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Baseus Blade 2 Review
A unique power bank designed to slot alongside your laptop in your rucksack
In This Article
Verdict
The Baseus Blade 2 is an external battery pack made for laptops that largely does what its manufacturer claims. And it has a surprising number of nerdy tech features for the stat fans. However, it won’t fully charge laptops and its efficiency could be a little better given its cost.
Pros
Cons
Key Features
Introduction
Power banks made for phones tend to be brick or block-shaped, and you can often fit the smaller ones in a pocket. The Baseus Blade 2 is made for laptops, and you could mistake it for a Kindle from a distance. Or even a smart weighing scale from even further away.
You’re meant to slide the Baseus Blade2 in your bag alongside your laptop, whether that’s a rucksack or laptop bag. The latter is where the design of this battery pack truly shines. It’s going to fit in all but the most fitted of laptop bags.
This is a 65W supply that will typically provide up to around 60W to a single device. However, its efficiency should be a little higher in my opinion, falling below what I’ve seen recently fromUgreenandAnker.
Design
The Baseus Blade 2 is not quite like other batteries I’ve owned or reviewed. It’s a slim slab, not a brick. You’re not going to fit this thing into a pocket unless it’s a particularly wide coat pocket.
But this lets it slim down to 10mm. The Baseus Blade 2 is not a friend to small clutch bags like an emergency5000mAh lipstick-style battery, but it can slide into other sorts of bags all but unnoticed.
This is the smallest in a family of similarly styled external batteries from Baseus. There’s this one, with 12000mAh capacity and 65W output, and two models with 100W output and 20000mAh capacity. The higher-end one has a more advanced screen.
The Baseus Blade 2 is the baby of the bunch, then, but probably also the one with the most easygoing mainstream appeal. It’s cheaper, thinner, and can still charge most ultraportable laptops at, or close to, maximum speed.
Its outer is entirely plastic, with a two-tone appearance. The top layer has a translucent finish that gives the whole of the Blade 2 a classier, almost smoky finish.
The battery doesn’t feel made to withstand too much punishment, though, and that plastic outer will scratch fairly easily if you’re not careful. A fabric case is included, though, a simple faux suede bag with a protective flap.
There’s a little more to the Baseus Blade 2 than you might guess, and it starts with a display on its front. This tells you the charge level better than a set of LEDs ever could. You also get an estimate of how long left the Blade 2 has to charge, or how long it will last when something else is plugged in and draining its battery.
What it doesn’t tell you is how much wattage the plugged-in devices are receiving. But you can work it out for yourself as there’s a tiny little display of the voltage and current for any plugged-in devices (multiply one by the other to calculate watts).
Here’s where Baseus goes flat-out silly with the over-engineering of the Blade 2. It has Bluetooth, letting the battery connect to the Baseus app on your phone. This offers charging info, including watts this time, it lets you customise the colour of the charging display (grey, black or orange) and also overwrite the slightly odd-looking “Base on User” screensaver-type display.
There are just two USB-C connectors on the Baseus Blade 2. If you want more, or a USB-A, you’ll have to upgrade to the 100W versions, which have two USB-As as well as a pair of USB-C connectors. They’re thicker too, of course.
Performance
The Baseus Blade 2 can’t use super-common battery cells like the ubiquitous 18650s because of its shape. It uses a SiC Negative Electrode battery that, were I to prise this thing open, would look a bit more like the large and flat batteries used in phones and laptops.
Baseus says the Blade 2 has a capacity of 46.44Wh. It took in 47.2Wh of charge before being maxed out, so we’re in the right ballpark.
On discharge, it outputs 34.92Wh to the test device, which works out at 73.9% efficiency. This is a little lower than I’d like to see in a battery of this class, where it’s quite normal to see figures around the 80% range.
Baseus claims an efficiency of upwards of 75%, so the reality is not far off the claim at all. But it is still lower than I’d like. Discharging at full speed takes 44 minutes. And I seemingly wasn’t able to hit the top 65W drain rate. 61.4W was the max, after trying several laptops.
I don’t think you’re going to have much trouble at least getting to that figure with most laptops, and the top claimed voltage and current combo supported here is 20V, 3.25A. For some reason, my test laptops didn’t seem to want to max out on the current the Baseus can deliver.
The charging rate of the battery itself is a touch slower, 60W. Thanks to a slowing down towards the end of this process, a full charge takes 67 minutes. Still, that’s not bad.
Aside from slightly lower charging rate seen during testing, the thing to bear in mind here is the Baseus Blade 2 is not going to be able to fully charge the vast majority of laptops.
It outputs 34.92Wh, remember, where theMacBook Airhas a capacity of 49.9Wh, the 14inSamsung Galaxy Book 4 Pro62.1Wh. And you won’t get the full 34.92Wh into your laptop’s battery anyway, as there are additional efficiency losses at the computer end too, and my test numbers don’t factor that in.
This is no great surprise. Open up laptops and you’ll find batteries physically larger than the Blade 2. But it’s important to adjust your expectations before buying one of these.
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Should you buy it?
You want a slim battery for laptops
This is an extra-slim battery pack, at 10.2mm, letting it slip into even slim bags designed to hold laptops. It has a much larger footprint, too, but the shape will be ideal for some.
You want true laptop stamina
The Blade 2 is packed with tech, but its capacity isn’t actually that high. Its efficiency is also on the lower side for a pricey battery, further limiting how far its power will actually go. Think half a charge, not a full one.
Final Thoughts
The Baseus Blade 2 is an external battery made for laptops, with a design to let it slide in alongside your portable PC in a carry case.
It excels on the techy front, by packing in a screen and even letting you see further details in a phone app. The two hook up over a Bluetooth connection.
The Blade 2 might not get you as far as you hope, though. Its stated capacity isn’t high enough to charge a laptop, and somewhat limited efficiency compounds that effect.
How we test
We thoroughly test every power bank at Trusted Reviews, using a USB Voltimeter to not only test elements like maximum wattage but to measure its total output to gain insight into efficiency and more.
Tested input, output, maximum wattage and more using a USB voltimeter
Charged multiple laptops during testing
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FAQs
It has no waterproof rating.
It’s closer to 50% charge for most laptops, and won’t fully charge almost any.
Sure, it pairs well with a Steam Deck.
Full specs
Andrew Williams is a technology writer, who has contributed to Stuff, WIRED, TechRadar, T3, Wareable and, of course, Trusted Reviews. Here he test and reviews some of newest mobile, audio and camera d…
Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.
Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Why trust our journalism?
Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.
Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
