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Ilano Dual Fast Camera Battery Charger + Batteries Review
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Jun 16, 2024
Photographer Dustin Abbott shares a series of tests of the popular Ilano Dual Bay fast Camera Battery Charger and the Ilano batteries for Sony and Canon cameras. Two batteries and a charger kit for under $100 - worth buying? | Read the Text Review: | Purchase the Ilano Charger and Battery kit at Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3VIGM5b Check out the DA Merch here: https://bit.ly/TWIMerch | Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/dustinabbott | On the Web: http://dustinabbott.net/ | Sign up for my Newsletter: http://bit.ly/1RHvUNp | Instagram: http://bit.ly/DLAinsta | Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1nuUUeH | Flickr: http://bit.ly/1UcnC0B | 500px: http://bit.ly/1Sy2Ngu Follow Craig @ https://www.instagram.com/craigstoffersen/ Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo: http://bhpho.to/1TA0Xge Adorama: https://howl.me/cjU0LKdp3LN Camera Canada: http://bit.ly/DLACameraCan Sony Canada: https://www.thesonyshop.ca/?ref=abbott Amazon: https://amzn.to/3HrY64d Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/3qG1p18 Ebay: http://bit.ly/DustineBay Into the AM Clothing: https://bit.ly/intotheAMda and use code DUSTIN10 for 10% off Make a donation via Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/dustinTWI ============================= Table of Contents: ============================= 0:00 - Intro and Concept 1:25 - USB-C Charging
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0:00
Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott. There are a lot of different battery chargers and third-party
0:14
batteries on the market at this point. I've spent time I think with at least four different
0:19
third-party brand batteries for my Sony cameras and a few for my Canon cameras at this point
0:26
The Elano concept that I'm covering here today is in theory just a better way to ensure
0:31
your batteries are always charged and also to have plenty of power backup. This is a
0:36
kit that comes with a really impressive dual bay charger along with two different batteries
0:42
that come with it. And so you have lots of power backup for either your Canon or Sony
0:47
cameras and they both come in a couple of different configurations depending upon what
0:51
Sony or Canon camera that you need. This is a really well equipped kit that comes
0:56
in for a little under 100 US dollars. And so this review is going to break down how
1:01
well does the charger work and how well do the batteries work. Starting with the charger
1:06
itself, as I unboxed it, I was impressed with the presentation, but even more so with what
1:11
all was included in the package. You've got your batteries, you've got your charger, there's
1:15
a manual, there's a wrist strap. I don't know why you'd want to carry this around, but who
1:19
knows? Maybe you would. There is a pouch to store everything in, a charging cable
1:25
The one thing that you don't get is a power brick for AC power to plug into the wall
1:29
So it's assuming you have a way to plug a USB-C cable into something. And if you don't
1:34
obviously that could be an additional purchase for probably most of us. At this point, we
1:39
have multiple ways of plugging a USB-C cable into power through some way. I was also impressed
1:45
by the overall design. It's kind of a clever design for we photographers in that it's
1:49
designed to look essentially like a camera. Instead of the actual lens here, you've got
1:56
an LCD screen that will show the state of charge individually for each of the two batteries
2:00
You've got a button here that in this case I can press it and it will power up the LCD
2:05
screen to show me what is going on with the state of charge inside. Very, very nice material
2:10
Soft touch materials. Everything is very nicely made up to including even the way that the
2:15
batteries click in. It's a very definite, there's nothing loose there. They're not going
2:20
to fall out. And so you have a really nice feel of precision in the way that it all comes
2:25
together. They've even got a slot here for an SD card to actually lock in just as it
2:30
would in kind of locking into your camera. And so you have the place to store a backup
2:35
SD card. Now, of course, if your camera uses something other than SD, you're out of luck
2:40
but most of them still have at least a single SD card slot there
2:45
One of the interesting things I found is that as expected, when you have it plugged in
2:49
it obviously is going to show you the state of charge while they're charging. But I also
2:52
like the fact that it will allow you to draw just a tiny bit of current off the batteries
2:57
themselves to show the LCD readout for the state of charge if you click the button there
3:02
And so obviously then after 30 seconds or so, the screen will power back off. And so
3:07
