Quick Take: The Energizer XP20001PD Type-C 45W Power Bank/Battery Pack

On January 6, 2019January 18, 2019 By rsts11In power, Travel TechLeave a comment

Here’s a quick battery review for you. We got the Energizer XP20001PD Ultimate power delivery battery pack on sale at Fry’s Electronics last week. With the 20Ah power in a convenient form factor, it looked tempting.

The packaging is very enthusiastic, referring to the pack as ULTIMATE and calling it a “PD RocketHub.” As far as we can tell, there’s no USB hub functionality to be found. There are a pair of short charging cables included though: One USB-A to Micro-USB B and one USB-C to USB-C. There’s also a tiny instruction sheet.

Specifications:

The XP20001PD has a 74Wh/20000mAh battery with four USB-A ports (5V, max 4.2A over 4 ports) as well as a Micro USB input for charging (5V/2A). The distinction for this pack is a bi-directional USB-C port, supporting 5V/3A, 9V/3A, 12V/3A, 15V/2.4A both ways, as well as charging at 36W with 20V/1.8A and outputting 45W at a 20V/2.25A profile.

xp20001pd usb-mini-b 2019-01-06 09.52.55

Testing:

We only tested USB-PD use cases, in and out, since there are many better options if you only need to charge USB-A type devices (like the RAVPower 22000mAh 5.8A three-port pack or the Anker Powercore 20100 4.8A two-port pack).

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Travel tips for Cisco Live (and other summer Las Vegas conferences)

On April 15, 2017May 3, 2017 By rsts11In General, Hotels, Las Vegas4 Comments

[See disclosure/disclaimer at the end if you’re into those things.]

Many of our readers will be headed to Las Vegas over the next couple of months. Whether it’s InteropITX, Cisco Live, VMworld, or something else, you may be curious about the quickest way to optimize your rewards and your stay while you’re there.

While reading all the other posts on rsts11travel would be the most thorough way to learn your way around Vegas, we figured we’d put together a unified list of things to do and think about as you head to what will be Tech City for much of the summer.

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Powering your laptop bag on the go, part 1 (the cable edition)

On January 17, 2017January 18, 2017 By rsts11In power2 Comments

Welcome back to rsts11travel. Today we’re going to start looking at power options for your portable electronics. We’ll be looking at charging adapters and cables from Portapow, Nomad Goods and Anker, with others coming in future posts. In the next part of this post, we’ll look at battery packs.

There are lots of options, and we’ll only cover about a tenth of what’s in my various travel bags, but this will give you a reasonable starting point for most equipment. Continue reading “Powering your laptop bag on the go, part 1 (the cable edition)” →

Welcome to rsts11travel.com

On December 31, 2016January 2, 2017 By rsts11In General3 Comments

Greetings, and happy new year.

We are proud to launch rsts11travel.com, the RSTS11 travel blog. For now it will be a category within rsts11.com but that may change.

The goal for this sub-blog is to cover some travel-specific topics outside of tech, so that even friends and readers who aren’t technophiles or thought leaders or the like will be able to benefit from some of my adventures. Guest posts are a possibility; if you’d like to share a guest post let us know.

Watch for three Las Vegas-themed posts in the next week to start things with a pop. On the board to round out January 2017 are a mobile power post and a mobile caffeine post.

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