Which are the best quality, reliable and high output Power Banks and Chargers for USB devices? (India)

I get this question a lot and I recently answered it on Quora too. Here is a more detailed answer with brands chosen among the ocean of other Chinese brands based on their reviews and personal experiences of my friends.

The brands listed here manufacture products for both Android and Apple devices. So happy reading!

Power Banks:

More details on how to choose one and what the 'mAh' rating of power banks means is given on my other post here:
Powerbanks: Which one to buy? What is mAh?

The best Power Banks to my knowledge as of Jan 2016 are:

1) Tukzer - 5200/10000 mAh

Tukzer is possibly the best looking and the best performer among all. It is lightweight and has high Quality Li-Po batteries. Shake the power bank to see the charge level!
You can find a comprehensive review on this one here: Tukzer 10000 mAh Power Bank Review 

2) TP-Link TL-PB - 10400 mAh

Comes with a pouch and in-built flashlight. Slightly heavy. This may not give the full backup capacity as promised, based on some reviews and is 70-80% efficient. 

3) Sony 4700/6100/10000 mAh

Possibly the longest surviving power banks are made by Sony. But they are very expensive.

4) Xiaomi 5600/10400/16000 mAh

Xiaomi is s very well known company for power banks and some of my friends are still using their's since two years. However, these are rarely available as of 2016 in India.

Wall chargers or USB power hubs:

A charger with a 2 Ampere rating will charge your device the fastest. Do not worry, a high current charger will not damage your battery. Your phone can take only a limited amount of current which is decided by the manufacturer. So if it is not manufactured to sink current above 1.5A, it will take only 1.5A even if you connect a 2A charger.

The best wall charger or USB power hub manufacturers for charging your devices as of Jan 2016 would be:

1) Anker (Qualcomm Quick Charge 2.0 18W)

Be careful, online shopping sites are plagued with first-copy duplicates of Samsung and Apple models. Buy from reliable sources.
2) Samsung (2A) 

3) Apple (2.4A)

4) Sony (2A)

5) Nextech (2.4A)

6) QuantumZero (2A)

7) Tukzer (Power Hub 2A+2A+1A+1A)

Charging/data cables:

With a good quality charging brick/hub, you cannot compromise on the quality of the charging cables. Otherwise if the cable offers more resistance or is not made of a good quality material like copper, it will reduce charging speed to a significant extent.

The best charging/data micro-USB cables:

1) Bandridge - 100% Copper cable

2) Tukzer

3) Rock

2015 Tech Writing Achievements

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas! :) Come 2016, I feel like sharing some of my best achievements in the blogging and tech recommendations world!

1) Blogger
My December 2014 post for fixing 'Thread Stuck in Device Driver' Error, encountered by a huge number of people after Windows 8.1/10 update, was very well received and worked for many people! It has more than 17K views! I was on Cloud 9 after getting that kind of appreciation for working and researching on something from the bottom of my heart.

Here is that answer: FIX 'THREAD STUCK IN DEVICE DRIVER' error for Windows 8/8.1/10

It definitely made my blog shine in 2015!

2) Quora
The following answer was a small achievement for me on Quora. I was awarded the most-viewed writer award for 'Dell' and 'Hewlett Packard' for some time. It was posted on 8th September, 2015 and I held that title for about 3 months after it became well-known.

Here is my answer on Quora: 
Answer on Quora by Nimish Gujarathi to 'Which laptop I should buy Dell or Lenovo or HP?'

The Answer:

If you are stuck between choosing company instead of specs I would say Dell, anytime Dell. Even if it may cost about 5K INR more or less depending on specifications.

My experience of comparison between these three tells me: 

1) Dell is more flexible with qualities like cross compatibility between batteries of different models, (like Latitude and Inspiron have same battery), standard charger port among all Dells so you can share charger of same electrical specifications. HP and Lenovo have their own custom shaped port. 
Analogy: Android with micro-USB which majority had and iPhone 5s with lightning connector which was rare in 2013.

2) Dell is more robust. Drop your HP and Lenovo and they will break like ceramic. I have seen both Dell and Lenovo fall. Screen connector of Lenovo broke and the person was forced to painstakingly use the crippled laptop for another year somehow due to financial issues, as service center could not help and asked for a large sum to change body. Dell however, survived without a scratch.

3) It is fairly obvious that HP is overpricing their products & accessories (HP battery costs about 6-7K INR, Dell battery costs around 2-3K INR) and with the reliability being not commensurate to the price. Dell is reasonably priced and gives most punch for the price.

4) Dell Support is simply amazing. The person sitting behind that toll free help number knows almost everything and gets you out of any situation.

5) Almost all Dell laptops can be customized. I myself could upgrade from 4GB to 8GB RAM. 

