Lenmar PowerPort Laptop - Portable Battery and Charger for Notebook Computers (PPU916)

• 5500mAh Lithium-Polymer battery externally powers your laptop while charging the internal battery, providing several hours of extra productivity Voltage 16,19,5.3
• Includes a USB output port for charging cell phones, mp3 players and other USB powered devices
• Compact, lightweight and ultra-thin - fits easily into your laptop case, backpack or briefcase for travel Fully recharges in 3-4 hours using your laptop's AC power adapter and included adapter tips
• 1 year warranty

I have a Samsung laptop and even though this product claims to work with Samsung, it does not work with mine. There is no way on the Lenmar website to find more tips to fit. Disappointed I have a long plane trip coming up and no backup power for my laptop. These batteries need to be more specific as to whether or not they are going to work with a particular laptop or not.

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So I have a bunch of these type of things, Xantrex Powerpacks, Solio etc... and most of all them have done well with small electronics PDAs, Phones etc... but fail in reality when running a laptop, usually because they rely on inverter technology then use the laptop power supply.

The PPU916 from Lenmar charges directly from your laptop power supply (in fact many such power supplies, so you can have it charging on one from an old laptop without having to disconnect your current laptop etc...). It is compact as a laptop charger and is remarkably low weight compared to other such devices with older battery technology.

It charged quickly and has a nice multi-led panel that shows how full it is and whether it is charging or has reached capacity all works well.

Output to the laptop is handled via a short dedicated cable with multiple tips. I found one in the supplied pack to handle my Gateway netbook and Dell Latitude D830. It also has a USB output so you can charge other electronics via their own USB connector most surprisingly I found that this worked well with my iPhone 4 which is usually very demanding of its power sources.

Not using the laptop power adapter to run from the Lenmar has the advantage that you can keep down the bulk. Just a netbook, small cable and the thin battery and you are good for a long time.

On the iPhone 4, I had it running the device while playing music and taking calls etc... and even after several hours of doing this, the Lenmar still hadn't dropped below the maximum 4 leds. I imagine it will run that phone for days based on this great for folks spending time away from AC power etc...

With the Gateway, (which already runs nearly 10 hrs in full power saving mode) it connected quickly and securely and the charging light came on and the netbook charged well. Again I got took the netbook from 70% to 100% without a drop in the meter on the Lenmar. I estimate a good 3-5 hrs runtime added if not more. Great for meetings when everyone else is running to try and get their power cords into a wall socket!

With the large laptop, a Dell Latitude D830, which the website states to be compatible, I didn't have so much luck. I got a tip to fit, but even when the Lenmar was completely full, the charging sign went on and off with the display flickering every few seconds as it alternated between automatic power modes, thinking it had power then no power etc...the charging light never stayed on.

It is possible that you could configure the power modes to avoid the flickering, and maybe you would extend battery life with the Lenmar plugged in, but it didn't exude confidence that this would work.

So overall, as an extender for small electronics/small laptops, I heartily recommend it but for large devices proceed with caution and if that is your only intended use, consider somewhere with a return policy.

One last gripe, the operating instructions point to a website location lenmar.com/adaptertips (and then adaptortips later on), where you are supposed to find the mapping between tips and devices neither was a valid link however and there was nothing on the site to guide you to it. I had to just use trial and error although it wasn't that hard.

All in all if it works for your devices I think $99 is pretty good when you look at what else is out there!

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My Dell Vostro laptop (after about 2 years of use) regularly runs 2 to 2.5 hours on its battery. It is a powerful laptop.

I bought the Lenmar external battery to help me work on long-distance flights and to take to coffee shops, meetings, etc. (where I'm not sure I'll be able to find an electric outlet). I used the battery only once on a 5 to 5.5 hour flight from San Diego to Boston. And it worked great (so far) so I thought I'd tell you about it.

