhere. I'd recommend not resting your head on a pillow but using firm cushioning under your neck; that will very slightly lift and relieve pressure from your head and keep head/neck/shoulders adequately separated. A straw cushion (common in Japan, maybe elsewhere) is nice but a tightly rolled hoodie is almost as good.
Sleeping on a hard surface to avoid side sleeping - noted. Sleeping on my back will lead to snoring which is not appreciated by those around me. I will try the pillow replacement suggestion, though.
What's bad about side sleeping? Just wondering.
Probably more health zeitgeist of the '90s than any real concern. Your bed, body type, and sleep style might make one more appealing than the other.
I was a restless sleeper though and had/have extreme difficulty getting to sleep often; learning to sleep on my back helps. Expressed another way, if my brain says I have to be on my side for comfort, and I have to achieve comfort to sleep, then if that comfort isn't achieved no sleep for me. Getting my brain to accept "and now we lie down for sleep" without thinking about comfort let me be actually comfortable in more positions/settings.
How do you stay warm camping in near freezing conditions? I think pads are more so for insulation to the ground then comfort. Yes they add comfort but a cold ground will suck the heat out of you so fast. How would you describe your typical tent bed time set up?
Setup is just a thin rain mat, tent, sleeping bag, and inside dressed mostly in wool. If traveling with a parka and it's clean/dry, I might wear it inside but suppose it could be laid underneath as a pad. With colder but not sever temperatures coming up I might give that a try and see what difference it makes.
You sleep on the ground in near-freezing temperatures? That's impressive, if true. I find it difficult to sleep if I lack insulation from the ground. An air-mattress isn't enough for me when it's 10-12 degrees celcius outside, provided my 20 yo sleeping bag is not meant for these temperatures.
For my setup my nemo pad + bag is smaller packed volume than an equivalently warm bag without pad. I mostly motocamp so packed volume is at premium. My nemo pad packs down to about the size of a soda can in my saddlebag.
Then you are sleeping on rocks/dirt with just a thin tent fabric. At the very least most people use some closed cell foam.
I have a barrier I made I place under my tent to protect the floor and keep out rain, so there's some additional layers here.
I think a lot of ultralight items are jugdged by measurable properties primarily (which makes the whole subculture very nerd-compatible, I guess). Ofc that doesn't mean you don't care at all for things like comfort.
A solid pad in Ultralight often also doubles in the backpack as a replacement for what would be the frame in traditional backpacks, so it's dual use (or triple, if you consider using it as a sitting mat when taking breaks.
Also, sleeping bags typically compress under your body and lose isolation because of that, so with a pad you can use quilt-style sleeping bags (they wrap around the top and sides but not bottom, which makes them again lighter).
With ultralight activities you're supposed to be so exhausted by bedtime that it isn't necessary to be comfortable to fall asleep.
You can be even more exhausted, if you pack heavier gear.
If you don't have a minimum of comfort you'll have a bad night and wake up exhausted the next day.
Hypothermia helps with exhaustion too.
When you wake up in the middle of the night shivering that's a good incentive to get up and get moving again.
You can get ultralight sleeping pads with a high R-value (thermal performance) that are also comfortable (for me, 10cm+)
They're just marketed by R-value because better insulation will cost more. Many people don't camp in places that would require a high one.
sleeping.
my thermarest pad is a decade+ old and I won't hesitate to take it on a lengthy backpacking trip as long as I have a patch kit, same as a bike tire.
I feel like advances in manufacturing and materials science have really made some massive strides in the past 10 years or so—my sub-2lb 2p tent feels just as durable as my 7lb backpacking tent from the late 90s did.
Jury is still out on my new lightweight tent vs my 34 year old Eureka that still gets used when weight doesn't matter.
My Big Agnes is treated as if it is tissue paper where the Eureka somehow survived containing teens wrestling inside. I hope my BA lasts the rest of my life.
I will agree with the advances in materials, they are amazing - I just think we've made some amount of trade-off in durability.
In my experience, the third main variable here is cost. Light gear can be durable, but that usually costs a lot more because it uses expensive materials like titanium.
Most efficient volume, weight, and durability is valuable in so many ways.
Quite often they end up being used a lot more too.
Also: useful.
Packs used to have MOLLE/PALS strips and/or external pockets. Packs made now seem to have supersonic flight aerodynamics as the primary design feature… heaven forbid we add 20 grams of stitching/webbing for expansion/versatility.
I think people that do long distance hiking are a little nuts but to each their own.
Can confirm there are not many mundanes doing it. It's a bit like how hacker culture used to be before the money.
Thats a bit strongly put.. I’d say a little bit goofy.
