Customer Reviews

Black & Decker CP120B 20-Watt Power Backup Battery Pack

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

Ok, I give it 5 stars although out of four I bought, two would not charge properly, but at 3.99 it was worth the extra effort to get them going. Here is the problem with some of these, the batteries have been sitting a while, so after you charge it for a few minutes, some of these may show they are charged, even though they are not. The batteries need to be cycled in these and all of mine have come back to life. Here is what you can do to help bring them back...

1) Charge unit until LED goes green (with a battery that needs to be cycled, it may show its charged after a few minutes. With battery that is in good shape and being dead, it should take around 4 hours to charge)
2) Unplug charger and turn on unit. It may go dead after a few minutes, thats OK. After it shuts itself off, wait 10 minutes.

Repeat the steps above and it should come back to life. The most I repeated the above steps were 4 times before it accepted a full charge, and all mine work now. Hope this helps someone if theirs does not take a proper charge...

I, too, think this battery pack works GREAT! I tried it for my Blackberry (I let it run down as low as it would go without it shutting off) and it charged my Blackberry enough for a whole day's use, and then some. A week went by without my charging up the B&D Pocket Power before I used it again, this time on my iPod. It was still able to charge my 80GB iPod. I use my iPod for music AND videos and, with the charge from Pocket Power, I even had enough battery power to watch my videos, which is energy-intensive. I have even tried charging my Canon EOS camera battery and it extended my use of the camera. I am buying another one for my trips to Europe -- not every hotel room there is equipped with as many outlets as we enjoy here and a travelling family can only stay up so long in the evenings vying for outlets to charge their electronics. It's not that heavy or bulky to take. However, despite all my accolades, remember that the sole function of this is as a BACK-UP (note the emphasis on back-up!); you should keep it fully charged when you have the opportunity to (because it does take many hours to charge) for those times in a pinch when you need it to charge something else that you forgot or didn't have the opportunity to. Hey, life's a juggling act -- it would be remiss of me to say that a little 5x3x1 box will end all our electronics charging woes!

Two weeks ago I purchased this Black and Decker product from my local CVS store in California. Brand-new, out of the package it wouldn't work. I felt reassured that at least it had a two year warranty, and was a "name brand" of Black and Decker. I was shocked when I phoned the Black and Decker service center in Texas, the 800-544-6986 that was included with the warranty info, ...and they told me that since the item had been manufactured three years earlier (there was a 2007 date-sticker on product), and since this product had been discontinued by Black and Decker, they could not honor the warranty for repair or replacement.

I informed the Black and Decker service-center manager [Anita] that it was not legal for Black and Decker to claim "no responsibility" for their warranty, and they couldn't refuse to honor their warranty just because they discontinued the item, (particularly because I had just purchased it two weeks prior, & had my receipt). She then gave me a local Black and Decker service-center phone number in California, where the representative ("Dave") informed me that because the item was discontinued by Black and Decker, "I was out of luck", and there was nothing they could do. It was just suggested I return the item to the store.

Beware consumers! Black and Decker is setting new precedents in skirting their legal responsibilities regarding honoring their product-warranties. It seems that since the volume of complaints are so high regarding Black and Decker products, not much attention is being paid to this negligence on Black and Decker's part, (and who has the time and money to bring a "breach of warranty" case to court, for a $50. item?)

After this experience I will never again have confidence in the Black and Decker name, and I urge you to consider researching consumer-complaints about this company's customer-service, before purchasing Black and Decker products.

Tom, in Encinitas California

This battery pack has a USB port that I can confirm works with the iPhone 3G.

The battery is a 1200 mAh NiMH battery that should just about charge an iPhone 3G from 0% to 100%.

This is an awesome product it charges super fast. I dont know what the other reviewer is talking about i can get 2 charges out of this even when i use my extended iPpod battery this is one product every person with an ipod should have.

I bought three of these, and they are very useful. There is a USB port and a regular 110 plug, so you can use it with anything that will take a USB cable for power and can also use it with you regular chargers for things like cell phones, PDA's, and even the Kindle. It's a little heavy, but not bad considering that it is a battery. Nice back-up for use on an airplane if you think you might run low on battery power. I bought mine "dirt cheap" from two different vendors on Amazon. If you search for this item on the Web, you will find some outrageous prices. I think the regular list is something like $59.95, and I would never pay that. I got mine for less than $10 (I don't even want to know why they were that cheap).

I got one of these a year ago. The issue I had was that the thing only had about 15mins of power before shutting down. That is usb or powering a 7w fluorescent bulb AC.

I was interested in using this 20 watt battery pack to power my modem/router during power outages so that I could have internet access. Testing a fully charged unit, I set my laptop to stream internet radio and the B & D device powered my modem/router (a Zoom ADSL X6) for 1 hour and 10 minutes. Since this product has a niMH battery and I was concerned about self-discharge, I ran another test after the battery pack had been recharged and then unplugged and left alone for a week. This time it powered the modem/router for just over an hour. I also used it to power the Zenith DTT 901 tv converter box and got over 2 hours viewing time with it. I also tested a second unit with nearly identical results.

I have seen numerous complaints about these units - underperforming or not working on various electronics, so maybe I was just lucky, but I am exceptionally well pleased with this product and have purchased several more for family members.

This has to be one of the best product that
i have bought. Only bad thing is you cant hook up everything to it or it will overload.

There are two sizes, the small 800 MAH unit (2 hours) & the large 2000 MAH (5 hours) unit. I purchased the small 10 watt unit & was VERY disappointed so I returned it. It took 17 hour charge for only 2 hours of my XM radio use which was insane. I then purchased the 'heavy' 20 watt unit with much better results. I used it to power my XM radio for 5 hours and it works well to recharge my cell phone twice. It will also power a LED 2 watt (45 watt equiv) light bulb for 7 hours. It also charges in 17 hours but the power available is more satisfactory. I WILL KEEP IT. It will work better if the Lithium Ion version is ever developed.