I used my regular battery till I had about 20% charge left. I plugged the Lenmar into the place where my power-cord normally goes. It quickly (within about 30 minutes) boosted my battery capacity to about 98%--all the time I was still using my computer. I didn't have to reboot like I might have had to do if I was switching laptop batteries. I unplugged the Lenmar and continued to use my laptop and had about 50% left of it's capacity when the flight attendant told us to turn off all electronics. In other words, I probably had my computer on for about 5 hours, and it's likely it might have gone on for up to 5.5 to 6 hours.

I don't know whether this Lenmar external battery will always perform this well, but so far, it's perfect for what I need it for.

1. It doubled my battery life.

2. It's about one-third to one-half the price of an extra computer battery.

3. It's reasonably small, a little smaller than an Ipad.

4. It didn't get hot (a little warm maybe).

5. It's easy to use.

6. It is better than carrying a second laptop battery because you don't have to shut down your computer to install the battery--you just plug it in. It is bigger than a regular laptop battery.

7. You can also charge your cell phone (I think at the same time, though I haven't tried that yet)

8. And it looks good too.

In it's first use, the Lenmar external battery appears to be a real find. I had no idea external portable batteries for laptops existed--and there seem to be only a few on the market that can handle laptops.

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Wanting to like a product is not a good reason to buy it. It's called wishful thinking, and the Lenmar PowerPort was an excellent example of a product that sounded too good to be true. In my own defense, I did contact them to ask them whether the unit would work with my Asus Zenbook, and they never replied, which should have been a warning. But the faithful ignore warnings and march on blindly. I had to return the unit, after quite a bit of unnecessary fiddling.

The broader issue is why laptop makers have designed Ultrabooks to not have easily accessible and replaceable batteries taking the worst page from the Apple playbook. Meanwhile, Lenmar is not the answer to short battery life.

I purchased the PPU916 for my Thinkpad T400 as a replacement for the ultrabay battery that went belly up (the ultrabay battery was a 2900 mah secondary battery that fit into the same slot normally occupied by the DVD/CD drive). It costs less than a replacement ultrabay battery and has a higher battery capacity for not much more in weight or size. From my initial tests this battery has about the same capacity as the native regular battery on the T400, which is in line with its stated capacity of 5500 mah. It ran for about an hour and a half with everything on the laptop turned on and me trying to drain it as quickly as possible for the test (the laptop by default runs in AC mode with this battery hooked up because it can't tell that it's a battery and not AC current, but that's an issue with any of these external batteries).

The only two minor issues I had with the unit is that the tips that the Lenmar web site said went with my T400 were wrong (the T400 uses the L62 tips, not the L53 ones that the web site said), and the manual says that the fifth red LED light does double duty as a charging indicator and shows the final 20% charge, when in fact it only shows as a charging indicator and the other four blue LEDs are the sole indicators of remaining charge. These are both minor issues. The only other even more minor issue is that there is no bag or anything for all the tips, which I guess the manufacturer doesn't expect you to have to take with you anywhere once you select the correct ones for your laptop.

Some people have posted about issues powering/charging larger laptops and some reviews on other websites like tomshardware.com have claimed that the unit cannot charge laptop batteries at the same time as it's charging itself from the laptop AC power adapter. I haven't had any of these issues. I ran the PPU916 until it was fully discharged, and then ran my laptop battery down about a third in order to test this. When I hooked the AC adapter up to the PPU916 and then connected it to my Thinkpad T400, both batteries were charging at the same time, and as far as I could tell the laptop was charging at the usual rate. Now, maybe this is because the T400 requires the PPU916 to be set at 19v instead of 16v and/or because the Thinkpad T400 AC adapter puts out up to 90 watts of power which is more than most other laptop AC adapters, and thus there is extra power available to charge both batteries at once. It could be either one of these things if the people who where having problems were using a 16v AC adapter with a lower wattage rating. I did notice that the AC adapter brick got warmer than usual which I'm assuming was because it was drawing a lot of power.

One other thing that I tested, and was pleasantly surprised at the result, was that the PPU916 will charge an iPad, which means it must be putting out at least 10w through the USB port, as an iPad will not charge from a standard 5w USB port found on most PCs. This test was done with an original iPad. I can't say for sure if it will charge an iPad 2 or 3.

All in all I'm pretty happy with the purchase.