it's not wasting battery, but you do have the opportunity, even if you're not plugged
3:12
in, to evaluate what the state of the charge of the batteries inside are
3:16
So how accurate is that readout? I've tested with both of these. I actually think that
3:21
the Canon version may be very slightly more accurate than what the Sony was. But as far
3:26
as what the Sony was, I did multiple tests. And when I had the battery inside the charger
3:32
it showed the state of charge at either 78 or 80%. I ran it multiple times and I got
3:36
78, one, 80, another. I put the battery into the camera and the camera showed a state of
3:41
charge at 92%. I would say that was pretty typically the case that the case maybe slightly
3:50
under reported what the camera itself did. And so I actually would probably prefer it
3:55
that way. I'd like to be pleasantly surprised when I put the battery in the camera and show
3:59
a little bit higher state of charge there than what I saw elsewhere
4:04
So I was interested in seeing on paper, this is rated at 18 Watts. And so interesting to
4:08
see how that actually played out. So I used one of my Blue Eddy power stations, actually
4:13
a model that I'm currently reviewing right now. And I wanted to see what these were actually
4:17
pulling and then compare it to the Sony charger, the trickle charging in the camera itself
4:23
and see how it all played out. And so initially when I plugged this in with one battery inside
4:30
it was drawing at 13 Watts and it took about 170 minutes for it to go from 0% to 100%
4:38
So why is that? Well, when you get up to about 80% of charge, as is typical with most quality
4:46
battery management software, powering and charging devices, you get to about 80% and
4:51
rather than trying to cram the top end of the battery, which actually starts to decay
4:55
battery life quickly, it will start to slow down and trickle charge. So towards the end
5:00
it was five Watts and then three Watts as it slowed down to almost nothing at the end
5:05
to allow that to give you as many recharge cycles as possible in the battery itself
5:10
And so, I tried then using the actual camera to charge in-camera in my Canon or Sony cameras
5:20
I have the ability to charge in-camera and those drew at about 12 to 13 Watts. So a pretty
5:24
similar state of charge compared to the Elano charger. Now of course, the advantage is that
5:29
I can put two batteries into this and then I'm drawing 17 to 18 Watts and that's where
5:34
the actual 18 Watts come in. And so the advantage there is that I can actually charge two batteries
5:40
for not much slower a time than what I can charge a single battery. And that's where
5:46
probably the genius is of this is that if you need to charge multiple batteries, you
5:50
can do so much more quickly. And of course you have the advantage of being able to charge two at a time versus one at a time. So how'd that compare to the Sony charger? Now this
5:59
Sony charger, this is the BC-QZ1 charger. So I will note about this, I have it because
6:06
I have multiple of these because they came included with my cameras. I do know however
6:10
from reviewing Sony cameras that they tend to only come with the high-end, great expensive
6:16
cameras. So you may not have one of these included with your camera when you purchase
6:20
it. If you're going to buy it individually, it costs a hundred bucks. So it costs as much
6:24
for just the charger is what you get the Elano charger and two batteries as well for. So
6:29
as from a value proposition, this obviously makes a lot more sense. This charger is rated
6:34
at 150 minutes to charge a battery. So remember it took about 170 minutes here. Now when I
6:40
compared them side by side, it was kind of an interesting result because I started off
6:45
with two batteries fully depleted, one in here, one in the Elano charger. Initially
6:50
this drew at 26 Watts when plugged into the AC power of the BlueEddy charging station
6:56
that I was using, whereas this is only drawing 13 Watts. And so in theory it should charge
7:01
twice as fast. It's actually not the way that it played out. When I got to a place where
7:07
I was, as I was monitoring to them, neither one was drawing any measurable current at
7:11
all. So it was right at the end of, of topping off the very top of the battery. That was
7:15
about two hours into the process and neither one of them showed a hundred percent yet
7:21
But when I took the batteries out and put them into the camera, they were like 98, 99%
7:26
So interestingly though, this starts off a lot faster. It didn't necessarily charge the
7:31
battery faster overall. I would say that it is very slightly faster, but not any kind
7:36
of big meaningful way. So my conclusion on the charger is that it's probably a little
7:42
bit, a bit, a little bit slower than this dedicated Sony charger, but your advantage
7:46
is obviously you've got dual bays. Your connection source is USB-C, which is going to be much
7:52
