Opinion
I came across the cleverly named Sharge after clicking on an Internet ad. Yah, I know. I do it, like, once or twice a year, much to the relief of Google, the ad agency, the advertiser, the Web site owner.
The company sells truly cool looking power banks and other computer peripherals. The ad I clicked on was for a new triangular model that still is not for sale, as it is still in Kickstarter mode (see image at left). So I settled for a rectangular model (see image below).
The Shargeek 100 (I paid US$159; previously called the Storm 2) is the first transparent power bank, so it shows off its innards. The four cells hold 25,600mAh total, which is sufficient to charge my phone 5x or my Dell laptop about 1x (it works, I tested it). But the really geeky part is the color display (see image at right). It lists
- Remaining battery life
- Volts, amps, and watts output
- Output distribution
- Battery and unit temperature
- Which port is plugged in
- And so on
Press the big yellow button to switch the display to different modes, as explained by the included manual. One of the modes is Settings, where you can specify how long the display stays on, temperature units, and so on.
The usefulness of the display is that it also reports warnings, such as if the DC port is incorrectly handled, or the battery temperature is too low (below -15C).
The unit charges fast (up to 100W) and outputs as much as 100W. As with other power banks, the 100W output is shared when more than one device is plugged in. Plug devices into each of the USB-C ports, for example, and one charges at 60W, the other at 30W.
It has
- Two USB-C ports; use USB-C port 1 to charge laptops
- One USB-A
- One DC port
The DC voltage output ranges from 3.3V to 25.2V at 3A, while the USB ports handle the usual range of outputting 5V to 15V at up to 5A.
One drawback is that the unit is hefty, weighing 1.25 pounds. The other is that the colors of the plugged-in ports shown in the display (red, yellow, blue, green, gray) don't match the colors of ports identifier, which are all in yellow. Ordering it from the manufacturer, it took three weeks to arrive, although postage was free.
The package includes a cloth case and a five-foot USB-C cable in Sharge's distinctive yellow color.
https://sharge.com/products/storm2
Comments