A Wild Power Bank Appears!
Have you ever heard of QQC? There's a good chance that this is the first time you've seen the brand mentioned. I hadn’t either until our editor-in-chief forwarded an e-mail from QQC’s marketing team asking if Tom’s Hardware would be interested in reviewing its Q-Swap.
What is the Q-Swap? It is a modular power bank based on 5200mAh Li-ion batteries (with a built-in charger) that snap into the “Q-Boost” frame, which provides the 5V type-A port for charging gadgets. The idea is that you can carry multiple battery packs for added run-time without the redundant bulk of boost circuitry and type-A ports in each of them. Sounds reasonable enough.
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Box
There isn’t much to see on the front of the packaging, other than the brand’s logo and product name. Around back, we are treated to a simple graphic showing how the battery snaps in and out of the frame, and how cables get plugged into it for charging or normal use.
Since this 10,400mAh kit is made up of two 5200mAh batteries, one battery can be charged while the other is in use. How is that better than having two completely independent banks? A typical 5.2Ah power bank has a volume of about 95cm³ while individual Q-Swap batteries have a volume of 63cm³, saving about 33% of the extra bulk per additional 5.2Ah. With the Q-Boost frame on, overall dimensions for the first 5.2Ah are similar.
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Specs
What are the key benefits? Compatibility with nearly anything under the sun, up to 2.1A charging and discharging, Panasonic cells, capacitive power display trigger, USB cable wear protection from the type-A connector opening flat against the Q-Boost frame, long-life design, and “double the power with half the weight.”
None of those claims are particularly outlandish, except that if you want to carry twice the capacity, you do need to carry twice as many of the 110-gram Q-Cells, which does nearly double the 145-gram carry weight of the first 5.2Ah.
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Packaging
Opening the box’s cover reveals the Q-Swap’s two batteries and booster slotted in a raised cardboard spacer behind a plastic window. On the inside, we get a reminder that QQC’s focus is “the weight in your hand” rather than the total weight in your backpack or however else you may carry your extra Q-Cells (should you choose to carry any at all). That’s where QQC’s “twice the power, half the weight” comes from: not having to hold the whole 10,400mAh at once as you would with a conventional 10Ah power bank.
As you may already be thinking, you can achieve approximately the same goal by simply carrying two 5.2Ah power banks, albeit at the expense of slightly more total weight and bulk.
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Holding Fast
When I first opened the package, I noticed some odd resistance but did not pay much attention to it. While extracting the box’s contents, I discovered a pair of surprisingly strong magnet stacks glued in opposite corners. It took me a minute of head-scratching before I realized that these were holding the front cover shut with the help of ferromagnetic inserts embedded in the cover’s corners.
That's a rather expensive packaging choice. I didn't look up the Q-Swap's retail price until half-way through putting this story together, and when I saw its jaw-dropping $120 price tag, the design suddenly made more sense.
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Accessories
Bundled items include the obligatory instruction leaflet, a very short (21cm/8in-long) type A-to-micro-B cable, and a felt carrying pouch possibly large enough to contain up to four Q-Cells.
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Special Request
As part of my discussion with QQC to review its product, I asked if it would be possible to provide a unit missing any irreversible assembly steps. QQC was happy to oblige. Included in the generic brown shipping packaging was one Q-Boost and one Q-Cell in separate plastic bags, held together by pieces of adhesive tape instead of factory welds or glue. This makes the tear-down process much simpler, faster, and safer. Had QQC not provided these, I may have ended up crushing the Q-Boost’s electronics while attempting to crack it open due to how the PCB is laid out inside the frame. Poking at a 5Ah lithium battery could also have turned unpleasant.
Two thumbs up from me for the company's transparency here.
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The Q-Cell
The first of two key components in the Q-Swap kit is the Q-Cell, which has a slight taper from its top to bottom, and tighter corner radii at the bottom edge where the QQC logos reside. This translates to the Q-Cell fitting only one way in the Q-Boost frame. Along the top edge, you can see the dimple from the LED light pipe.
There is no hint of where the "touch" function lies, which compelled me to read the manual in order to figure out how to trigger the charge indicator. A simple dot silk-screened in the corner, opposite the LED, to draw attention there would have made this far more intuitive.
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Q-Cell Contacts
The Q-Cell’s top side is furnished with four contact slabs and a micro-B charging port. Two of the pads must be battery positive and negative. Due to the risk of shorting these terminals out while they are exposed, I expect some sort of current-limiting circuitry in there and possibly a protocol on the two center pads to enable full power output.
A few simple multimeter measurements reveal that the leftmost pad is likely ground, as it is the most negative pad relative to the other three, while the rightmost pad has to be the positive output as it floats to 4V under no-load condition. The remaining pads are tens of millivolts above the negative terminal, yielding no information about their function.
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Q-Cell Specs
Unsurprisingly, the battery’s specifications match the packaging: 2.1A at 5V for the charging input, and 5.2Ah and 3.7V for the battery’s effective capacity.
Upon reading “do not short-circuit,” I had a compulsive urge to do the exact opposite. Instead of shorting it outright, though, I connected a discharged capacitor across the presumed power terminals to simulate a momentary short-circuit. The capacitor charged to 4V within one voltmeter refresh interval without visible or audible sparking, which may mean that the output terminals have some form of current limiting, and that getting useful power out of the Q-Cell could be as simple as remaining below its over-current cutoff. While this would be nice tinkering-wise, I would also be wary of carrying loose batteries with always-on output terminals.
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Q-Cell Opened
Upon popping the cover off of the unassembled Q-Cell, we are greeted by two 18650 cells and a slim circuit board nestled in-between. A second board is stuck vertically behind the contact pad side of the battery at the bottom, held in place by a plastic wedge. Behind that wedge lies a third board hosting the micro-B connector. I would say this is a surprisingly complex mechanical arrangement. A light pipe in the corner guides the status LED’s light to both sides of the Q-Cell.
I’m certain QQC could have found a suitable micro-B connector to fit on the main board, though putting the micro-B on its own board does have the benefit of decoupling mechanical stress, which may make it more reliable.
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