DeWalt USB-C Charging Kit review: your power tool battery can charge gadgets now

Your leaf blower battery ought to be capable of cost a laptop computer. Your drill battery ought to cost your telephone. And whereas we’re at it, why shouldn’t our ever-more highly effective USB-C energy adapters be capable of cost these energy software batteries as properly?

Essentially, there’s not a lot distinction between a battery financial institution you purchase from Anker and an influence software battery from DeWalt — each usually include the identical 18650 lithium-ion cells. However to do all that, your energy software batteries would want a robust USB-C port.

And that hasn’t actually been a factor… until now.

The $100 DeWalt DCB094 USB Charging Package helps you to add that port to any DeWalt 20V energy software battery in a literal snap. Slide this quarter-pound adapter onto your battery pack, and also you get a bi-directional 100W USB-C PD port. Which means not solely are you able to cost as much as a MacBook Professional-sized laptop computer with a sufficiently big DeWalt pack, you possibly can cost these DeWalt packs along with your laptop computer or telephone’s USB-C charger as properly.

The adapter helps all the pieces from a budget 1.3Ah packs that got here along with your loss-leader combo package to the huge 15Ah FlexVolt packs you’d most likely solely stick in stationary instruments. It’s the most important gadget charging battery you’re liable to seek out exterior of devoted energy stations.

As somebody with a storage drawer filled with DeWalt batteries, I couldn’t wait to place it to the take a look at. Nevertheless it’s additionally not fairly the expertise I used to be dreaming of.

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I’ve been testing the DeWalt DCB094 on and off for months, and right here’s the excellent news: it completely works.

I turned DeWalt’s monster 15Ah pack right into a USB-C exterior battery that was capable of cost my spouse’s 14-inch MacBook Professional (69.6Wh) three full instances and nonetheless had gasoline within the tank. My Steam Deck? I charged up its 40.04Wh pack 5 full instances — that’s 10 further hours of Elden Ring proper there. After I filmed an almost three-hour timelapse Lego construct with my iPhone, I plugged it right into a 6Ah DeWalt pack figuring out there was no method I’d run out of juice.

Each DeWalt 20V battery I attempted, new or outdated, giant or small, labored with the adapter, too. That features my two 1.5Ah packs, one 1.7Ah pack, the 2 5Ah packs that got here with my lawnmower, and the 2 6Ah packs I purchased a couple of yr in the past and infrequently use. I clocked all of them charging as much as 100W in each instructions over that USB-C port, sufficient to maintain as we speak’s (however not tomorrow’s) largest USB-C PD laptops operating identical to they have been plugged into the wall.

When it got here time to recharge these energy software batteries, the 100W USB-C port generally let me do it sooner than DeWalt’s AC adapters, too. Whereas DeWalt sadly solely ships the DCB094 with a 65W USB-C charger, even that ought to provide a sooner charging fee than the corporate’s cheaper AC adapters that include drill or driver kits. And once I added my very own individually bought 100W USB-C charger, I used to be capable of shave off time over my 4A (80W) DeWalt AC adapter when charging the very largest packs.

Right here’s how briskly I obtained these batteries to cost and roughly how a lot I obtained out of them:

The one concern I had was that if I absolutely drained a battery, and I imply absolutely drained it — ran all of it the best way down in a leaf blower or drill repeatedly till it will spin no extra — generally the DeWalt adapter wouldn’t gentle as much as cost once I popped it on. Typically I needed to trick it by plugging it into a special battery or charger first.

So if all of it works so fantastically, why am I giving it this product a 6? Partly as a result of The Verge simply moved to a full 10-point scale for evaluate scores to keep away from rating inflation — a 6 remains to be good! — but in addition partly as a result of the DeWalt adapter’s benefits start to recede if you’re not pairing it with a 15Ah battery that prices $389 all by itself.

With smaller batteries like my 1.5A, 1.7A and even 4Ah packs, they merely didn’t cost needy gadgets lengthy sufficient to justify reaching for them over a conventional battery financial institution or charger.

A part of that’s doubtless as a consequence of switch losses, which aren’t distinctive to DeWalt. You possibly can’t absolutely cost a 100Wh laptop computer battery with a 100Wh battery pack like DeWalt’s DCB205 as a result of a few of that vitality doesn’t make it throughout. (Some will get expended as warmth, and I can attest that charging my 100Wh HyperJuice with the DeWalt adapter made the HyperJuice get uncomfortably sizzling to the contact.) Normally, I noticed losses of between 20 p.c and 33 p.c with my devices – for instance, the 6Ah (120Wh) DCB206 solely gave me 80Wh price of Steam Deck battery life.

Picture by Sean Hollister/The Verge

However that 6Ah battery can be a 2.5-pound brick when you add the DeWalt adapter — twice the load of my HyperJuice, even when we’re assuming I don’t have to purchase the DeWalt battery as a result of I have already got one for my instruments. DeWalt’s 5Ah battery is just a bit lighter, however then I’d solely be 66Wh of energy for my devices, and so forth.

When you think about the truth that DeWalt’s batteries are fairly dear and heavy for the capability they usually provide, I can’t actually suggest somebody purchase into the DeWalt ecosystem only for this characteristic, until you actually need rugged batteries that may cost your gadgets and energy instruments on the go.

However when you already have a storage filled with sizeable DeWalt batteries that don’t get a variety of use? I may completely see myself spending $100 if I didn’t have already got a succesful energy financial institution or two. Between the 5A charging speeds and the 100W output for devices, there’s loads to love.

Now, although, what I really need is for DeWalt and firm to take the apparent subsequent step: stick the USB-C port on the battery itself, so we don’t have to mess with adapters in any respect. In January, DeWalt product supervisor Sean Fitzgibbons informed me the DCB094 may very well be a little bit of a take a look at balloon: “If we get the curiosity that I count on we’re going to get, I feel that will open the door much more to doubtlessly including that on to batteries down the highway.”

I feel DeWalt ought to simply do it. Lots of people would purchase a USB-C native energy software battery who’d by no means take into account a $100 adapter you’ve gotta tackle and off each time.