A couple of years ago I bought a Ravpower 30W USB PD powerbank with one USB Type-C port, and two regular 5v USB ports.

It was a little quirky. Sometimes it would start charging itself from the laptop until I held the button down for 5s. At some point the behavior started getting worse, to the point that last summer I left a poor review. The seller contacted me quickly, and I had a replacement within a week. The replacement fixed the problem.

That left me with the defective unit. Today, I decided to take it apart and see what’s inside.

The highlights are:

• A sturdy ABS case
• 8x LG F1L 18650 cells
• One PCB
  • Sonix SN8F57 8-bit 8051-based microcontroller
  • Cyprus CYPD2122 USB PD port controller
  • Southchip SC8802 buck-boost charge & discharge controller
    • Regulation of voltage and current for lithium ion battery charging for 1s-6s battery packs (4.2-25.2v)
    • Charging current to 10A!
    • Input voltage from 2.7-30v
    • Output to load from 2-30v & 60W

The pack sells for ~$75. To put things in perspective, you can buy eight FL1 cells for $4.41/each, which works out to about $35. That price drops to $3.56 each through a grey-market seller if you buy a thousand at a time. Ravpower is almost certainly paying less than that.

You can see more in the YouTube video I shot of the process:

Datasheets: