Back a month or so ago, I ordered a mini 3rd-party Garmin charging battery bank. I can’t remember if I stumbled upon it myself on Amazon or if a DCR reader pointed me at it. Either way, way-back-when, I ordered it and have been using it on and off over the last while. But I’m not entirely sure it’s really for everyone. Or at least, why you’d buy it.
Now, I’ll preface this by saying I’m generally fully on “Team Buy All the Chargers and Battery Banks”. If there’s any issue I have, it’s buying things to charge my devices. Probably cause I’m stuck charging so many things, I’m always looking to ensure I’ve got juice. For example, I continue to use tons of the 3rd-party charging pucks, Garmin charging stands, and even Garmin USB-C keychain adapters.
Long-term, some of these cheap products work well, and sometimes they don’t. Just like Garmin’s own charging cables. I have more of those than I can count, including many of the newerish USB-C ones, even one right next to me that barely holds on to the watch. But instead of Garmin’s own charging cables costing $20-$25, most 3rd-party charging cables/situations are like 2-4 units for $9.
In any event…back to this mini battery pack. Here’s what’s in the box:
The thing is roughly the size of a square Oreo, if square Oreos were to exist. For better or worse, they don’t.
It’s a bit chunkier in thickness though, but it does have a leash. In thinking about it, I could see a leash being debatably useful for dunking Oreos in milk. Food for thought.
The specs on the unit are 1,200mAh, meaning that with most Garmin watches having about a 300-500mAh battery (depending on the unit/case size), so something like a Fenix 8 47mm, you’d be able to charge roughly 3-4 times.
In my testing, after topping off the battery bank and then fully charging an empty Fenix 8 Pro 47mm, it showed 2/3rds battery remaining (but the battery indicators are only 3 dots, so fairly imprecise). It has a USB-C port on the side and an LED battery indicator too. There’s also a button to start charging.
So when it comes to using it, you simply plop your watch onto it, and off it goes. In most cases, this works fine for all the units I’ve stuck on it thus far:
However, it won’t hold on there permanently if jostled. It’s not MagSafe or such. You can wrap the watch around the unit, like your wrist, and that works for watches with slightly smaller straps (like the Garmin Bounce 2), but for longer straps, I find even on the tightest option, there’s still a bit of play there, which would get bonked if in a backpack or such.
Now, you can use hair ties or rubber bands to make it stay there, which is what I do. With three daughters and a wife, I’ve got more of these things floating about than I could ever count. I fail to understand how my daughters can go to school each day with their hair in a ponytail, another one or two on their wrists, and then return home with none and their hair removed from said ponytail. All with no knowledge of how that happened. Point being, the only way to hold the watch on there during movement is with some sort of rubber band/hair tie.
When it comes to charging, I charged two Fenix 8 Pro 48mm watches side-by-side from zero, and they charged at exactly the same rate from start to finish. Garmin’s newer watches take roughly an hour to get most of the way there (~90%, quite linear charging), before trickle charging the remaining/final 10% over roughly another 25-30 minutes. Older watches take 3-5 business days to complete charging, regardless of method. Either way, all of them charge with very low power demands compared to a phone or laptop, so all of this is relatively trivial.
When it comes to charging the pod itself, you’d do that via USB-C cable. Which gets to my first annoyance – I can’t use the same port to charge other devices. Meaning, I can’t use the Garmin watch charging bank to randomly charge anything else via that USB-C port. Which would make it *MUCH* more interesting as a backup battery bank in a hiking bag or such. When I’m hiking on multi-day treks, I generally keep a smaller power bank in my bag, which I literally mark with tape as emergency use only. It’s specifically designed in case my other battery bank (and phone) dies, and then I specifically get myself in trouble and need my phone. It’s not for simply charging my phone because I need to take more photos. It’s there as an emergency backup.
All of which then segues into the last challenge here: Given the sorta-chunky size, and price, limited holding strength, and relatively limited capacity, it seems to make *far* more sense to just get a lipstick power bank, even one with a built-in USB-C cable, and then a Garmin to USB-C adapter if you wanted to.
Which isn’t to say there is no audience for this unit. For example, there are two core use cases I see:
1) The first case is actually myself, though I only just realized this. The Garmin Bounce kids’ watches last about 2 days, which means you charge them every other night. If we forget, and don’t realize it till the morning, it’s often too late to charge it enough to get through all the kids’ afterschool activities. Whereas this solves that, because I can throw this in the backpack (with a hair tie), and they’re good to go.
2) The second case is simply when you might not want someone else stealing your power bank and discharging it (e.g., within your family). Given this *ONLY* charges Garmin watches, and won’t charge anything else, it kinda limits power-bank-theft (by other family members). Kinda like making your food too spicy for others in your family to enjoy.
Beyond that, I think just lipstick-size chargers are probably the way to go, since they are multipurpose.
With that – thanks for reading!
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Hopefully you found this review/post useful. At the end of the day, I’m an athlete just like you looking for the most detail possible on a new purchase – so my review is written from the standpoint of how I used the device. The reviews generally take a lot of hours to put together, so it’s a fair bit of work (and labor of love). As you probably noticed by looking below, I also take time to answer all the questions posted in the comments – and there’s quite a bit of detail in there as well.
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I've also put together a quick list of some of my favorite or most compatible accessories for this unit:
Garmin USB-C Adapters (4-Pack)
Garmin USB-C Charging Puck
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Garmin developers got bored after creating dozens of watches and features.
This isn’t made by Garmin
I bought one of these and used it during a 100 miler last fall. It worked great and helped my FR955 make it all the way through the race.
Will Garmin ever update their Edge Battery pack? It’s now almost 9 years old…
Explain why they keep putting connectors to charge via it on all their bike computer’s while not supporting it with ways to charge it from it.
(I’d take a 3rd party battery pack with USB c too lol)
Personally I find the idea of a dedicated power bank really appealing. Much more relaxing than thinking that the phone consumed everything and now you can’t recharge the watch anymore.
Would it fit under the watch on a wrist? If so, it could be useful for endurance althetes looking to have continuous GPS over a few days.
I ended up purchasing an Anker Zolo battery bank that will primarily charge my iPhone using magsafe but i attached one of those usb-c -> Garmin adapters to the cord of the charger. That way I always have a Garmin cord, a usb-c cord and a magsafe charger in one small package.
This is the charger I purchased (currently unavailable).
link to amazon.com
Does it do pass through charging? Can it be used in place of a puck while plugged into a power source itself?
Would it be feasible to use for untra(trail) running? I.e. charging with the power unit + watch on the wrist? Or will this be too unstable?
I have always wondered why I could not find such a solution.
Realistically, very, very long battery life in Sports watches are only strictly necessary in extreme/ultra events and I would prefer a smaller watch the other 360 days/year.
Now I have an Enduro 2 for these races – but day to day I prefer my old, smaller, lighter FR 945… If I could only væhave a small “Garmin Puck power bank” :-)
I wonder if Garmin will switch to wireless charging or flat contacts? I like not having to take my Whoop off to charge. Google is half there but one still has to take the watch off.
If you want a cylinder charge there is also the Nitecore NPB1 5,000 mAh or NPB2 10,000 mAh which are IP68 rated – 2m for 30 minutes. The NPB1 or NPB2 also powers for the HU60 headlamp – which includes a wireless remote.
As for protecting your food – anchovies on your half of the pizza often works well.