before I go further I need to say this even though I purchased it myself from
B&H with the intention of publishing a review from a normal users perspective I
was so appalled by the Brenton hydrogen reactor that I contacted them anyway and
spoke to customer support and the product manager who assured me the
design was fine and there might be something wrong with my unit he said
he'd exchange my unit for a new one and since then I've waited over a month
during which time I've sent four requests for the new unit they haven't
replied and all I can do now is assume they don't think sending a new one will
help so without further Ado here's my
video The Cooler Master glacer 240l CPU
Cooler delivers the convenience of an all-in-one and the performance of a
custom water cooler click now to learn more welcome to my unboxing of a product
that many people are curious about and no one seems to know much about not even
the manufacturer the page about it linked from the Brunton homepage seems
designed to give as little information as possible with only a promotional
video uh designed to appeal to outdoorsy
environmentalists I I mean I guess the video also shows using it in the snow
and rain and stuff and says that you can abuse the product and they'll cover it
under warranty so that's cool but I wish it also said to be careful because the
exposed plugged in USB connectors in a
wet environment that they show in the video are not a great idea and even if
your hydrogen reactor is covered your phone or whatever else is PL into it is
not we find more information on the page
within the store of particular interest here is the fact that you can live swap
the cells when one runs out for continuous power a very neat feature the
benefits listed on the store are that it's environmentally responsible it
recharges with water and a hydrolyzer and then outputs only water when in use
it has no bulky batteries but a bulky reactor to carry and these things so I
don't know no solar power to rely on and no natural discharge which is a definite
issue with regular rechargeable batteries even an Loops this last
selling point is a potentially important feature for something like an emergency
preparedness kit so these are hydrocor
they store hydrogen by absorbing the gas into reversible metal hydride this means
solid state storage and less volatility compared to straight Compressed Gas you
can even take up to two of them on an airplane with you in terms of size
they're about equivalent to 4 to five AA batteries with the optional hydrolyzer
accessory they can be recharged up to 100 times I was actually looking for
extra information about the hydroc cores and I came across Horizon's website they
seem to be the actual manufacturer of a similar product called the mini Pac and
similar hydrogen cartridges called Hydro sticks which Brunton has refined uh
branded and brought to Market a fairly common occurrence unfortunately because
it's not a straight Rel label the odm's website really didn't help me as much as
I hop hoped and ended up just being yet another source of conflicting
information on the phone when I asked Brenton directly I was told a hydrocore
is about equivalent to a 4,000 milliamp battery bank but good luck finding that
information anywhere public on the Brunton site and product box instead
they rate it in iPhone recharges derp
okay so it's rated at six iPhone recharges but then Horizon site says two
iPhone recharges which is more in line with the 4,000 mamps that I was told on
the phone then they've got ablea battery
equivalencies that are used on both websites instead of standardized
measurements these also frustrated me as I continued to dig on the Brunton box it
claims that a hydroc core is equal to 15
plus AA batteries but Horizon's Hydro stick has both 14 and 10 battery
equivalencies on the exact same page literally 6 in from each other lastly
and this is important Brenton claims Hydra course will handle a 2 amp output
and Horizon rates their Hydro sticks at 0.4 amps I was assured on the phone that
the higher amperage output is one of the benefits Over the Horizon design of the
Brunton one and you just press this button on the top to kick it into high
gear to enable 2 amp output at the end of it all I really wasn't sure how to
interpret everything but one Theory I had at first was that Brunton could be
using the more refined hydr stick Pro
that was teased on her Horizon's Facebook page months ago but then never
released under their own name after testing I'm not so sure but for now
let's move on to using it I didn't realize this when buying it but it's
actually basically useless without the $250 recharge station the two included
Hydra cores will be empty after anywhere
from 4 to 12 iPhone cell phone charges
um and then you can either buy more of them for 20 bucks a pop if you can even
find them I couldn't find anywhere to buy them or get a recharge station for
$250 I assumed that the reactor itself
would come with that functionality for $150 guess I should have done more
research so basically at this point a
product that is supposed to reduce bulk compared to battery Banks has me
carrying fuel cells a reactor a recharge
station and then something to power the recharge station with if I'm going to be
somewhere for longer than a couple of days brilliant anyway you load the fuel
cell in by screwing in wait for the light to stop flashing then it's ready
to rock the purge valve does a self test during the startup process don't be
alarmed it's just a little noise it's not a big deal in operation the reactor
gets warm to the touch but not hot the hydrocore fuel cell on the other hand
does not it stays cool to the touch noticeably damp air comes off the side
while it's operating which makes sense because it does exhaust water but
there's no real visible Steam and it does kind of smell funny but I wasn't
sure if that was only because it's new or whether it will continue continue to
do that uh throughout its lifetime I mean all that's fine and good but as
long as it charges your devices then a device charger can be determined to be
functional well honestly once it got
going and booted up it just plain didn't do that either my HTC1 picked up the
power source but said it was insufficient for charging and my iPad
Mini has a nice little helpful not charging icon in the top corner so it
sounds like that 4 amp rating on Horizon
site is probably closer to reality than the 2 Amp one that Brenton's advertising
on their site in spite of the fact that right here on the side of the box it
says one amp so I don't know and when it
in order to validate these results since I didn't get another unit I checked out
reviews on their website what few of those reviews aren't just pre-sales
questions from people who don't actually own the thing with responses from brunon
employees that are then rated five stars did seem to back this up mine doesn't
charge a tablet or even a high-powered smartphone and that seemed consistent
with the experience that the only other verified owners I can find are having I
also really have to question the claim of reduced bulk and weight in their
video compared to batteries two hydroc cores in a reactor you will need one of
these for the other stuff to be useful at all weigh alt together around 365 G
or about the same as a 12,000 mAh
battery pack from into circuit which you can get for about 50 bucks on Amazon in
addition to that they aren't much smaller they're not as versatile in
terms of output voltage and the devices they can power and they don't have as
much capacity compared to that into Circuit Solution this whole apparatus
also weighs about the same as two Patriot fuel plus 9,000 milliamp
portable battery banks these are $72 each from Patriot and they stomp all
over the Brunton hydrogen reactor in
terms of capacity they have 2 and a half amp outputs for faster charging they're
a similar overall size not to mention that with regular portable battery packs
there's no water Vapor exhaust you don't need to keep them in a particular
orientation there's no boot up time they have more output ports I don't know if I
mentioned that already and they're easy to obtain at a local store whereas more
fuel cells will need to be ordered online if you can find them at all and
finally they don't need an expensive charging station so basically unless
you're an early adopter for fun I don't recommend this product okay it's green
and hydrocor are recyclable as tin but it just doesn't make any sense it's
neat to see fuel cell technology being deployed for consumers even if the
initial product offerings are unexceptional expensive and difficult to
obtain but for me to reexamine this technology in the future functionality
will have to be improved and pricing will have to come down quite a bit
speaking of pricing from browsing Brenton's website it looks like they are
taking some pretty sweet profit on their products in general they're equivalent
to the into circuit 12,000 Milah charger is called the impel to and comes with a
rugged casing and costs $400 that is eight times as much for
that rugged casing you might as well just buy eight of the other one so maybe
what it'll take is another brand to bring fuel cell products to Market and
we'll get a result that makes a bit more sense for the average consumer don't
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