6) The performance of Dell is simply amazing. I run heavy softwares like MATLAB and Xilinx as well as high-end games like Battlefield 3 and Mafia II smoothly (Core i7 3632qm coupled with 2GB AMD Radeon HD 7730). The full HD screen is beautiful and sharp bringing out the best quality that the media has to offer. 

7) If you want to force me in telling you issues with Dell I would only speak about battery life. It has reduced from 2.5 hours to 1-1.5 hours in 4 years of use. Happens to all laptops though.

What is 'Class' in SD Memory Cards?

You always have that one friend who will boast about having got a memory card of a high capacity at a cost that is super-cheap in some deal. There is very high chance that, that memory card is of a lower 'Class' than the more expensive ones out there and it may not give him performance.

This post applies to all types of SD (Secure Digital) memory cards, be it micro-SD, mini-SD, SD, SDXC, SDHC and so on.

So to make it very simple:

Class = Speed and Performance

ALWAYS look out for 'class' logo while buying memory cards!

You will see these kind of logos on memory card which signify their class.

Here is an example of how cost differs with class.

Now, the number written in circle, signifies the write speed of the memory card. For example, 4 means minimum 4 MBps writing speed will be ensured! It can go above that, and if it is so, it will be specified on the packaging. Higher the class, higher will be the cost of the memory card.

Question: But Nimish, how is this 'class' significant and how do I choose which class I need?
Answer: Here is a Wikipedia extract.

Source: Speed Class rating of Secure Digital(SD)

Write Speed Significance:
Like many reviews will tell you, if you have a DSLR that has a very high shutter speed, that is, it can capture photos very fast, then you will require a high performance memory card on which they can be quickly stored. Otherwise, your memory will become a limitation and you may not be able to choose a higher shutter speed. In such a case, you might have to choose a minimum class 6 or better yet, class 10.

UHS Speed may be required if you want to shoot 4K video with your camcorder.

Read Speed Significance:
If you have a performance demanding game installed on your Android smart-phone's micro-SD card, no matter how powerful the phone hardware is, your micro-SD card will become a limitation on performance if it does not offer high reading speeds.

For example, if you try to use a class 2 card for installing and playing something like Asphalt on a Galaxy Note II, it will definitely lag. But it will not lag if you use a class 6 or a class 10 card. Your general phone performance will also be affected depending on the class of the memory card, if you choose to install applications on the memory card.

So in conclusion, don't be fooled if someone offers a hard-to-believe dirt cheap price on a high capacity memory card and check the class rating on it first.

Investing in expensive headset/headphones

Here is some audio technology research I did before deciding to buy a Sennheisser headset. This is some serious investment we are talking about. Think it out very well and make a proper decision. All prices are mentioned in US Dollars as they are not that different in the US and in India.

By 'headset' I will be referring to headgear with a mic and by 'headphone' to the one without a mic.

Few terms you need to know if you are new to audio technology like I was:

1) Drivers:
        Drivers are the speakers on the left and right.

2) Soundstage:
       To put into very simple terms, while listening to music if you want the feeling of sitting in an opera theatre and being able to make out precisely and directionally the violin being played by the 4th musician from the left you will want to invest in better soundstage. Also hearing footsteps while gaming comes under soundstage. It basically means how well you can perceive the surroundings.

3) Open back and Closed back
       In an open back headphone the casing of the drivers is not closed to the external environment and it will give you better access to sounds in surrounding. Closed back headphones are made such that they are completely noise cancelling and give an immersive experience. However, open back headphones give a better soundstage and are preferred for gaming. Closed back ones are preferred for focused listening of music.

4) Circumaural  and supra-aural
        Circumaural means that the headphone drivers are big enough to completely cover your ear. The won't press on your ear and the cushion would rest around it. Supra-aural are the ones which press against your ear. Circumaural ones are better at noise cancelling.

5) Impedance
        Impedance is the resistance that your headphone offers to the analog signal. Higher the resistance lower would be the amplitude of the signal, resulting in more power requirement. For example,if you keep the sound level same for comparison, the headphone with a higher impedance would give out lesser sound.

6) Frequency response
         If you search for high quality headphones on the internet this is something you will hear a lot about but not understand if not familiar. Its simple. Lower the frequencies your headphone can go to, the better you will 'feel' the music. You must have guessed it, i'm talking about bass. Lower frequency response generates better bass and better music experience for certain genres like metal and rock music. The explosions you hear in games would be better 'felt' with good bass.

7) Mono and Stereo
        The ability of being able to make out the direction from which the sound is coming is absent in mono. In case of stereo controlled sound is available from 2 drivers and you can make out if sound came form left or right side. So if a person talks something close to your left ear, mono will make it sound like he is standing in the front giving out uniform sound in both left and right speakers, whereas stereo will make sure you get the realistic left side sound effect.