People that do long distance hiking happen to like that you think that way.
The max weight is a bunch of bullshit on the ultralight gear.
Last time I moved I showed up the day before my stuff did, I slept on a camp cot I had bought for which I was 90% of the max weight. I used it on a carpeted floor for one night, it bent in two places. If I’d put the damned thing across a root it would have looked like a pretzel the next morning.
I’m not sure I understand the point…
I don’t think many (if any) backpackers are taking a camp cot with them? I imagine most are using an inflatable sleep pad or a foam sleep mat.
It's all of a piece.
The designers forgot that a human is a live load!
"Up to" does seem to be a perfectly distributed load that doesn't ever for instance toss and turn, or sneeze.
Apparently I'm not a spherical cow.
20Ah for 23 bucks? Seems like it's almost too good to be true. Wouldn't surprise me if it was just half that, would explain the price and weight.
Capacity appears to be inline with others: https://old.reddit.com/r/Ultralight/comments/1li5rxw/20000ma...
The author of tfa refers to r/ultralight, but fails to note the capacity reported there. Then he writes (or generates) an "article" that might be advertisement, making emphasis on price and fleetingly mentioning the brand products. It doesn't feel sincere.
Liz is a lady, and I am confident she did not AI generate this article. Aside from it clearly having her authorial voice, here is another piece she has written:
https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/23/24326077/i-asked-chatgpt
> Aside from it clearly having her authorial voice, [...]
LLMs are pretty good at imitating styles, if asked to do so. It's just their default style that's easy to recognise.
(You are probably right in everything you say! I just wanted to point out that style of an article isn't necessarily a giveaway.)
Also I doubt that Haribo has special light battery technology. Seems more likely that they lied on the capacity... Article doesn't test the capacity
This is a white-label product, they likely just used lighter plastic or a cheaper frame (cost savings? white color?) and accidentally made it attractive for hikers.
The weight difference to the Nitecore pack being mentioned is only ~15g.
While the price is only 1/5 of the Nitecore packs.
This seems off, either nitecore is putting a very heavy premium on their products while not using obvious weight saving options, or the Haribo pack simply will not deliver on capacity
If a video game company can fund building a fusion reactor, maybe a stealth breakthrough in energy densities coming from a sweet company is just how things roll these days!
I'll find out if this is true. Hiking buddy of mine pointed it out on Friday, so got one on the way. Was $18 when he called it out, $23 by the time I ordered. Apparently they have a bunch of random stuff like this. They must have some outdoorsy folks in marketing.
Thru hikers just kind of find this stuff. They are obsessed with weight and recommendations spread quickly through word of mouth on the trail and on forums.
And sometimes there are items that flare up and get popular before disappearing, leaving stragglers to scour second-hand lists. I remember people talking about CostCo ultralight quilts and similar.
Mine came in at 288g, which is a bit more than the 280g that the article mentioned. The nightcore NB10000 w/cable comes in around 167g. Will see this week how it does from a battery performance perspective.
Us one-baggers also find the weirdest things, for the same reason.
Some endurance athletes do love their gummies. I'm not one of them.
> They must have some outdoorsy folks in marketing.
Perhaps it's just their Germanity shining through?
Man it drives me crazy when people/products use Ah instead of Wh as a way to specify battery "capability".
Without knowing more details about the battery, "20Ah" alone does not convey enough information to determine how long the battery could power a given load for. If I need to power a 100 watt lightbulb, will a 20Ah battery power it for an hour? 10 hours? 10 days? No way to know.
Wh is the unit of stored energy, Wh is what I want to see. Even the official Amazon product page for it doesn't list a Wh figure.
I think they really just do it because generally everything you will connect to the battery, for the most part, will be using the same voltage, and it’s just easier to do your math and in your head. Remember, most people can’t just calculate a 20% tip in their head without having to think about it for a while or use an app.
Also, in this particular instance, phone batteries are measured in miliamp hours, so it makes the thing I actually want to know, how many times can it charge my cell phone, really easy to figure out.
But as somebody who tinkers with inverters and such, I agree, it is annoying. It is still generally not that hard to do in my head, and trivial with a calculator. But I’m with you.
That's wrong, if they only specifiy Ah, then they usually imply cell voltage (3.7V avg.) and not the 5V you're drawing over USB.
Even if you assume you're charging a phone with that, you first need to subtract 25-40% total losses. And then consider that phone batteries are LiHV with 3.85-3.9V nowadays.
Well, and if you are on that train: instead of Wh, why not use J?
(Though for American hikers it would be somewhat fun to use a unit of 'pound feet'.)
Isn't that 20Ah figure always relative to the internal voltage of the lithium batteries, 3.7v? At least that's what I always assumed.
