I've got the power! Baseus Blade2 PD 65W 12000mAh Smart Power Bank review

Introduction

Baseus are one of a handful of brands with expertise in the portable technology products category. I even reviewed their Eli Sport 1 earphones recently, and today I'm ready to tell you about the soon to be released Blade2 power bank which I've been using as part of my photography kit-bag for charging phone, camera and flash batteries respectively.

With a genuine 12,000mAh available, and Fast Charging support, I found the Blade2 to be convenient giving me peace of mind on long photo-shoot sessions whether it was a full day wedding or just being out and about.

Even when not on a professional shoot, but just a day out with my phone using the camera heavily which drains the battery fast, knowing that I can charge the phone just over two times meant I was happily recording at the highest settings without caring about what the battery drain was like to get me through the entire day and then some.

For perspective, the Blade 2 is a little thicker than a smartphone but it does taper to being thinner than one at the edges, and weighs no more than a small tablet.

Specifications

Form factor

As mentioned, the compactness makes this large capacity fast charging power bank ideal to slip into a laptop bag or even a pocket. All my jackets have inside breast pockets where this has fit into without an issue, for example.

In the hand it feels solid just like a tablet. The Type-C ports do not have any more or less wiggle than a smartphone Type-C port either, and the power button feels exactly like the usual buttons found on tablets and phones. Nothing new here.

What is different is that when pressing the power button, a small 1" LCD display turns on displaying some key information, such as remaining capacity, a timer, and the current charging rate as well as status icons for the countdown timer, sleep timer and low current eco mode which can all be enabled via the Baseus App on a smartphone.

The Smarts

Speaking of the app, this was a new discovery for me. I'd never seen a power bank with its own app before.

Bluetooth is always on with the Blade2, simply install the app, click on add device and it is automatically found. From here you can then customise features like enable a sleep timer or reminder, change the Bluetooth discovery name, check the current stats of what's connected to the power bank and some other device information.

You can even tweak the text shown on the screensaver, I'm not quite sure why a 1" LCD needs a screensaver, but here we are, shown above is the default text out of the box. The Themes screen allows you to change between 3 different background colours, and I found the white theme to be useless as text is incredibly hard to read.

Performance

There isn't too much to say here other than it does exactly what it says on the tin. With my Galaxy S24 Ultra, Super Fast Charging 2.0 was shown on the phone when connected using the included Baseus Type-C cable.

This assured me that the cable supplied by Baseus was up to the requirements for such fast charging. Sometimes bundled cables don't always meet the spec, or end up being low quality, but this seems well suited and is constructed in a way that reminds me of some Anker cables I also have.

With two devices being charged at the same time, Baseus claims that 45W PD + 25W is possible, but I am not so sure about the 45W PD part, as now my S24 Ultra just shows Super Fast Charging, missing the '2.0' at the end which denotes the use of the PPS PD 3.0 standard. It's not a huge deal as the difference on a phone like this between the two modes is in minutes for a full charge, but it may matter more for other types of devices being charged at the same time. Your mileage may vary.

At no point did I experience any heat issues with the Blade2, it remains cool to the touch, typically only reaching room temperature.

Conclusion

An extremely well-made power bank that doesn't cost the earth considering its spec, form factor and features. There are cheaper power banks that claim to have more capacity, but take those claims with a pinch of salt as they rarely deliver those numbers in my experience, and you also don't want to leave your valuable equipment charging connected to something cheap and potentially risky.

Baseus currently have an early bird offer running which saves 30% by using the code 30OFFBLADE at the checkout. The offer runs between 29th February and 11th March for anyone interested in picking one of these up. After the March 11th, the offer switches to a launch promotion offering 20% off.

There are no big negatives I can come up with, perhaps bundling two Type-C cables would have been useful, the single cable means you need to dig out a spare one for a 2nd device you want to charge, and need to also make sure that it is fully PD compliant for proper fast charging if the device supports it.

It might have been an idea to add some extra functionality like a beeper that made a noise when a device had stopped charging, with the option to customise it in the app. I'm reaching for ideas here, but these are generally preferential things I guess.

Lastly, the surface finish on both sides of the Blade2 has a sort of satin lustre. I noticed that this finish attracts a lot of dust. If seeing dust on your devices is an issue, then it may be wise to keep a small microfibre cloth nearby 😅

Bottom line is that it is well made, well priced, and well specced. I use it regularly and have yet to find a single fault that isn't nitpicking, genuinely.