Black and Decker PowerToGo 20W Review

I don’t travel much these days.  Not since my youth when we would take trips from Tennessee to Florida or on long rides across the country in my friend’s brother’s eighteen-wheeler.  Those trips consisted of endless hours of listening to whatever FM radio station was available in whatever Podunk town we happened to be going through.  Portable CD players were brand new and therefore only the more pampered kids had one.  MP3 players… WTF were those?  Travel today is much more entertaining.  In-dash DVD players, screens anywhere and everywhere, laptop computers built into your new Hummer H2.  People WANT to go on trips these days in the car.  The longer the better.

And do you know why we would rather ride around in a car than take a much shorter trip on an airplane?  Because 99% of planes don’t have a place to plug stuff in.  Want to charge your iPod?  Not on this plane, pal.  WiFi?  Yeah, if you want to pay $9.99 per minute to use the slowest connection since dial up.  No thanks, I’ll just watch a video on my PSP.  What’s that?  This is a 12-hour flight and you don’t have a place to plug in my PSP for a recharge?  Well, you know what American Airlines?  You can blow my n…  Eh.. Never mind that.

You know what you do when you don’t have a place to get some juice for your gear?  You get portable power.  Black and Decker created this nifty little contraption called the PowerToGo.  You can get it in 3 flavors, 10w, 20w, and 100w.  I opted for the 20w because I didn’t figure I would need much more than that to power my PSP and cell phone, and because the 2Ah battery that comes with it is half the weight of the 4Ah battery inside the 100w version.  Weight is an issue when traveling.  Here’s a few details on it:

• Input – 8.4 VDC, 5.0A
• Output – 115V AC 60Hz-20W for 5 minutes, 16W continuous
• Battery – 2Ah, NiMH
• USB – 5V DC (350 mA)
• Piano black finish
• Durable plastic enclosure

This portable power source comes in the typical blister packaging that I loathe beyond reason.  I still don’t understand how this packaging came about and why the inventor wasn’t gunned down by a consumer somewhere.  Once this was open, I found the PTG itself, a black B&D bag, the 120v charger, and the instruction manual.  I should mention that the charger that comes with it is meant for US-type 120v wall outlets only.  All my friends in foreign countries will need to purchase a separate power adapter for this.

Once I had everything out and in the open, I opened up the instruction booklet and gave it a quick read.  Yep, just as I thought.  Charge it and use it.  So I did what the book said, I plugged it in and let it charge for 11-17 hours the first day.  That’s a long time to have to charge something, and when I woke the next morning it was still flashing red, a sign that it was not yet fully charged.  So I waited a while longer.  Sometime in the early afternoon the battery was fully charged, and the red light was on steady.  So I went through the packages on my desk searching for the USB power/data cable I ordered earlier that week.  It uses a male USB 2.0 plug on one end, and the other end has a mini-USB plug for data as well as the power plug designed for charging the PSP.  This adapter does not come with the PSP, nor is it supplied with the PowerToGo, so if you want to charge your PSP with this gadget, you need to hit up Ebay and purchase one this USB cord.

First, I attempted to use the PTG to charge the 1200mah battery on my PSP using the wall outlet port.  This lasted about 5 minutes, as the official power adapter for the PSP uses 120v power at  the full 20Watts.  You guessed it, it sucked my PTG battery all the way down to empty in no time.  So back on the charger it went.  For another 10 hours.  Just so you guys know, this thing takes FOREVER to charge EVERY time, not just the first time.  So if you plan on using it more than once, forget it.  Better rent a motel room and charge it overnight.

Late that night, I tried again with the USB adapter.  Here’s a little tidbit of info for those who think they can put their PSP 2000/3000 into USB Mode and charge it that way using the PTG… it doesn’t work.  The PSP won’t recognize the charger and you’ll end up wasting a lot of time trying to get it to work.  So I broke out the USB charger for a test charge.  I took my PSP 2000 and drained it all the way down to bare battery.  No juice whatsoever.  Not even a spark.  So I turned on the PowerToGo and plugged in the USB charger to see how quick it could charge it up.  If it even charges all the way.

Over two and a half hours later, the results are in.  It took two hours and forty-two minutes to charge my PSP to 81%, at which point the PTG shut itself off.  Not great by any means, but not horrible either.  I think that this would be an excellent backup power source in a pinch.  So now comes the test of how long the play time is with direct power, no battery included.

I loaded up a movie on my Pro Duo and set to watch it.  I got through a little over two hours of Lord of The Rings before the final loss of power.  Watching a video via UMD got me even less with just under two hours of watching time.  UMD games got me about the same, around two hours of play time with no battery.  So if you are desperate for entertainment but don’t want to by a cheap battery online, you could go with this.  Honestly, however, cheap generic batteries can be found on Ebay for under $7 with free shipping and last over three hours on a full charge.  They also charge in much less time than this thing does.

To conclude, I personally think that unless you plan on being stuck in the desert and need emergency electricity to a cell phone, you should just buy a cheap non-OEM battery and keep it on hand as a backup.  I don’t think I could find much entertainment value when it comes to the PowerToGo, aside from maybe charging an iPod, but they are electricity suckers as well.  I believe that many of the home-made products on Instructables.com have done a much better job than this has, and all you have to do is replace batteries in many of them (i.e. the Minty Boost).

Another factor in my final decision is that it is common for this model to lose power on its own after a couple days without use when not plugged into the charger.  I find that very unsettling for a product that costs upwards of forty bucks.  The funny thing was that when I contacted Black & Decker to question them about the charge retaining issue, I never received an email back.  I put off this review for a week, in fact, just so I could give them a chance to explain themselves.  So much for that.  So want to get the most for your money?  Spend that forty bucks on a brand new OEM battery or five generic ones.  You’ll get more play time out of them..

	REPORT CARD : Black & Decker PowerToGo category rating comments Innovation 3 Great idea, but nowhere near efficient Durability 4 Tough plastic casing, but could be stronger Reliability 1 There are many cheaper substitutes that can do a much better job… and keep a charge after two days. Usefulness 2 Like I said, there are many, many substitutes out there… Value 2 Fourty dollars is way too much for something that takes this long to charge without delivering a decent life. FINAL VERDICT: 3 out of 5 stars