10 years ago most of these battery packs were relative to the 5V output voltage, so they advertised lower amp-hours. That stopped making sense with fast charging at higher voltages so they restandardized on 3.7V.
But watt-hours would make infinitely more sense for all batteries.
Huh, I didn't get that memo so have been played a fool assuming 5v until now. Advertising mAh corresponding to a different unadvertised voltage than the output is just misleading advertising.
Then the fact we’ve “standardized” on mah as the unit is just another in our long proud tradition, same reason we still use “Watts” as the main measure of light output, even when it has to be made up for use on LED bulbs.
Could as least use Coulomb (or just count electrons), instead of taking Current = Charge / Time and multiplying by charge again.
For what it's worth: 1 mAh ~ 2.25 * 10^19 electrons. Or with SI-prefixes: 22.5 exa-electrons (= 2.25 Ee).
Mostly all flashlights advertise in lumen though? I suppose you mean light bulbs?
Yes, I mean the bulbs. Generally in the US at least we find them in the store labeled like "40 watt equivalent (small print: 2.1W)"
Not necessarily, no. If you have multiple batteries in series for a higher voltage pack, then it'll be less for the same amount of energy stored. But then the marketing for these packs will happily abuse the units to get the biggest numbers.
Internal voltage is chemistry dependent. In other words, cell manufacturer invariant. It's 3.7V for NMC, 3.2 for LFP, 2.3 for LTO, 3.0 for Na-ion.
Technically speaking, the pack voltage as well as Ah rating should be that of the pack and not cumulative total of the pack; two NMC 18650 in series should be 7.4V 2600mAh, not 3.7V 5200mAh. But denoting as if all cells are in parallel allow this figure to be maximally inflated and so that's what manufacturers do.
High voltage charging etc are not relevant. Though, high voltage assembled battery packs should be marked in that high voltage amp-hour ratings.
The technical reason why amp-hour rating exist is because there are parameters dependent on amperage than energy or voltage, such as thickness of the wire to be used in the device or cycle life of the cell. Voltage of a battery also kind of change proportionate to remaining energy in it, and values like 3.7 for NMC or 1.5 for Alkaline is a 50%, averaged, state.
There's a technical reason for it: the voltage sags when the battery is discharged quickly. Ah is relatively constant, but Wh decreases significantly with faster discharge rates, so it can't specified as a single figure.
That's a bit cursed mental model tbf... The voltages of batteries, in the first place, is function of state of charge. 100% = 4.2V, 0% = ~2.7V, 50% is 3.7V(by volume or something. 2.7 is also technical absolute minimums, cutoff voltage is usually more like 3.2V. Please don't abuse the battery in the ranges between 3.2 to 2.7V, let alone below).
Charge/discharge current capacity is constant throughout, at least so battery manufacturers say, at 1-20x the amp-hour capacity depending on the cell. Usually 5x or less.
Since energy = voltage x current, instantaneous W capacity is higher at first, reducing as it becomes supply side limited rather than load side limited.
But all those is irrelevant to why everyone uses mAh, it's because products with biggest numbers sell fastest. Marking capacity in Wh is noble, but it's a clearance worthy sin if you ask the shelves.
Is that because of internal resistance of the battery, or some other effect?
Yeah, but pretty much every power bank uses lithium ion batteries (or used to, at least), so you use 3.7 average volts.
If you want to quadruple your amp hours without modifying the hardware, just treat 25% of the voltage gradient of each battery as your unit of measurement.
Alternatively, since this is USB-C, and we assume the marketing copy is honest, use the max voltage USB-C can deliver: 20v.
So, draw 20V from this device and measure the amp hours it outputs.
Wh is really the only sane way to go.
Lithium NMC, which I think is the most common, is 3.7V. Lithium iron phosphate, which some power packs do use, has a nominal voltage of 3.2V.
And LTO, which is what I actually want, is 2.3 - 2.4 V.
Yeah, if you publish Ah, you should also publish voltage. Then it's just Ah * V = Wh.
…just remember V is a rather complicated function of many parameters instead of some fixed value.
Battery capacity is always measured in amp hours not watt hours, because it’s telling you more than just capacity. The rating is a measure of how many amps the battery can emit continuously for one hour. You can estimate how long the battery will last at different loads, but it won’t match up 1:1 because of efficiency differences depending on how fast the battery is discharged, and if it has a chance to recover between discharges. Basically watt hour measurements are path dependent, and using a fungible unit like watt hours obscures the meaning of the measurement.
> The rating is a measure of how many amps the battery can emit continuously for one hour.