8) Surround and virtual surround sound:
        In surround sound systems like 7.1 and 5.1 you will see multiple speakers kept around the room. With software gimmick and a USB connection headphones have the technology to create 5.1 and 7.1 surround virtually using 2 drivers.

9) Digital and analog connectors
        Digital connector : USB - cannot use on smartphone.
        Analog connector : 3.5mm jack - can use on smartphone.

10) Sound card:
         The 3.5mm female jack is your connection to system sound card which does audio processing. It takes a digital input from the system and outputs analog signal. If you buy a $300 headphone and connect it to your computer via a cheap low quality sound card, the quality of sound will be far lower than you expect. The sound card quality has to be on par to the headphone quality you are going for.

11) Audiophiles:
        People who buy headgear costing nothing less than $200-$250 and focus only on audio quality. :)

Now we know the basics! Lets start! We will do this in a Q n A format so its easier.

Question 1: What is your budget?

Answer to this is everything. I would say keep your budget flexible to the range of plus/minus $30-$35. For example, if you set a hard budget filter for your searches on online shopping websites, something you want truly and are ready to invest slightly more for, will not show up in search results and you would miss out! However do check for cheaper option too as you may find something tha tis bang for the buck.

Question 2: Are you buying a headset for gaming, for video chatting or purely for music?

Now you may have the following answers:

1) Purely for music
      Now that you have decided this, it is obvious that you do not need a mic coupled with the headset. So your investment will be based purely on audio quality and nothing else. The type of music you like also matters here. You will need better response on lower frequencies if you hear metal and rock and better on the higher frequencies if you listen to classical.

Let me tell you that most of the headgear in the world belongs to this category. There is a lot available on the market and even companies like Sennheiser sell awesome headphones at just $100 which is comparatively cheaper and 'bang for the buck' than the big guns out there.

2) For gaming
       If this is your decision, you will be more focused on the bass i.e. how well you experience the explosions and soundstage i.e. how well you can hear the footsteps if someone is lurking behind you. The audio quality may or may not be as good as pure headphones, but it depends on the model. The mic quality of purely gaming headsets is not that good as it is not a necessity for gaming. So they incline on improving the soundstage and frequency response more. For example, the Kingston HyperX Cloud II gaming headsets are great but the mic recording sounds modulated and artificial.

3) For video chatting and music
       You may be away from family at college or on tour and need a way to chat with them without sounding like a robot and hearing their voice as realistically as possible. Now we are talking about a headset that is a combo of both high quality drivers and mic(Eg. Sennheisser headsets are the best I found for this category).

Caution:

1) Some headphones have a USB connector just to provide power, so they wont work with USB connection(Klipsch KG200 - excellent headset by the way!). This makes them unsuitable to carry around for trips and plug in to music player unless you have a power bank.

2) The foldable headphones may come at an attractive price and they are highly portable, as sometimes they can be dismantled to pieces(Steelseries 5H v3). But more number of joints can prove to be a disaster. If the contacts become loose, problems like sound coming out of only one speaker may happen. That is why unibody headsets with no volume controls along the wire are preferred.

Want best of both worlds?

Here is what audiophiles who are gamers as well do:

1) Buy an expensive headphone according to their need.
2) Buy a separate attachable microphone. The best in the market seems to be the AntLion ModMic. It magnetically attaches to your headphone whenever you need it.

However the ModMic costs as much as moderate quality headphone so this combo is a bigger investment.

Happy hunting! :)

No sound after Windows 10 update? Here's the solution.

Thousands of people over the world have reported problems with Windows 10 operating system especially with Microsoft rolling out these updates for free for the older PCs/Laptops running Windows 7. All of these problems have their roots in the older driver softwares that interface the peripherals like speakers, display, touchpad(mousepad), card reader etc. not being compatible with the features offered by Windows 10.

Coming to our main problem, people having Conexant SmartAudio HD driver as their main sound driver in HP and Dell laptops, faced this problem the most.

I have 2 solutions for this, first is extremely simple with some tweaks to the sound properties and the second one is for slightly advanced users with uninstalling faulty drivers and installing new ones.

Solution 1: Disable sound enhancements.

Step 1: Right Click the sound button on the bottom right of your task bar. Select 'Playback Devices'.

Step 2: Right click on your default speakers which will read 'Conexant SmartAudio HD Device' and select 'Properties'.

Step 3: Select 'Disable All Enhancements' and click 'Apply'

Your sound will be back! However this is with compromise in loudness of sound, since you disable the Bass Management, Virtual Surround and Loudness Equalization. Second solutions helps you keep these settings and turn your sound on,

Solution 2: Install Conexant Driver given by Lenovo for Windows 10.

This solution was posted by 'Darkbreeze' on the 'tom's GUIDE' Forums and is reported to be working by several users. Thanks a million to him! :)
Link - Darkbreeze's answer on tom's GUIDE.

