I purchased one and wrote a pretty decent sized review for it. I think that my review answers all the questions so here goes.
The PSP's largest problem in my view is the battery life. While it can last 10 hours playing MP3 files during gaming you will only get 3 to 6 hours. To combat this problem many third party companies are releasing battery packs and a variety of chargers. I personally purchased the Pelican Power Brick with the hope that it would be able to triple the battery life of the unit. According to the Pelican website "The Power Brick gives you twice the playing time of a PSP battery at half the cost!" To back up the claims of Pelican I figured I would do some tests of my own and along the way I noticed something interesting.
When I first got it home and opened up the package I noticed two things. No power adapter and no instructions. While most people don't read the instructions anyways its always nice to include something. With the size of the brick they could have put them on a sticker on the side even. Instead of using a separate power supply just for the power brick Pelican has you use the original PSP power supply to charge. You can even charge the power brick and the PSP at the same time off of the one adapter. I quickly figured out that if the green light on the side is blinking then its charging and once the light stays solid green the brick is charged.
The Power Brick itself is about the size of a UMD and about 3 to 4 times as thick. The sticker on the back says "3.6 Volts 3600 mA". The original PSP battery is 3.6v 1800mAh. The odd part is I could not find anywhere that Pelican lists what kind of battery is in the power brick and more on that voltage and milliamp rating later.
The first thing I did was plug the PSP power supply into the Power Brick. After a few minutes I noticed the corner of the unit near where the power cable was attached was getting very hot.
After I let the unit fully charge I figured I would test just how much power the battery can supply. The best test I could think of is trying to charge the PSP's battery then after the PSP is fully charged, discharging the PSP and trying to charge it again.
After I discharged the PSP until the Battery Info screen showed 0% and the PSP turned off I attached the charged Power Brick. After the charging light on the PSP turned off I disconnected the Power Brick and proceeded to discharge the PSP battery again. Once the PSP was fully discharged I reconnected the Power Brick and waited until the charging light on the PSP went off again. I did not have to wait long as I checked up on the unit only an hour later and found that the Power Brick could no longer continue to charge the PSP. When I checked the battery screen on the PSP it showed a 24% charge.
The way I read the Pelican package and the battery makes it sound like the Power Brick should have been able to fully charge the PSP twice or at least do better then 24% on the second charge. Thats when I started to wonder about that 3.6 volts it claims on the side of the Power Brick. The PSP power adapter is 5v if the Power Brick only put out 3.6v the charge circuit on the PSP would not turn on so it had to be putting out more voltage. I later found out a fully charged Power Brick puts out around 5.2v. I believe the whole reason the Power Brick says 3.6 Volts 3600 mA is to make it look like the battery can hold twice the charge of the main battery (which it can not as my tests show).
In the interest of fully testing the unit I broke it open (broke is the correct word they glue the unit shut). It has a small green circuit board and a blue shrink wrapped battery pack made up of two batteries in series. On the circuit board there is some texas instraments chip that has been scratched to prevent you from reading the chip number which I thought was odd. The batteries had very few markings and the only numbers on them did not show up in a google search so I still have no clue what kind they are.
Along the way I also noticed the connecter on the PSP is the same size as the power connecter used on many PDA's including my own Dell Axim x50v. Just to find out how much power this can supply I hooked it up to my Axim and found that as long as I leave it off it can charge just fine otherwise the Power Brick can not keep up and the screen flickers.
In the end for $19.99 the Pelican Power Brick offers you the chance to double the battery life of the PSP and possibly supply power to some other gadgets. If double the battery life is not enough for you several companies will be releasing hard cases that include extended batteries in the coming weeks. The Power Brick is also available in several accessory packs that include other PSP products such as car chargers, UMD disk caddies, and screen protectors.
For information from Pelican checkout
http://www.pelicanperformance.com/ps...sheet/6018.htm
