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First commercially available fuel cell charger appears online
Our buddies over at Engadget are reporting on the availability of a portable fuel cell designed to recharge your gadgets. The Medis 24-7 Power Pack was first announced back in 2005, but it has taken them some time to get the technology to a stage where it is reliable enough to sell commercially. The 24-7 power pack contains a fuel cell using "a direct liquid borohydride technology". I have no idea what that means, but it delivers enough power to keep your iPod playing for up to three and a half days, and that is really all I need to know.
The 24-7 Power Pack is currently available online for $39.95 which includes the Power Pack itself, a variety of charger cords and a user manual. The Power Pack is not rechargeable (or reusable), so once it is empty, you'll need to spend $22.95 for the replacement pack. The Power Pack is scheduled to appear in Best Buy stores soon.
The manufacturer does not mention whether the fuel cell is approved for taking on a commercial flight, and knowing the TSA, I'm not sure they know either.
I have to say I'm quite happy to see this technology finally appear in a commercial product, companies have been showing off their fuel cell products for years, but until now, none of them were actually made available for us mere consumers. I'm sure that the price will scare some people away, but being able to carry a 6.5 ounce backup power pack with the capacity to keep my iPod playing for 3 days is worth $23 to me. As the technology matures, I'm convinced that prices will drop.
Filed under: Gear
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Chris M. Aug 20th 2008 8:08AM
Are the cells recyclable I wonder?
Tilyou1 Aug 22nd 2008 4:58PM
Before you get too excited, you might want to learn more about Medis and its fat box. What Medis offers is junk -- little more than a trick to make investors think Medis really has something to sell. Consider:
- the power output is trivial. The Medis half-brick won't even power a totall dead cell phone to quickly make a phone call (compare Cellboost, which at least really is disposable, and can let you make a cell phone call almost immediately). And it won't power a Blackberry at all. And it's not even disposable -- you have electronics that can't be recharged, and can't take off something off-the-shelf like an AA battery.
- there are MANY superior solutions for ipods -- I shouldn't need to tell you about them. Some run on AAA batteries, some on AA batteries, and some one Lithium-ion; and many if not most are rechargeable. Why buy something hugely more expensive, that works poorly and adds to landfills?
- The Medis junk needs to be "activiated" after which the power depletes quickly. After a few days it's so weak it's practically useless. After a few weeks, it's dead whether you used it, or not. Some hot technology, eh? There's already something much better: more compact, more powerful and rechargeable -- called a BATTERY pack.
And the price of the powerpack has been going UP from when it was first offered a year ago. Not all prices go down. The automated line to pump out those powerpacks was completed a year ago -- but so far Medis has reported NO revenue. No one wants their junk.
Then the story gets much worse... Medis looks not like a company with a lousy product. It looks like a ripe old scam. For more information, check here....
http://ragingbull.quote.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=MDTL&read=360
Medis has a longgggggggg history of promising miracle products, and delivering nothing. Now that's changed: it's delivered junk. Some improvement!
And before you give a positive review, do some research, 'kay?
Tilyou
payattention Aug 22nd 2008 8:30PM
Readers of tilyou1's post should be aware that tilyou1 has been posting his drivel on the stock market discussion boards of the Medis stock for six years at the rate of an average of at least four posts a day. He has been posting his doomsday version to a fare thee well.
First he predicted the company would go bankrupt (he set a date--three years ago). That prediction failed.
When that prediction failed he predicted the company would never make a product. The company made a product.
When that prediction failed he badmouthed the product...as you can see in his post.
Bottom line: ignore what he says, as the many posters on the stock market discussion boards have done. tilyou1 is the price we pay for the right to free speech.
Tilyou Aug 22nd 2008 10:27PM
I didn't "bad mouth" the product -- I just gave facts. I could have added that when it was independently tested by an engineer with a fuel cell hobby, two of the three Medis powerpacks he bought online LEAKED and popped back to their pre-activation state.
Payattention never disagrees (nor can he, honestly) with any of the facts I presented about the fuel cell's pathetic performance; nor can he disagree with the observation that despite making many wild promises since 1992 about revolutionary products, about semi-automated manufacturing lines, and super-green batteries, the reality is Medis has NEVER shown any revenue from products. No one wants what it has.
I don't need to make personal attacks.
I have facts: http://ragingbull.quote.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=MDTL&read=360
T
payattention Aug 22nd 2008 11:55PM
I appreciate the temperate tone tilyou1 has taken so far on this board, unlike the enraged tone he frequently takes when contradicted on other boards--when he calls those who disgree with him Nazis. Or he buries those who contradict him with endless repetitive, bombastic posts.
I leave i to users to determine if the product meets their needs. Best Buy is one of the outlets for sales, in addition to several websites. The product is UL and European UL approved. The only known tester who disapproves of the product is the anonymous poster tilyou dotes on who admits he only tested early versions of the product, not the version for sale nowadays.