This is absolutely not true at all. 'Ah' is a measure of capacity and 'amps' is a measure of current. Batteries typically have three measurements: nominal voltage, capacity (Ah or mAh), and rated continuous current (amps).
> watt hour measurements are path dependent
Watt hour is a normalized measurement of the battery's capacity. For example, it lets me compare a 12v/100Ah LifePO4 battery versus a 3.7v/3Ah Li-ion 18650 battery in terms of each batteries capacity (in this case 1200Wh versus 11 Wh).
Batteries have different capacities at different C rate discharge. 1C is the amperage listed as the battery amp hours, but at higher discharge, batteries have a lower capacity. Some batteries handle higher discharge better than others (closer to the rated capacity). You can of course estimate the battery capacity in watt hours, but it’s not how the battery is classified (eg in a data sheet)
Sort of. C rate discharge is just another (confusing) way of state CDR. You might as well just say the CDR in amps. C rate is really just to give a comparison on battery chemistries to illustrate how performant different chemistries can deliver power at a normalized value (to illustrate how the battery chemistry could in theory scale up)
For example, 1C is rated continuous discharge amps, which means a 1C rated battery will provide 1 * Ah. So if a 20,000 mAh battery is rated for 20,000 mAh @ 1C, it will (in theory) discharge 20,000 mAh at 20A in one hour.
> You can of course estimate the battery capacity in watt hours, but it’s not how the battery is classified (eg in a data sheet)
You're right but this is irrelevant because real life usage highly varies. Data sheets are just guides.
Ah does not mean it has to be discharged over exactly one hour in some test. It's simply a unit just like kWh. And most batteries are not optimised for one hour discharge. There's batteries with insanely high C-rates for delivering a lot of power quickly, discharging in 10 minutes. And some with really low that can standby for years. They'll still indicate the Ah capacity the same way.
The C rate still comes from the amp hour number on the battery. I’m aware you can discharge faster or slower than that, but the capacity measured will not be the same
I can see why you would think that, but no, that’s not the case. My RV battery is 200aH but can discharge at 380 amps and drain itself in well under an hour. (That’s a peak rate which it cannot sustain for long enough to discharge itself but it can still be well above 200 the entire time.)
Most lithium batteries can drain themselves much faster than an hour.
I understand that. What I’m saying is that the capacity is different depending on how quickly you drain it. Different battery construction can mitigate this effect to a higher or lower degree, but the battery is rated for 200A discharge in one hour. At 380A you will get less total watt hours out of the battery than you would at 200A, ie it will discharge in less than the 31.5 minutes you would otherwise expect.
If your 100W light bulb is a USB bulb running at 5V (to make the math a bit easier), with 20 Ah you’ll get 100Wh, ergo it’ll run your bulb for a hour. You just need to specify the voltage. There are numerous online calculators to do this math for you.
https://www.inchcalculator.com/ah-to-wh-calculator/
Watt-hours won’t save you, because we don’t know what voltage your bulb needs. Don’t assume it’s 120/240V.
I mean, I know what voltage/wattage my devices need. I have no idea what voltage the battery bank is going to offer.
...by that logic if my 100W bulb is running on 10V, with my same 20Ah I'll get 200Wh, so I'll get a bulb of the same wattage, with the same battery, running twice as long? Magical double energy!
...this is why we should measure the total energy in Wh, not Ah.
It is there somewhat for no-name brand. For product that is actually supposed to pay something for a brand it feels low. Unless these are promotional items that fall from back of the truck...
> Wouldn't surprise me if it was just half that,
This was openly crowdfunded in Japan. Please explain the lie/scam for us? How does Makuake rip people off?
https://www.makuake.com/project/haribo_dcglobal/
Is this comment anything more than the normal shit HN negativity?
Nihilism is so cool, thinking is so hard, if I try I might fail.
Sure you might be right. Just want to know where the scam is here?
Did the crowdfunding mention breaking a new barrier in battery technology?
Batteries are made out of components, they have a capacity, volume, weight and price. It doesn't make sense that a cheap battery with low weight has a higher capacity than the existing expensive product.
Because 20ah for a 5v battery is ~357 Wh/kg which is more than the highest density lipo as of 2024 [].
Do you honestly think they are putting the most cutting edge lipo technology in a gummy bear branded battery pack?
I agree with your GP, it is unlikely.
Maybe at least consider the density vs SOTA before you accuse someone of being a nihilist.
[] https://www.cei.washington.edu/research/energy-storage/lithi...
I assume they're using Ah at the cell level (3.7v nominal), and then maybe rounding up slightly.
(This is the absurdity of using Ah to measure the capacity of consumer-oriented power banks. They usually output 5v over USB A or a variable voltage over PD, but measure current at the cell level. Of course this fact or the precise voltage is rarely stated anywhere.)
