Hi everyone,

I've gotten myself into a bit of a battery dilemma for my upcoming tour, mainly due to my own lack of knowledge. I'm hoping someone here can help me out.

For my upcoming long tour I bought a Xiaomi 20,000mAh battery to charge my devices. I also bought a Lenovo laptop to bring along to do some writing and website work while on the road. In my general ignorance about all things batteried, I did not realize that the USB ports on the Xiaomi battery won't charge a laptop.


In looking for something that would charge all my devices including the laptop, the batteries themselves all seem to require charging through an AC adapter and standard wall plug. This is a bit of a disappointment as I wanted to be able to charge everything I have off of my dynamo.


Does anyone know of a battery with DC out for charging a laptop, but that can be charged itself by USB? My (very basic) understanding is that charging this way will take a long time, but I'd rather be entirely self sufficient with everything being USB rechargeable than have one thing that absolutely has to find a wall socket. Perhaps there is no market for this kind of device and so it's not being made by anyone. Any insight?

*Please excuse (and feel free to educate) me if I have any of the terminology wrong.

I would take a tablet and avoid the laptop if possible. Failing that, just a thought - a decent lenovo, say an X1, should give you 4-5 hours of battery life. So plug in the laptop in at night to work with it and forget the Xiaomi for charging. How many hours of work do you plan on doing after riding all day long? Batteries that are powerful enough to charge a laptop are probably going to be somewhat larger and heavier as well.

here's one, 23,000 mAh - https://www.amazon.com/RAVPower-2300...arging+battery

What you want doesn't really exist. Handheld devices need 5VDC into the device to charge, laptops need whatever DC voltage comes through the transformer (the brick thing on the cord) to charge their batteries.

Where will you be that a computer is of benefit, but no electricity to charge the computer will exist? If you have a second battery, it can always act as a spare, only used if you drain the first and have no way to charge it.

Interesting question. I have no personal direct experience (I make do with a Nexus 7 tablet).

This being said, there are battery banks with high voltage output. Add the proper cable and you are good to go.

Now, this will only get you a few more (8?) hours of autonomy. On the plus side, a battery bank is roughly the size and weight of a laptop charger. On the minus side, charging a large battery bank will take much more time than recharging your laptop using the charger.

Looking forward to reading updates on this thread

Interesting, guess I was partly wrong.

That said, it still seemingly needs to be charged at the wall, so unless he is good with the power it provides before being depleted, he is still back at square one, unless he had a generator that kicks out 12VDC and fabs up a custom cable.

You probably want a computer shop, Not a Bike Forum.

THE sub section Here..
https://www.bikeforums.net/electronics-lighting-gadgets/

Thanks for the replies. I'll try to answer some of the questions and give some more information.

Sadly, I already went out and bought the laptop for the trip. There were reasons for choosing a laptop over a tablet, but now that I'm faced with this issue, I certainly wish I had gone with a tablet and dealt with any shortcomings.

Power won't be an issue while I'm in the US, but I'm planning to go through Central and South America, so there will be some longer stretches where I don't have regular access to power.

One of the big reasons for buying a cache battery in the beginning was to ensure that devices get a regular charge when using the dynamo. Using pass through charging with the dynamo connected to the battery connected to the Garmin means the Garmin isn't constantly alerting me every time I slow down or speed up and it stops or starts charging. So I'm looking for a battery that can charge the laptop, but can be charged by the dynamo. I'm beginning to think it doesn't exist, or maybe as suggested I need to find a more specific forum. Thanks for all the replies and suggestions!

PowerTraveller make the PowerGorilla battery which is designed for the outdoors and which is capable of charging laptops.

It maybe an option for you.

Thanks. I had a look at those, but they are both really expensive and also require an AC adapter to charge them.