Omars “PowerSurge” Powerbank with 20.000 mAh and Power Delivery for 46.99
A Powerbank for your smartphone should be at home by now, but Powerbanks for laptops are still relatively rare. Slowly, however, things are getting moving and several new models with Power Delivery are coming onto the market. We ordered a Powerbank from Omars and tried it out.
- Omars PowerSurge 20000 Powerbank
What is USB Power Delivery?
Laptops and tablets as well as mobile phones are designed for mobile use. But that’s exactly how they need electricity and it can be difficult to charge your laptop for a long time, let alone find a power outlet. The power of “normal” Powerbanks is also not enough to charge the larger devices. This is where “Power Delivery” comes in.
The standard, USB PD abbreviated, enables higher performance when charging via USB with up to 100W. For comparison: USB 2.0 delivers up to 2.5W, USB 3.0 up to 4.5W. Even with the term Power Delivery there are still differences, so not all PD devices are equally fast.
Processing & Connections
No bright colors but a plain black surrounds the Powerbank. The sides are rounded and the surface is made of matt, roughened metal. At the upper end there is a small display showing the battery status in percent. There are two USB-A ports and one USB-C port. Next to it is also the Power Button.
The first USB port is a conventional one with 5V/2.4A, the second one supports Quick Charge 3.0 with up to 12V/1.5A (18W). Power Delivery is only available via the labeled USB-C port, which supports up to 20V/2.25A (45W).
The Powerbank is of course comparatively heavy and weighs in at 558g. Dimensions of 180 x 80 x 22 mm are also quite large for a Powerbank, but acceptable for a mobile battery for a laptop.
Accessories
In addition to the Powerbank there are two cables. The important one is the USB-C cable, which is needed for the Power Delivery connection and is one meter long. The USB A to Micro USB cable, which is only 20 cm long, charges mainly smartphones and is also equipped with a USB C adapter.
What’s in it? Performance & Capacity
With 20,000 mAh the Powerbank belongs to the larger models – as “normal” a capacity of 10,000 mAh has prevailed. But they are also necessary, since tablets and notebooks naturally have much larger batteries than smartphones. Here are just a few prominent examples for illustration.
| Smartphone | Laptop/Tablet | ||
| Xiaomi Mi 9 | 3.300 mAh | Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro | 8,000 mAh |
| Samsung Galaxy S10 | 3.400 mAh | Galaxy Tab S4 | 7.300 mAh |
| iPhone XS | 2.658 mAh | iPad 4 | 8.800 mAh |
The higher power is already noticeable when you charge the Powerbank yourself. A prerequisite for this, however, is an appropriate power supply, which is not included but must be ordered. For my test I used a 45W charger from Inateck, but any other charger with Power Delivery is suitable. Charging the full 20,000 mAh from 7% to 100% took about two hours – not bad. Anyone who has ever charged his 10,000 Powerbank with a micro USB cable knows that it can sometimes take all night.
Supported devices
The list printed on the packaging already reads promising: MacBook, Nintendo Switch, iPad, of course many smartphones and other devices should be compatible with the Powerbank. If you just want to charge your mobile phone with it, you don’t really need the Powerbank; it should be a laptop to make the purchase worthwhile. But then, of course, you can also charge your phone with it; the second USB-A port supports Quick Charge 3.0 after all.
Whether a device can be charged with it is always up to the power supply unit and the cable. Thorben used the Omars PowerSurge Powerbank in his test of Xiaomi’s Qi-Charger. But here charging only worked with the Xiaomi cable, strangely not with the Powerbank cable.
We have tried some tablets and laptops (MacBook, Surface Book, Xiaomi Mi Notebooks) – the main thing is that it can be charged with USB-C. The only thing that is important is that the USB-C cable is not used. The devices we tried out could all be charged with the Powerbank.
Conclusion on the PowerSurge Powerbank
It’s nice that the Power Delivery Standard is slowly picking up speed and you can now also load laptops via Powerbank. The Omars PowerSurge Powerbank is a good mobile battery that meets exactly this requirement. It’s no longer small and handy, but it’s easy to carry in your backpack or bag when you’re traveling with a laptop anyway.
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