It actually is, when you read GGP's link [1]
20000 mAh (3.85V/77Wh)
Which is consistent with what the latest mass produced batteries can do.
[1] https://www.makuake.com/project/haribo_dcglobal/
True and the plastics used aren't typical low weight, the attached cord also weighs (which many power banks don't have). I doubt it even uses a GaN DC-DC converter. There's no way this could be lighter than one designed specially for lightness if the capacity was real.
To be fair, as others have mentioned, claiming internal battery amperage compared to output amperage is a common enough fudge that they're not materially lying.
Makuake is supposed to be a crowdfunding site but it's more of Groupon now. Lots of "projects" are just rebadges from AliExpress, profiting from the fact that English proficiency of Japanese consumers as well as appetite for foreign sold product is effectively zero, virtually unexisting those websites.
It sounds correct to me. Ugreen powerbank is also at the same price range.
The picture on Amazon says 10Ah. Not interested until there is independent verification. The Haribo licensing lends some legitimacy, but way too many fly by night companies selling a fraction of what they advertise.
Haribo specializes in making candy, not electronics. Branded swag tends to be bottom-of-the-barrel.
There are two models, one listed at 10Ah and one at 20Ah:
https://www.amazon.com/DCHK-10000mAh-Charging-Portable-Motor...
https://www.amazon.com/DCHK-20000mAh-Charging-Portable-Motor...
You can learn a lot from the ultra light dudes.
I replaced all my travel electronics to be powerable from USB-C. This saved me from a lot cables and adapters.
Even re-soldered the cable of my electric shaver to use a USB-C PD adapter PCB. As long it's somehow close to the standardized voltages (5/9/12/18/etc.) there will be no problems.
I'm not trying to be gatekeepy or anything, but in 2009 (not so long ago), I did an "ultralight" 40-day on-and-off-road motorcycle trip without any electronics. A few years before that, I did a 10 week "backpacker without a backpack" trip with no electronics. This is still very possible.
The weight savings, the "escape from electronics" bonus... It's not nothing.
> in 2009 (not so long ago)
That's 16 years ago...
In some places it's no longer possible to travel without a smartphone. For example, where I live you can't buy a ferry ticket without an app. So if I want to travel to another island with a motorcycle, I'll have to bring a smartphone.
I think that it's a bad trade-off. A cell phone is a literal lifeline.
Cell phones are a crutch. Us real hikers/backpackers/outdoorians don't need such hand holding as "doing it on easy mode". You look danger in the face and call for help, I look danger in in the face and I say "you ready?". We are not the same.
Why do you need to ask if you're ready? You should always be ready. Not being ready is a sign of weakness. We are not the same.
Fully committing to USB C was a wonderful move. It's much easier to pack for the day, but also for hiking, cycling and motorcycle trips. I wired my motorcycle panniers to have USB C chargers inside them.
Retractable C to C cables are also worth it.
Which brands of retractable USB C to C cables do you prefer?
The random ones I got from Amazon a few years ago have been just fine. I have a longer one for my MacBook on longer trips.
And if soldering is beyond your optimization ambition, there's aliexpress where you can find small USB-PD adapters for most electric shavers. It's little niche innovations like this that drive my ordering flow, not saving a few cents.
For those that want to travel light the Panasonic MultiShape[1] is great as you can share one rechargeable base with multiple tools. It is annoying as it's not USB, but inexpensive cables are available[2] and work great.
[1] https://shop.panasonic.com/pages/multishape [2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CMGQWM1B
The trick is to make sure to get a power bank that can do all kinds of voltage. 12V is especially useful for obvious reasons.
(Coincidentally, the Nitecore power bank briefly discussed in the article supports that.)
Can you talk more about this? I have a waterproof Braun one and I was thinking of making. USB-C dongle for it so that I don't have to crack the case and ruin the waterproofing.
If you're taking a shaving device of any sort on your backpacking trip, you've missed a core lesson of the ultra light dudes.
They never said they were packing for a backpacking trip.
Ah, true. I made an assumption.
Wouldn't it be logical that ultra light people have no body hair left? And want to keep it so? After all that is lot of grams...
Well it's only useful if you go on such long hikes that the weight of your hair exceeds the weight of your shaver
Not to mention all the energy loss from air friction!
just think of all the excess weight of dead skin cells covering your body!
Should be one safety razor - just the blade. Just need a steady hand...
You're budgeting for the weight of a safety razor?
Surely the hunting knife you use to kill your dinner when combined with the mirror you use for starting your forraged twig fires, that would be the ultimate solution.
