The media could not be loaded. [See video review. Transcript Follows. Executive summary: it's pricey but really delivers on features. It delivers 100W on its USB-C port (and I test that in the video) and the display gives you lots of details on what's going on. It's my new go-to for travel.] Let’s look at this Storm 2 Slim power bank. This thing is neat. First thing you’ll notice is this great display. I’ll discuss that in detail shortly. Second, this isn’t a boring black box. They gave this a clear polycarbonate case and you can see everything. The cells are purple, circuit board is black, and accents are aluminum and white. It looks amazing. You can see here its USB type A output and USB type C input and output. Compared to its big brother, the Storm 2, the slim model is slightly taller and longer but substantially thinner. For me this is easier to find room for in a bag. You can see the Storm 2 has battery eight cells while the slim has four, but the slim’s individual cells are thicker. The big model has the same A and C ports as the slim model, plus two additional ports, a second USB-C out and a barrel jack DC output. In terms of weight, the slim model 450 grams or just shy of one pound. Compared to the Storm 2 it’s 144 grams lighter, or about a third of a pound. Let’s plug some things in. For best performance with USB type C devices you need to use a type-C to type-C cable like this yellow one that comes with the power bank. USB type C can run at higher voltage and that’s why you can get a hundred watts through it. Not all power banks can output twenty volts on their type C port. This one can, because its DC converter can both go down to five volts output and also boost up to twenty volts. USB type A is limited to five volts so you can’t get as much power from that port. So if you have a USB type C device and want to charge it quick, use the power bank’s type C port. However, we all have a lot of type-A cables around so it’s nice having that port, too. Now let’s look at the display. It’s small and I definitely need my glasses to read it, but it’s colorful and somebody over there has been watching Star Trek The Next Generation. Across the top left are icons that show up when something’s plugged in. On the bottom left are details about power coming in and going out. You can short-press the button to flip between the type-A port, the type-C port, and total output. The bigger number is the power in watts, and underneath it shows the voltage and current, but those numbers are teeny-tiny. On the right side you’ll see the capacity of the battery. The number is tiny but the icon also changes color when it’s low. Then you see the voltage and current of the battery cells. Then you’ve got temperatures of the board and the cells, and finally a resettable timer showing how long you’ve used it. Now let’s go into the menus. Long-press the button to get there. First is an informational display on the individual cell voltages, cell capacity, and cycle count. Short press for the next page. Here you can set the temp units. Reset the timer on the main display. Change some display settings. Force a power off, and go back to the main menu. To change things on a page, long press…then short press to highlight what you want, and long press to select it. Now my temp settings are in farenheit. Ok, warning, now things are going to get super nerdy. I discovered that you can buy little boards that take USB type C input and they’ll tell the power source to select one of the voltages that type C can handle. The purple board here will tell the power bank to switch to twenty volts, and that power will go to the yellow connector on the end. I’ll use this to connect to a smart charger for drone batteries. This will let me recharge my drone out in the field from the Storm 2 power bank. I made two of these adapters. This one is set to fifteen volts for my amateur radio rig. The other one for my drone is now finished, with some nylon wrap and heat shrink. Now let’s grab this smart charger that’s for my drone batteries. It has a DC input here which my new adapter connects to. Then I’ll plug a USB type C to C cable into that, and to the power bank. The charger starts right up. I’ll use this Toolkit RC battery charger to draw a bunch of power from the Storm 2 Slim and put it into a drone battery. The power bank will output twenty volts and up to five amps current, which is one hundred watts total power. That’s the maximum power USB type C can support. You can see about 95 watts are going to the drone battery. There are some losses in the wires and voltage converters, but not much. Let me wrap this up. The Storm 2 Slim is a real monster of a power bank. It comes at a premium price but you get what you pay for, too. It gives you USB type C with power delivery up to the full hundred watts. The batteries have lots of capacity and can easily charge any laptop, phone, or tablet multiple times. It’s sized right for travel, it looks great, and the display shows you exactly what’s going on. This thing is definitely traveling with me from now on. Thanks for watching, I hope you found this useful.