Step 1: Download the Conexant Drivers from Lenovo from this link. download.lenovo.com/consumer/mobiles/audio143w81.exe


Step 2: Hit Windows + X key (only for Windows 8/8.1/10) and select 'Device Manager'.  Right click on 'Speakers' and select 'Properties'.

Step 3: Go into the 'Driver' tab and click 'Uninstall'. Do this for all the audio devices ('Internal Microphone' in my case as shown in screenshot).

Step 4: Install the driver you downloaded from Lenovo. Restart your laptop.

Your sound will be back with all the enhancements! :)

How to check Windows product key(BIOS injected and normal).

The laptops/branded PCs sold after 2010-11 started to not have the Windows product key sticker if it came pre-installed. This is because while manufacturing the product key was injected into the BIOS itself, so that people would not lose it and while installing the OS it would detect it automatically from BIOS and not ask the user. The contrary has happened.

This started to create problems for advanced users who keep installing different OS and replace the pre-installed one. If they did not note down the product key, then it would cause problems while re-installing the original OS if they did not have the DVD of the same Windows version as a different version of other build number does not accept that product key even if edition of Windows is same.

This recently happened to one of friends who lost her Windows Activation as she hadn't noted the key. We did some research and managed to bring it back.

Solution 1 : For BIOS injected product key.

Step 1: Go to rweverything.com and download their free software

Step 2: Install software by running the 'SetupRW.exe' file inside the zip folder. Start the application after installing.

Step 3: Click on 'ACPI Tables' and a dialog will be displayed within the app.

Step 4: Select 'MSDM' in this dialog and your bios data will be displayed with the injected product key written on the last line and beside the hex values as shown. I have blurred out my key for security reasons.

Solution 2 : If you are running pre-installed OS and just want to check keys

Step 1: Anywhere on the desktop or other drives right click and select 'New' and 'Text Document'. This will open up notepad.

Step 2: Paste the following in the notepad.

Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
MsgBox ConvertToKey(WshShell.RegRead("HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\DigitalProductId"))

Function ConvertToKey(Key)
Const KeyOffset = 52
i = 28
Chars = "BCDFGHJKMPQRTVWXY2346789"
Do
Cur = 0
x = 14
Do
Cur = Cur * 256
Cur = Key(x + KeyOffset) + Cur
Key(x + KeyOffset) = (Cur \ 24) And 255
Cur = Cur Mod 24
x = x -1
Loop While x >= 0
i = i -1
KeyOutput = Mid(Chars, Cur + 1, 1) & KeyOutput
If (((29 - i) Mod 6) = 0) And (i <> -1) Then
i = i -1
KeyOutput = "-" & KeyOutput
End If
Loop While i >= 0
ConvertToKey = KeyOutput
End Function

 Step 3: Save it and close. Change the extension from '.txt. to '.vbs'. If you double click this it will run as a Visual Basic Script file identified by Windows itself and you will see the product key from the Registry. This is the product key of your current OS and NOT your BIOS injected key.

If you are running the pre-installed version of Windows then the BIOS injected and VB Script product keys will be same.

However once you update to Windows 8.1 or 10 it will change as Microsoft gives a new product key for a different version of Windows.

As I have shown here the pre-installed Windows 8 product key in BIOS and updated Windows 10 key is different! Look at the starting and ending characters.

Powerbanks: Which one to buy? What is mAh?

I have got this question a lot! "My phone's battery life has reduced, which power bank should I buy?"

Things to keep in mind for buying

1. Charging speed matters. Make sure it has a 2A output or at least 1-1.5A.
2. Make sure you are ready to shell out around 1-1.5K INR or more for a well-known good quality powerbank. If it is selling too cheap, it is poor quality/first copy and will definitely stop working after max 4-5 cycles, give you a low current output or could be of a much lower capacity than it states on the box.
3. Buy a good quality cable. If you buy a cheap cable it might provide a higher resistance, obstructing electric current and thus reducing charging speed. 
4. Preferrably buy from Amazon and Flipkart. Avoid Ebay as the listings are not verified and the seller may cheat by taking cost of original but sending a duplicate. Always read reviews. 

What is mAh?

Coming to the second question, milliampere-Hour or mAh simply put, is the unit of the amount of energy your battery can store. Higher the mAh, more will be the time for which the battery lasts.

For example, if you have a 10,000 mAh or 10 Ah powerbank and you are pulling 2A current for charging your phone, it will provide 2A for 10/2=5 hours before completely discharging.


So far in my experience, the best powerbanks that I have seen are the original Tukzer (1-2K INR), TP-Link (1.2K INR), Xiaomi (1K INR) and Sony (2K INR). For more details on these, check out my latest post, if you are not coming here from that one: 

Which are the best quality, reliable and high output Power Banks and Chargers for USB devices?