more flexible than this kind of old school proprietary end here that is only for a certain
7:58
charge cable. Whereas with the Elano, you can go with a smaller overall package, even
8:04
though it's two dual bay. And then also you have the chance of charging off of anything
8:08
that provides USB-C power, which obviously is a lot of devices compared to that AC power
8:15
This using DC allows you just more flexibility for that whole charging process. So anyway
8:21
I liked that point. And of course, obviously I like the value proposition. I like the cleaner
8:25
interface. With the Sony charger, all you're getting is just the three green bars. So a
8:30
very kind of sloppy way of showing state of charge. This is, you know, down to a single
8:35
percentage point. That's obviously much more precise and more useful to let you know where
8:39
you're at in the whole charging process. So how well do the batteries work? I've been
8:44
using these batteries exclusively for the last five weeks. Now, as is pretty common
8:49
with third party batteries, they're actually rated technically at higher than what the
8:53
first party Sony battery is. The Elano battery is rated at 2400 mAh, the Sony battery at
8:59
2280 mAh. So on paper, 120 mAh advantage for the Elano battery. What I found in actuality
9:08
in using them is that when I did a runtime test, I decided to do a real world test using
9:15
one of the most kind of high power draw things that you can do in a modern camera. And that
9:20
is to shoot higher resolution 4K video. So I shot 4K 60 video in my A7R Mark V, started
9:28
off first with the Elano battery at 100% state of charge, and I used a 160 gigabyte
9:36
it's a CFA card in there. And so I had lots of room to record. So I started the test for
9:41
the Elano battery at 7.22 a.m. and at 8.57 the battery died on me. And so that was an
9:49
hour and 35 minutes. At that point, I was, it was kind of a moot point anyway. It was
9:54
showing that my 160 gig card was essentially just about full. And so the battery went first
10:01
but the card was just about to go. So after allowing time for the camera to cool down
10:06
I did a Sony test, started the Sony test at 9.20 a.m. using a fully charged Sony battery
10:12
same parameters, and it ran till 10.56. So that's an hour and 36 minutes. However, the
10:18
difference being is that here it was the card that showed exhausted. The battery still showed
10:22
about 5% battery life left. And so my conclusion is, is that even though the Elano is higher
10:29
capacity, it actually, in terms of real world use, it is very slightly about five to 6%
10:36
It is very slightly less capacity for real world use than what an OEM Sony battery is
10:42
So is the Sony battery better? I would say yes, but on a positive note, I've used these
10:49
batteries exclusively for the last five weeks. I'm not seeing one warning, so zero compatibility
10:55
issues, at least at this stage. So that's huge. I will note that I think that there
10:59
is, the camera was maybe a split second slower powering on, probably some kind of power check
11:05
that it runs. It takes a little bit longer with the Elano battery, but it's, it's so
11:09
slight that it was just an impression I had. I can't verify it because the time is still
11:14
too short, but a very, I think just a split second delay longer and powering on the camera
11:20
but outside of that, zero compatibility issues. An OEM Sony battery costs $78 per battery
11:27
So you get two batteries, 160 bucks. If you were to get two batteries plus the charger
11:32
that's 260 bucks. Whereas here we have a hundred dollars for the dual bay charger and two batteries
11:39
to go with it. So you can question other things. I mean, obviously the Sony stuff is probably
11:44
just a hair better, but the Elano is very, very close within a few percentage points
11:49
You can question how long the reliability is going to be. Fit and finish seems to be
11:53
good, but obviously I've only used them for five weeks, so I can't answer that question
11:57
I can say this though, on the value proposition, there's no question that this is a very strong
12:03
value and it's also a really well executed package in terms of the materials, in terms
12:08
of the functionality. I've really liked it. I probably will continue to use it. And that's
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really the best endorsement that I can give. I'm Dustin Abbott. And if you want more information
12:17
you can check out the link to the Amazon listing for the Elano battery charger and kit. And
12:24
as noted, you can get this in either Sony or Canon configurations and a couple of different
12:28
battery options. And the price will vary a little bit. Smaller capacity batteries are
12:32
going to cost a little bit less. Obviously these batteries cost just a little bit more
12:36
So check it out there if you want more information. As always, thanks for watching. Have a great
12:41
day and let the light in
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