...or just not shave for a few days. I guess you could do that too.
Think of the weight of all the extra hairs though.
That's a good point. Personally, I compensate for that by drinking slighly less water each day.
It's a trade off but I think it makes perfect sense after a few nights of not-sleeping directly on the ground under a miniture dyneema tarp.
About 12 days per gram.
> I haven’t done capacity testing yet
Seems like this article is skipping something important. What's the point of a light battery if it won't hold enough charge?
In a world where electronics lie, if it’s too good to be true, assume it is until someone proves it isn’t.
Haribo power bank has 4.8 stars on Amazon… https://amzn.to/4nAgugy
Oh yeah, that confirms everything!
Is the manufacturer of these things trustworthy? I am especially skeptical of any battery pack manufacturers because of the inherent risk of these things.
https://archive.is/1G2Ut
https://web.archive.org/web/20250918192436/https://www.theve...
Thanks!
This is advertising done right. Wish more companies would do this. Instead of spamming me with your brand on every platform, sell a dirt cheap product with your branding. This way the middle man gets nothing, everyone else is happy.
Social media is a dirt cheap product with branding, and the battery manufacturer is a middle man.
Sorry for being off-topic, but why with all the advanced technology today I have to manually copy ounces and pounds into Google to learn how much it is? Instead of adding dark themes and material design, it would be better to add a unit converter.
Also do you really need a power bank for a 2-day trip? In airplane mode a phone can live like 2 weeks.
Under normal usage, even in airplane mode, some phones last only 12-48 hours after just three to five years.
[dead]
On iOS:
Highlight text, select convert, see conversion:
https://imgur.com/a/tD9H1t9
But the real solution is for Americans to stop using dumb units.
On Pixel and Samsung:
Long press home button for "circle to search", draw line across text, see conversion.
Holy crap, I never knew that was a thing. Thank you!
If you have a mac as well, you can do these conversions in Spotlight.
Taking photos and videos does kill the battery quite quickly if you take a lot through. So does depend on what you use your phone for during your trip.
1 oz =~ 28 grams is a really useful conversion to remember
(signed, an American living in Europe)
28.4 grams. The rounding adds up quickly, and there’s comments here about people trimming borders off of paper maps. That .4 matters. Also, 16oz to 1lb.
Also matters when your buying things for recreational purposes. Especially when only buying points.
the point of knowing the rough conversion is to be able to do head-math to get a close number. I use 30 a lot of the time, b/c most of the time a close estimate is all I need.
if you're cutting off the borders of your map, by all means, use a calculator
And important that Troy is used for metals (31.1) That counts when 1g of gold is nearly $120usd
Grams are ounces. Ounces are pounds. Milligrams are grams. Micrograms are milligrams. Picograms are micrograms.
Yeah for pounds it's not so bad, you just do x2 and you're in the ballpark though not 200% accurate.
Ounces are more annoying to convert.
iPhone has one that's built in fwiw
Better question - why do you keep linking to websites that block visitor from reading the article?
Worse question: who’s got a hn frontpage/grease monkey/ai assisted subscription service to replace the main links with the archives?
And then open them in reader mode.
That would be so amazing. But there's the edge case that the page is not archived yet. Though admittedly that'll be very rare for paywall links on HN.
It's not paywalled on my end. What message do you get?
I traveled ultralight until I got into landscape photography. Those tele zooms are heavy AF. I got bigger quads and biceps.
Try out Micro Four Thirds. I have an OM-5 as my secondary camera and it's great for hiking, etc.
Are you shooting full frame?
Landscape photographers do not consider the 35mm format to be "full".
Any photographer who pretends to not understand what the term “full frame” is referring to is an asshole.
Zoom on medium format? what's the point?
I don't like camping or hiking deep into nature, but I do like rucking, my bag empty weighs 5lbs, and then I put a 30lb steel plate in it.
Has anyone actually measured the true capacity?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Ultralight/comments/1li5rxw/20000ma...
Looks like a guy there measured it and it is 14.7 which is more than I thought it would be.
> So at a nominal 3.7 volts that’s around 14700mAh, which is around 73-74% efficiency. That’s fairly standard. If you perform the same tests with other batteries rated at 20k mAh, you’ll generally see a similar usable capacity.
I was thinking of getting the Haribo one because I like to camp and climb mountains, but I found an old Ravpower battery bank (RP-P819) my Mom got all of us maybe a decade ago and it is 16,750 mAh on the label and weighs 308.5g. I'm not worried about ultralight enough to make that into e-waste and get the Haribo. I guess technology hasn't changed that much with regard to battery packs. The age of the plateau continues.
