Gadgetory

before I go further I need to say this even though I purchased it myself from B&H with the intention of publishing a review from a normal users perspective I was so appalled by the Brenton hydrogen reactor that I contacted them anyway and spoke to customer support and the product manager who assured me the design was fine and there might be something wrong with my unit he said he'd exchanged my unit for a new one and since then I've waited over a month during which time I've sent four requests for the new unit they haven't replied and all I can do now is assume they don't think sending a new one will help so without further ado here's my video the cooler master glazier 240 L CPU cooler delivers the convenience of an all-in-one and the performance of a custom water cooler click now to learn more welcome to my unboxing of a product that many people are curious about and no one seems to know much about not even the manufacturer the page about it linked from the Brunton home page seems designed to give as little information as possible with only a promotional video designed to appeal to outdoorsy environmentalists I mean I guess the video also shows using it in the snow and rain and stuff and says that you can abuse the product and they'll cover it under warranty so that's cool but I wish it also said to be careful because the exposed plugged in USB connectors in a wet environment that they show in the video are not a great idea and even if your hydrogen reactor is covered your phone or whatever else is plugged into it is not we find more information on the page within the store a particular interest here is the fact that you can live swap the cells when one runs out for continuous power a very neat feature the benefits listed on the store are that it's environmentally responsible it recharges with water and a hydrolyzed ER and then outputs only water when in use it has no bulky batteries but a bulky reactor to carry and these things so I don't know no solar power to rely on and no natural discharge which is a definite issue with regular rechargeable batteries even Anna loops this last selling point is a potentially important feature for something like an emergency preparedness kit so these are Hydra they store hydrogen by absorbing the gas into reversible metal hydride this means the solid-state storage and less volatility compared to straight compressed gas you can even take up to two of them on an airplane with you in terms of size that are about equivalent to four to five double-a batteries with the optional hydrolyzed ER accessory that can be recharged up to a hundred times I was actually looking for extra information about the hydro cores and I came across horizons website they seem to be the actual manufacturer of a similar product called the mini pack and similar hydrogen cartridges called hydro sticks which Brunton has refined branded and brought to market a fairly common occurrence unfortunately because it's not a straight real label the ODMs website really didn't help me as much as I hoped and ended up just being yet another source of conflict information on the phone when I asked Brenton directly I was told a Hydra core is about equivalent to a four thousand milliamp hour battery bank but good luck finding that information anywhere public on the Brunton site and product box instead they rate it in iphone recharges derp okay so it's rated at six iphone recharges but then horizon site says two iphone recharges which is more in line with the four thousand milliamp hours that I was told on the phone then they've got double a battery equivalencies that are used on both websites instead of standardized measurements these also frustrated me as I continued to dig on the Brunton box it claims that a hydro core is equal to 15 plus double-a batteries but horizons Hydra stick has both 14 and 10 battery equivalencies on the exact same page literally 6 inches from each other lastly and this is important Brunton claims hydro cores will handle a 2 amp output and horizon rates their hydro sticks at 0.4 amps I was a shirt on the phone that the higher amperage output is one of the benefits over the horizon design of the Brunton one and you just press this button on the top to kick it into high gear to enable to amp output at the end of it all I really wasn't sure how to interpret everything but one theory I had at first was that Brunton could be using the refined Hydra stick Pro that was teased on horizons Facebook page months ago but then never released under their own name after testing I'm not so sure but for now let's move on to using it I didn't realize this when buying it but it's actually basically useless without the 250 dollar recharge station the two included Hydra course will be empty after anywhere from four to twelve iPhone cellphone charges and then you can either buy more of them for twenty bucks a pop if you can even find them I couldn't find anywhere to buy them or get a recharge station for 250 dollars I assumed that the reactor itself would come with that functionality for a hundred and fifty dollars guess I should have done more research so basically at this point a product that is supposed to reduce bulk compared to battery banks has me carrying fuel cells a reactor a recharge station and then something to power the recharge station with if I'm going to be somewhere for longer than a couple of days brilliant anyway you load the fuel cell in by screed in wait for the light to stop flashing then it's ready to rock the purge valve does a self-test to during the startup process don't be alarmed it's just a little this knows it's not a big deal in operation the reactor gets warm to the touch but not hot the hydro core fuel cell on the other hand does not it stays cool to the touch noticeably damp air comes off the sidewall to operator which makes sense because it does exhaust water but there's no real visible steam and it does kind of smell funny but I wasn't sure if that was only because it's new or whether it will continue to do that throughout its lifetime I mean all that's fine and good but as long as it charges your devices then a device charger can be determined to be functional well honestly once it got going and booted up it just plain didn't do that either my HTC one picked up the power source but said it was insufficient for charging and my iPad Mini has a nice little helpful not charging icon in the top corner so it sounds like that point four amp rating on horizon site is probably closer to reality than the 2 amp one that Brenton's advertising on their site in spite of the fact that right here on the side of the box it says one amp so out and when it in order to validate these results since I didn't get another unit I checked out reviews on their website what few of those reviews aren't just pre-sales questions from people who don't actually own the thing with responses from brundin employees that are then rated 5 stars did seem to back this up mine doesn't charge a tablet or even a high powered smartphone and that seemed consistent with the experience that the only other verified owners I can find are having I also really have to question the claim of reduced bulk and weight in their video compared to batteries to Hydra cores in a reactor you will need one of these for the other stuff to be useful at all weigh all together around 365 grams or about the same as a 12,000 milliamp hour battery pack from into circuit which you can get for about 50 bucks on Amazon in addition to that they are much smaller they're not as versatile in terms of output voltage and the devices they can power and they don't have as much capacity compared to that into circuit solution this whole apparatus also weighs about the same as to Patriot fuel plus 9 thousand milliamp hour portable battery banks these are $72 each firm Patriot and they stomp all over the Brunton hydrogen reactor in terms of capacity they have two and a half m outputs for faster charging they're similar overall size not to mention that with regular portable battery packs there's no water vapor exhaust you don't need to keep them in a particular orientation there's no boot up time they have more output ports I don't know if I mentioned that already and they're easy to obtain at a local store whereas more fuel cells will need to be ordered online if you can find them at all and finally they don't need an expensive charging station so basically unless you're an early adopter for fun I don't recommend this product okay it's green and hydro cores are recyclable as tin but it just doesn't make any sense it's meat to see fuel cell technology being deployed for consumers even if the initial product offerings are unexceptional expensive and difficult to obtain but for me to re-examine this technology in the future functionality will have to be improved and pricing will have to come down quite a bit speaking of price from browsing Brunton's website it looks like they are taking some pretty sweet profit on their products in general their equivalent to the into circuit twelve thousand million power charger is called the Impella - and comes with a rugged casing and costs four hundred dollars that is eight times as much for that rugged casing you might as well just buy eight of the other one so maybe what it will take is another brand to bring fuel cell products to market and we'll get a result that makes a bit more sense for the average consumer don't forget to like this video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it please do support Linus tech tips if you do feel the need i've got a support link below the video that will give you all kinds of options anywhere from changing your amazon bookmark link to our affiliate one so that we get a kickback all the way up to contributing to us directly we're going to be having like t-shirts soon and all that kind of stuff is great and as always guys don't forget to subscribe for more unboxings reviews and other computer videos you