I’ve written many times over in the Anker forum for methods to mitigate power outages. Some of these also apply to Soundcore product decisions.
As Soundcore products tend to be mostly used with mobile phones and nearly always have internal batteries, they are inherently power outage friendly. But there are some specific things you can do.
Why Power Outages
- Climate change is a demonstrable fact.
- Hotter summers are going to stress electrical grids and parts of the system will be experiencing hotter temperatures never experienced before and so will “trip” themselves turn off, or set of fire, or wires droop and short.
- Higher temperatures cause also more extreme windy, wetter, and in cases colder, weather so more flooding and ice storms in places not accustomed. If you’re wondering why warming can cause colder it is because the jetstream gets more erratic and introduces a latitude which rarely sees cold the odd unusually cold snap. So more extreme weather, on average hotter.
- Certain electrical loads increase in hot weather, more so in USA where air conditioning is more common.
- “Brown outs” are where there is no/little disruption to power supply, but demand gets so high that the voltage to your home drop to the level electronic devices won’t work. Doesn’t impact “non-electronic” electrical items like old technology electrical products, but newer products will turn off.
- “Black outs” are where supply is disrupted, total loss of electricity.
- “Geopolitical turmoil” (hint).
Mitigation techniques
- While this is a Soundcore community, they are part of the Anker umbrella, so best thing you can do is own Anker Powercore powerbanks. At least 2-3 so you can use them around the house, and be using one while one is “on charge”. Power outages usually are intermittent, power comes on/off (particularly if brown outs) so during an “outage” you can have items plugged into power to wait for power to (intermittently) recharge.
- Consider solar panels if you’re sufficiently south and usually sunny.
- Note that when power returns, there is a chance of a spike which “fries” the chargers. So owning multiple chargers too helps. Anker chargers do protect themselves but if a spike is strong then you’d get a permanently damaged charger.
- During the outage do not use the Anker Powercore to recharge the Soundcore product, plug it in immediately and keep it plugged in. This saves around 20% of your stored energy as you do not lose the energy of charge-discharge. If you dump energy from a Powercore into your Soundcore speaker’s battery which then discharges, the pushing and pulling loses energy, but if you instead just use your Powercore to keep the Soundcore product running, then the Soundcore product battery is not involved.
- If your Soundcore has AUX support, use that instead of Bluetooth, as is slightly more efficient.
- Lower volume if you can.
- Lower bitrate if you can. e.g. don’t use LDAC if that is supported.
- Disable ANC / Ambient and use these at a minimum.
- In-ear consume the least power, then smaller speakers. Larger speakers consume the most.
- Try to listen to downloaded media, locally stored, as that reduces the load on your device (e.g. phone) as it doesn’t have to run the cellular / Wifi electronics. While on power and on Wifi, download media, and then listen to it from downloaded. If an outage then occurs, purely consume downloaded media. e.g. I use MP3 and MP4 media when trying to stretch power savings.
- Actually using Soundcore products helps you overall handle the outage. A watched clocks ticks slower, so instead just chill, close your eyes and listen to your fave sounds. I have a 256GB storage phone with 200GB of media stored, and have 400Wh of stored energy across my Anker products so if an outage happens I can just chill and relax and wait for others to work to restore the power. In my house I have two Mini 3 Partycast speakers and plenty of Powercores to keep the Mini 3 and my phone working so can last (literally) weeks without electricity. So I won’t be getting any angst when power is gone.
Please share any tips and tricks below!
I will one up your powerbanks comment.