> 20k mAh
Or just write it as 20 Ah (not you, the reddit poster). I suspect people have no concept of SI prefixes. They know that k = one thousand but are unaware that milli is one thousandth.
No he meant 20kmAh. It's rated for a 5km hike, delivering 2 amps the whole time, taking 2 hours. 5*2*2 = 20.
(I wish batteries were just rated in Joules)
We used to say this in mountain biking years ago, but I guess it applies here too:
-Lightweight -Durable -Reasonable price
In reality, you can only choose two of these.
Those extra ounces will build muscle. Those extra hundreds of dollars you save won’t hurt either.
In a typical hike, not only do I care about weight and capacity, but also recharge speed from AC.
I often will be stopping at a cafe for lunch, and in the 45 mins I'm there I want my phone to charge from 15% to 90%, and I also want my battery to recharge from 15% to 90% to give me another 3 days hiking before the next recharge stop. That involves carrying a dual-output USB adaptor where both outputs are fast charging, two cables, a battery bank and my phone.
Thats a lot of stuff to carry, when someone would ideally make a single AC adaptor with a built in battery and cable such that when plugged in to AC it recharges both itself and an attached phone, and when unplugged from AC it discharges itself into the phone.
With clever design, some of those bits of electronics can be combined and casings and heatsinks shared making the whole setup smaller, lighter and cheaper. By integrating the battery charging logic into the AC adaptor, the temperature of the adaptor and output towards the phone can be used to adjust the charging speed to maximize use of the flyback transformers saturation current.
Is this same model with different "Powelephant" branding? Looking for one available in Australia: https://www.amazon.com.au/Built-Cable-20000mAh-Power-Bank/dp...
EDIT: Doesn't seem to be. Similar design, but two USB cables on that one. Not sure I trust the capacity.
Canoe camping is nicer than backpacking. I’ve done both and I’ll never prefer backpacking again. Much easier on the body to canoe, you can hold 200 pounds of gear, ice, cot, cast iron cookware, guitar, huge power bank.
Backpacking is spartan and uncomfortable by comparison. And with canoe camping, much more primo sites and much fewer people around.
There are better options out there. I recently bought the INIU 10,000mAh 22.5W powerbank from Amazon for $29.69 CAD [0].
It weighs 205g/7.2oz.
[0]: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B09176JCKZ
I like INIU, but this has half the Wh? 10Ah @ 205g vs 20Ah @ 280g.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250918192436/https://www.theve...
Are these actually designed by Haribo? Or is it just a branding on top of a Chinese generic?
I feel comfortable in stating that they are not designed by Haribo, a candy company.
Well, yes, that was my thought. I mean my own employer had some company branded power banks that they gave out to employees. They're crap! But they were requested by the Sales team to hand out as swag at trade shows and whatnot, so they probably didn't put much more thought into it than "Find supplier that can create small power banks, slap company logo on them. Do it cheaply."
I have to think the Haribo power banks were on the same lines, although it's a bit strange that they're actually being sold on the company's Amazon storefront.
Perhaps it was a rushed tradeshow/employee perk gone awry. Something like:
Tradeshow coming up very quickly, previous merch supplier has let the sales team down.
Mid-level Haribo employee responsible for merch finds a supplier willing to rush through everything, because let's face it, Haribo are probably going to pay their bills.
MoQ is 100 units, which is 1 lot.
Sales person intends to order 2000 units, better to be safe than sorry and run out. Accidentally orders 2000 lots of units with 100 units per lot. This isn't noticed until they're already printed and then it's, as they say in the legal profession, no takesie backsies.
Haribo suddenly have a lot more power banks than they have booth visitors, and employees combined.
Rather than store them indefinitely, they sell them off at cost and shift them quickly though Amazon. This drastically cuts down on warehousing space of small lithium (explosive) packs that the candy people have to store.
And kids and grown-ups love it so, with 20,000mAh wherever they go.
Indeed, but it is odd that it’s apparently only these Haribo batteries with this design. I’d expect them to be white-label products that many companies resell with their own branding.
They're crowdfunded: https://www.makuake.com/project/haribo_dcglobal/
If you Google XU102998-24006, you can find some seemingly identical generic version
Power of SEO--the top result on Google for "XU102998-24006" is actually your HN reply. :)
I thought the point of back country hiking was to get away from technology and society.
Weight is of course a major consideration, but its not the primary reason im not bringing batteries on a hiking trip.
As someone who does backpacking, a few reasons for bringing power sources:
- A satellite communication device. You don't use them for internet access, but it does allow me to send my location and a small message so I can let an emergency contact know where I've made camp for the night (and a lack of a message means I'm in trouble). It also enables me to contact search and rescue if I know I'm in trouble.