As to contradicting the fantasies disguised as facts which tilyou1 endlessly disgorges (over 4000 posts in six years) I note that because he frequently violates Yahoo's terms of service, almost all his posts have been deleted. Yahoo does not consider him a good citizen.
Tilyou1 Aug 23rd 2008 8:16PM
Endless personal attacks -- ho hum. Meanwhile the reviews of the power pack are in... and they're BAD.
The powerpacks worked as long as no one could them -- now that Medis is daring to mark the specs public, the joke has gone public.
========================
These reviews laff at the *concept* of a half-brick sized slow-charging $35 partly disposable power source -- they don't know yet how bad it is. They don't know that:
- a few weeks after start up, it's dead (whether used to power something or not) or
- it's lame out of the box (won't power a dead phone to make an immediate call -- something Cellboost can do; and won't power a Blackberry, which Cellboost also can do).
www.engadget.com/2008/08/19/medis-24-7-power-pack-fuel-cell-available-online-now-at-best-bu/
.........
by "Fuel Cell" they mean "Non-rechargeable battery pack". And if they manage to use the term "Green" somewhere on the
package they really mean "Clogging up landfills or praying there is a recycler near"
.........
Why on Earth would anyone buy this thing? Am I missing something?
.........
Someone got the concept just spectacularly wrong, it seems to me. The idea of a "fuel cell" is that it will be cheap to run. As greatsunjester said, this is a nonrechargable battery pack on its way to a landfill near you.
.......
T bought this several months ago. It didn't work very well. You plug it into your device and a green LED lights up to let you know the device is drawing power. All the cellphones I tried phone would only charge for a few minutes before the light went out - you'd have to unplug and plug them back in to get the LED lit again. Skip this and buy a portable battery pack instead.
....
For what it's worth - this is a stupid product NOT because it's brand new early-stage tech, but because it's a dumb strategy.
1) The device is ugly, nobody wants to carry around an ugly dehumidifier, just to get extra talktime out of their elegant iPhone / Blackberry.
2) Quick price evaluation - 60 extra hours of play time on my Nano would be roughly 3 to 4 charges. So $20/3 and $4 amounts to roughly $5 to $7 per charge. Stupid.
Scott Carmichael Aug 23rd 2008 8:20PM
Thanks for the comments. I'll be getting my own hands on this product pretty soon, and will post my own thoughts. I'll reserve any judgment till I have tested it myself. To me, the CONCEPT of fuel cell technology is an exciting one, and while I am sure not everyone will be interested at paying $20 for 60 hours of backup power, I'll leave it up to my readers to decide whether that is an acceptable price to pay. I can see some situations where it is, and some where it could be considered insane.
But as I said; I'll check out the product, and we'll take it from there. I appreciate learning a little more about the history of Medis, but I'd suggest keeping the politics of their history to other sites. All I do is review a product, and let my readers decide whether it's something they can use (or not).
TeckSkeptik Aug 24th 2008 12:47PM
Please do test it. I encourage you to test it in a way that is something more rigourous than "I plugged it in and the light came on". this form of testing has been done by other reviewers. Then they presume it work and that they can just parrot the claims of the company.
Then what happens is that 3 months after the 'green light test' they actually can use the product and it no longer provides energy.
http://www.treocentral.com/content/Stories/1397-1.htm
I have rigorously tested 3 of these things. Granted it was units from their preproduction line (which was the semi-automated one), but the claims for those units were the same as the claims for the new units. They have totally garbled their message whether or not they have changed anything in the device since this testing. Further I tested them in the most beneficial mode possible (maximizing power and best orientation).
I encourage you to read the results, copy the testing if you like. I have also evaluated their claims against incumbent technologies. Here is the link.
http://techskeptic.blogspot.com/2008/01/medis-finale.html
I hope this information is helpful. I'm a big fan of new technologies as long as they are actual improvements over older technologies and not simply the result of hype. This is not a Wright brothers story.
techskeptic Aug 25th 2008 2:26AM
"The only known tester who disapproves of the product is the anonymous poster tilyou dotes on who admits he only tested early versions of the product, not the version for sale nowadays."
:) yeah, thats me. To be clear, I don't dislike this product because it performed poorly in my testing. I dislike it because the claimed performance is worse than incumbent technology.
20 Watt-hours it simply not that spectacular (its not even good) for a unit that is as large as this device and as expensive. Want 20 watt hours? Simply get a rechargeable Li+ pack available almost anywhere, and then 'fill it up' for free before long trips. Same utility, lower cost after 2 or 3 fills, longer life.
The 1 watt output is even worse, it makes for very long charge times. The 2W system is still based on the 1 watt fuel cell, so it only provides high power for a short time.
Anyway, good luck with your testing. If you want a small pack filled with 6 Lithium AAs that provides more power, more energy and lower cost, I can make you one. :)