What's Hiding Inside Haribo's Power Bank and Headphones?
26 comments
·November 27, 2025VBprogrammer
I stick to Anker for cables, batteries and chargers. I'm sure they've had their own issues but everything I've bought feels well made. The only one I've had an issue with was a USB-C to everything else adaptor which weirdly stopped working after a week or two. I was surprised to find that their support was based in the UK (Cardiff if memory serves) and very efficiently processed a return and replacement.
I've watched Big Clive's videos for too long to trust no-name Chinese things with anything involving mains potential or energy storage.
vardump
IKEA 45W and 65W Sjoss chargers and braided cables are also good. Pretty cheap too.
LunicLynx
I bought myself an anker powerbank because of all the rave around them. Mine behaves incredibly strange. Charged in seconds, then not containing half a phone charge. For a 20.000 mAh this was really disappointing. Probably a one of but still leaves the impression that this was looked at because it ruined the price for others.
literalAardvark
That's obviously a dud cell. Contact support if it's not several years old.
Melonai
Had a tangential issue with an Anker power bank (screen was sometimes showing bogus charge essentially), and can confirm Anker E-Mail support is pretty good in my experience, they sent me a second unit (even though the first is still functional and I still use it just fine to this day), free of charge after a brief exchange.
Might be worth a shot.
testdelacc1
Yeah same. I’ve bought Anker power adapters, cables, power banks, headphones. All of them have done incredibly well. They’re not immune to issues, because sometimes their suppliers let them down. But if that happens they’ll replace your product for free.
krackers
The more interesting thing is that they were actually pulled. Did the manufacturer send a recall notice? (And if so why didn't they send a statement). I can't imagine Amazon themselves taking any action since they allow other junk to stay up
curiousObject
Why these batteries got all the attention - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45322135
giantg2
Batteries that undercut the market price have serious flaws... who would have thought!
baiwl
This reminds me of when pvs-studio would post every single analysis they would make of popular C++ projects. It was a fun novelty back in the day. Just like these scans, which now are boring and overplayed.
frumiousirc
I'm curious how the cost of performing these CT scans compared to the profit reaped by Haribo while the batteries were selling.
mberger
Gummy bears?
tclancy
My indulgent aunt once let me get a five pound bag of them from one of those Scoop Your Own candy stations. I left them in the rear window of her VW Rabbit for the better part of a summer day and they melted into a horrible blob that scarred me for life. Not sure why this Gummi Bear post is giving me flashbacks to that.
But yes, those folks. Check the product shot in the article for their logo.
metalman
not sure what is more interesting, the detailed information on lithium battery construction, or how they got a CT(cat) scanner, or the idea of having an industrial cat scanner around. those batteries were bizarely cheap and there was prior suggestion that these(others) were actualy fake with empty space or filler, which isn't the case, and all in all they just need to up the precision of there automated processes. nice piece of journalism.
notpushkin
> how they got a CT(cat) scanner
Lumafield is a CT company: https://www.lumafield.com/
Carioca
Yup! And their whole social media “thing” is doing these kinds of on-topic analysis of (mostly consumer) devices
ChrisMarshallNY
> how they got a CT(cat) scanner
I think they are becoming a lot more prevalent in labs, these days. They aren't the monster devices that many of us may be (unfortunately) familiar with.
butvacuum
They can be a lot smaller when neither dose nor movement is a factor in imaging.
Y444
I love the summary at the top. Cool thing to have.
charcircuit
Has anyone reported issues with this battery, from what I've seen online everyone has been happy with its performance. Maybe the uneveness called out by the article is not enough to matter. Not following the industry standard is not necessarily the tipping point of everything going wrong.
arcfour
"Well the batteries haven't caught on fire yet. I'm sure they're fine, despite the serious manufacturing defects that increase the risk of a fire substantially."
You realize they stopped selling them, right? They don't do this for "nothing to worry about."
charcircuit
>increase the risk of a fire substantially
The article doesn't state by how much it increased.
>You realize they stopped selling them, right?
I don't think Amazon is an authority on battery safety and are airing on the side of safety than making an actual judgements on the safety of it.
jacquesm
That lower than .5 mm margin on those edges may not have caused fires - yet - but if nothing is done about it then one day they will. That's an accident waiting to happen.
tclancy
No they are definitely not. You’re completely correct! They are, instead, an authority on what might get their asses sued to the moon and back and apparently found the cost/ benefit of selling this popular product to be negative. Any ideas what might cause that?
FWIW, the Haribo charger seems to be rather well made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xT_t5nvFcoY (26:50, by ZeroBrain, a German YouTuber that disassembles electronic devices)