We did have to use it once when my sister lost her footing and fell of the side of a mountain and shattered her leg. (full recovery, thankfully)
- GPS receiver. I've shifted to using my phone as my GPS unit (with Gaia GPS). Trail GPS units have been subjected to planned obsolescence in a bad way, many will only be supported for a few years now, after that you can't load maps into them anymore. Might as well use your phone and Gaia works offline. Although you do learn that modern cellphones really, really hate being offline for weeks on end and random things start breaking down.
The latter was super important this year. With the budget cuts to park services this year in the US, many of our back country trails are in worse disrepair than they usually are. There were multiple days where the only way I knew I was still on the trail was to follow the dot on my GPS and look for the occasional cut log...
Rechargeable headlamp is another one.
I use my phone for navigation and camera. I also use it to read before bed. The powerbank recharges the phone on multiday trips. The powerbank can also charge satellite communication devices and headlamps when needed. This is pretty common for many backpackers.
As with most other activities, the point varies for different people. For some, it's a way to test their preparedness against the elements. And for some of those, the game is to do that in as small and light a package as possible.
There is no particular point to a hike any more than there is a particular point to a ride in a car. Back country or any other.
A hike could be just the way to get to the camp, where you will spend 2 weeks primarily coding.
I use INIU 20000mAh Mini Power Bank. Is also small and weights around the same. Don't know why there aren't more of this kind out there
I guess I default to assuming this is BS?
I was in the market for a 20Ah battery to power my Burning Man totem last month. I ended up buying two off Amazon - a no-name brand and an Anker for 2.5x the price ($65 for 28Ah). The Anker bank was heavier than the no-name and had substantially longer battery life under the same usage patterns.
I don't know a lot about batteries, but what I do know is that they're very important tech and any performance wins would have cascading effects through multiple industries. It's incredibly unlikely that there is new battery tech that is meaningfully better while also not taking the world by storm. It's far more likely that whitelabel/noname brands are just lying about the specs/cheaping out on energy density and hoping consumers don't notice or care.
Yeah, my assumption is a ton of people are getting for half the advertised capacity, and if they looked at actual 10Ah batteries this would be in line with their energy density.
Batteries are improved all the time. An improvement of 5% in weight is not really a big breakthrough at this point, especially as we do not know the reason; could be the battery, but also lighter casing or something else.
I’m kind of disappointed that the earbuds mentioned in the text aren’t shaped like gummy bears (and the power bank not like a pack thereof)
This is great and all, but for me it feels like much more of an achievement when I reach the summit with 30kg+ of mixed gear and child on my back - and there’s nothing quite like the feeling of putting it all down and feeling like you might just float away.
Then again I am the kind of masochist who used to run ultramarathons with a backpack full of rocks just for the jollies.
What does it feel like to put it all on again to go down? That is the absolute worst for me. I’ve had lug all sorts of heavy gear to some crazy uphill locations for photo/video shoots, and none of that is designed to wear comforatably on your back. Downhill back to the truck after going up hill and then doing the shoot has on more than one occasion made me think “I’m too old for this”
Just “here we go again”, with a few squeaks and pops from various body parts, as I’m not quite the unblemished young thing I once was. These days the luggage also likes to yank my hair and kick my kidneys, and occasionally violently lurch to one side or the other without warning, which definitely makes matters exciting.
Empathise on the gear-lugging - I have Sherpa’d full size solar panels up a pathless and sheer mountainside, and it was not fun - although again standing up there with two tonnes of hardware going “heh, I hand lugged all this here” was gratifying.
At least I didn’t have to carry them back down.
I've done the same many times with the 30+ kg of gear and kid, even once going up to resupply a friend on a multi-week trip. It's good fun for your quads. Helps to put some of the heavier gear in a pair of those large waterproof roll-top bags and sling them across your chest, gets your centre of gravity more neutral.
I mean, if you find it easy enough to reach the summit with 30kg+ of mixed gear, then surely there's another more difficult summit that would be just as much of an achievement without?
This article seems like referral link spam. Who is upvoting this?
Nitecore is somewhat accepted as the best lightweight battery, but they aren't cheap.
10Ah battery is $60, 5.9oz. the 20Ah is 10.2oz and $100. Unlike the Hasbro, it comes close to its rated specification.
My backpacking trips have definitely not needed 20Ah. For two or three nights I can usually get by with a 5000mah, if I shutdown at night and frequently use airplane mode. And my phones are usually getting on, don't have Greta battery life.
What is your source for the nitecore being higher capacity than the equivalently rated haribo? All primary sources I've seen so far indicate they are comparable at 70-75%