Q: I received the PowerPack 10000 from Amazon yesterday. It has been charging from my laptop using your USB connector for 12 hours and it has only reached 3 lights on with the last light still blinking. Is this common? Or is the device faulty?
A:
Our battery packs are shipped with less than 50% of their full charge for safety considerations. When the charging started, you probably saw one solid light and one blinking light. Now after 12 hours, you got three solid lights and the fourth one blinking. This means the battery pack has been receiving the charge, which is good news. Please keep in mind that the battery pack holds about 3-4 times the full charge of an iPhone 7, so it will take quite a bit of time to fully charge it even when it starts charging at a little less than half full (say 40% full). That said, I have two suggestions that can help you shorten the charge time:
1) Make sure that you use the foot-long charging cord (white or black depending on the color of your PowerPack) that comes with your battery pack. Doing so will minimize voltage loss over the wire.
2) The USB port on a laptop is likely to be the slowest source of power. It may only deliver 500mA current at 5 volts, depending on the model of your laptop. I would suggest that at a minimum, you use your cell phone (smartphone)'s power adapter to charge the battery pack. If you use an Apple or Samsung phone, simply pull the attached cord out of the power adapter and plug in the foot-long charging cord, instead.
To summarize, the charge time you experience is probably normal, as you charged from the USB port of a laptop. You'll be able to charge the battery pack significantly faster if you switch to using your phone's power adapter. We give the following guidance regarding the time it takes to charge the battery pack from 0% to full.
- 4.2 hrs with 18W Quick Charge enabled fast charge plug
- 6.2 hrs with 5V/2A plug like iPad plug
- 11-12 hrs with 5V/1A plug like stock iPhone plug.
- ~24 hours with a slow USB port on certain laptop/desktop computer models.