Pelican Power Brick Review....


bast525

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Well I just wanted to post this real quick, I bought one of these Pelican Power Brick's for my PSP and thought some of you other PSP owners might be interested.


the short story: It does exactly what it says.

The long story: It's an external battery, with approximately double the capacity of the PSP's stock internal battery. You use the AC Adapter/charger that comes with the PSP itself to charge the power brick. Approximate charge time is about four hours. The power brick has a little green LED light on it to indicate when it's charging as well so you know when it's fully charged.... I didn't even expect this little feature but it is much welcome.

Once charged, unplug it from the charger and plug it into your PSP. The PSP will behave exactly as if you have just plugged in the AC adapter. It will go into charging mode if not fully charged, and if already fully charged will run off the power brick instead of the internal battery (in the menu it will say something like 'power source: external).

It does seem to provide roughly twice the PSP's internal battery life... I'm getting about 8-9 hours running strictly off the power brick as the direct power source (in other words NOT using it to charge the PSP's battery as it's been fully charged this whole time) before the PSP would switch over to it's internal battery. So that's 8 hours PLUS the usual 3-5 hours from the internal battery before you have you recharge... SWEET.

Other pros of the power brick: it is very compact and not TOO heavy, measures about 2.5" by 3" by .5"... easily fitting in your front or back pocket. The cord supplied with the brick to connect it to the PSP is about 3 feet/1 meter long, just right to reach from your pocket up to the PSP when you're holding it at chest level playing it. Another surprising feature is that the power brick has a place to attach a wrist strap (like the PSP's own wrist strap). Not sure if anyone would use this but hey at least it's there.

Another BIG advantage of using the power brick, is that, just like when running the PSP off of the AC adapter, when you are running off of the power brick you can turn the PSP's screen backlight up to the FOURTH, brightest brightness setting, which is not accesible when running off the internal battery. By the way, that 8-9 hours I quoted? That's with me ALWAYS running at the fourth brightness setting... the PSP screen just looks even more amazing at this very bright setting.

It also seems that you can charge the brick and the PSP itself AT THE SAME TIME OFF OF THE SAME AC ADAPTER. So if you've really gone an extended time, drained the brick completely and also the PSP's internal battery, you don't have to worry about charging one then switching to the other, just plug the adapter into the brick and the brick into the PSP and leave it for roughly 6-7 hours and both will be fully charged. SWEET!!!


The ONLY downsides I have on this wonderful little brick is that the raised, chrome colored Pelican logo is just too cheesy for me, but really as long as it stays in your pocket who cares. The only other downside is that the top of the brick gets VERY hot while it's charging. I thought maybe my brick was defective but after googling around I found that this seems to be common to all of them.


Anyways... I wholeheartedly recommend this product to anyone who owns a PSP even if battery life hasn't been an issue for you, if only so that you can experience the joy of always running on the fourth brightness setting which is GREAT for darker games like Metal Gear Acid and Twisted Metal. And at only $20 I feel it is a VERY good deal... the only unknown factory is lifespan and that's the only one I'm worried about. Cheap rechargeable batteries tend to fall off in capacity pretty rapidly and that would suck if that would be the case with the brick.
 
I bought something called a 'Power Runner' years ago to charge my archos jukebox. (cost a fortune bak then!!!!)

This sounds like the same thing. On my power runner you can change the voltage for each item you use, would love to dare to try it with my psp. It really is exactly the same as you said. Just have a go......


Nope, I daredn't! But thanks for the review!

How was the rest of E3?
 
whoa... :blink:


holy crap that sux. Mine has been working fine so far. I was a little concerned at how hot it got the first time I charged it but it hasn't ever seemed to get hot like that again. I looked around and found some reviews and others also mentioned about it getting hot but no one mentioned them going up in flames or anything though!!! I thought it only got hot like that the first time because it was completely drained and the current draw must have been pretty big. Well I'll be careful and only charge it when I'm there to look at it I guess.... let it melt I'd love to sue somebody :p
 
....yeah, i still may get one, though. i'll wait for later models!
 
Quiest posted on May 22 2005 at 09:33 AM said:
I would be too afraid that this thing kills my psp!

Well obviously if that happens Pelican would have to replace everything that got damaged by their unit.

I'm going to keep using mine... works perfectly so far and I love playing all my games at the fourth brightness setting and having so much more battery life.

But, thanks to that link about the one that melted, I'm keeping my reciept and warranty card and all that so that IF anything happens I'll be covered. I also wont let the thing charge if I'm not around to watch it...

One thing about what that guy did, I have this feeling he had the Power Brick plugged in to the adapter, charging, while running the PSP off the brick at the same time... I imagine the current draw could be enough to do that... as I said a fully drained battery WILL get pretty hot when you first start charging it... Anyways I looked around and didn't find any other claims of this kind of thing happening.
 
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Seriously if it were that big of a deal or that common it'd be all over the internet by now, this is just one story of one guy with one defective unit... yet I KNOW these things must be selling a LOT because every time I stopped by Gamestop to pick one up they were sold out, supposedly getting shipments of them every week!

Again I think this guys one melted when it was charging, not during actual use, so I'm not worried about it... I'm surprised you guys are making this big a deal because ONE guy had a defective one.
 
yeah i know, ti's crazy though!
i'll get one...and keep an eye one it
 
One other thing I thought might be worth mentioning for those who don't already know (this applies to just using the regular AC Adapter as well).

The PSP can be switched back and forth from the internal battery to external power WHILE TURNED ON. So you can turn the PSP on and start playing, running off the internal battery, and then plug the power brick in, and the game will continue uninterrupted (well of course you probably paused while you plugged it in :D ), it will switch power sources w/o any effect on the game. Same deal, if you're playing while charging and it fully charges, you can unplug it and not worry about the system shutting off or anything.


Additionally, you can remove the internal battery completely and still play running off of external power.
 
odd... anyone with a guess as to why?

Mine still performing quite nicely... doesn't even get very hot while charging like it did the first time.


Unfortunately.... even the fourth brightness setting is not enough to make games like Metal Gear and Twisted Metal really playable outdoors on a sunny day :(
 
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