This is a video about a battery, this battery to be exact.
But I need to give you a little bit of backstory so
that you know why this battery was such a great answer
for my current setup and also I think
for anybody else out there too.
But the disclosure to this video is also kind of weird
because originally this was just supposed
to be a sponsored showcase video from SmallRig about their
VB212 V-Mount battery.
But then the box came in the mail
and I saw this guy's face on it,
Caleb Pike from DSLR Video Shooter was on my box
and I was like, what's going on?
So I texted Caleb and he was like, yeah, I have a, you know,
product collaboration with SmallRig about this new battery.
So all objectivity went out the window right then and there
because obviously I'm not gonna roast probably one
of my oldest YouTube friend's
first, you know, creator collab product.
Luckily though, the battery's actually pretty darn good.
He's even got his little signature on the cable,
on the little leather binding for the cable here.
This is a pretty good cable by the way.
Not that that's the most important part here,
but it's a 240 watt braided USB-C to
USB-C. I've tested it in a few different applications.
It's good. And as somebody who cares about cables,
I think it's a pretty good little cable.
Anyway, before I get into the battery,
let's talk a little bit about what my current setup was,
'cause I've had some people ask me about my current rig
and I've got some updates
to the rig that I'm pretty excited about.
But the battery can actually be in lieu of some
of the choices that I made, which is pretty rad.
So Sony a7 IV connected to an Atomos Ninja V.
I've got obviously my signature purple HDMI
cables connecting that.
And then I've got a DC pin that goes
to the battery eliminator, which then goes to D-Tap.
And I also used to run a dummy battery to D-Tap as well.
I'm not doing that anymore, instead I'm just running a USB-C
cable from the plate to the camera
to keep it juiced all the time with USB-C.
Now, Kondor Blue sent over their new V-Mount plates,
which are excellent.
Probably the best V-Mount plates I've ever used.
Now this video isn't about my Kondor Blue V-Mount plates,
but I wanna give you a quick little tour of these
so you can see why this battery is so dope.
So up here we've got a D-Tap port
and I love that they're using the reversible D-Tap port.
It's three pins. You can use the top two
or flip it upside down and use the bottom two.
That's sweet and convenient.
And then we've got USB-C PD in and out, and then 12 volt
and 8 volt DC barrels.
On the bottom on this side we've got another D-Tap,
also the reversible type.
And then we've got this cool little trigger lock thing here
that protects the on-off switch, an eject button
for the V-Mount battery, and then power indicator LEDs.
And then on top we've got another USB-C port
and then some threads and pins for expansion modules
that Kondor Blue is coming out with.
One is going to be an SDI/HDMI converter
that you could put on top of your plate,
which is gonna be sweet.
Another one is they have a power expansion,
which is gonna have two 2-pin Lemos and
and one 24-volt 3-pin Fischer port on it.
So that's gonna be cool if you need those things.
But otherwise it's really compact.
The locking system for it is excellent.
There's no instances of accidentally the battery coming out.
Once that battery's in there, it doesn't matter
how much force you put on it, it is locked in.
It's just an excellent V-Mount plate.
The best one I've ever used.
So what I do right now is this USB-C on the top is what's
running into the camera to give it continuous power
while there's a battery inside, it keeps it charged.
If power fails, I still have the battery inside
but also the USB-C port on the side on all three of my rigs,
I have a cord, a USB-C cord that goes from the plate
to a wall wart that gives power delivery to the plate
and thus to the whole rig.
So I can even hot swap the battery,
I can take the battery out
and it will still continue running
because of that power delivery
and it will charge my V-Mount battery and everything else.
So that's the reason why I think this plate is so great.
And then SmallRig sent over this battery.
And what's crazy is this battery does pretty much everything
I just explained through this sort of complicated rig
but all inside the battery and at a higher capacity.
And just the battery is the same price
as just my battery here, even though it has like a lot
of the plate parts on it too.
So let's talk about what is on this battery
and why it solves a lot of those same problems all at once.
Now SmallRig has a few other sizes
of a similar design to this.
They have the 99 watt and the 150 and that kinda thing,
but this 212-watt behemoth is coming in at $439,
which is the same as my 150-watt Bebob over here.
And while it is bigger,
I'll admit this is the biggest micro battery I've ever seen.
It's not crazy big considering
how much bigger the capacity is,
but the coolest thing is all the ports that it has on it.
So we've got two USB-C ports, both that support 140 watt.
So you can rapid charge the battery,
but also they're both, you know,
input/output ports, which is great.
The same thing I was talking about with the plate over here.
So you can run power in, run power out,
or you could power two heavy duty devices off this.
Even if you didn't wanna use it on your camera rig,
you could have a 212 watt laptop battery if you wanted to,
over 140 watts.
And they've got a Type-A in the middle, which is convenient,
which even my plate doesn't have.
And then they've still got the 8 volt
and 12 volt DC barrels,
which you normally don't see on a V-Mount battery,
which I like on my plates if I wanna run, you know,
dummy batteries and stuff like that.
But it's also got D-Taps on both sides.
And then of course the actual V-Lock, really the only thing
that it doesn't do is those D-Taps aren't the three
pin reversible ones.
And then there's a button on the side you can press,
which will give you a little display showing your remaining
battery, but that display is even better.
One of the things that I use when testing cameras
and other things is I have a little meter
that I can connect via USB in between the line to tell me
how many watts is it drawing, what's the voltage,
whatever, this has all that on the screen.
Here, let me connect my phone so
that you can see what I'm talking about.
So you can see it lists all the different ports
so you can see, you know, voltages
for each individual port, which is great.
And then for C 1 that's USB-C 1
you can see we're drawing, you know, nine-ish volts
and it shows you the TDP down here.
Then you also have your sort of total
how long you could be maintaining that output for,
which looks like it's saying like 21 hours.
It's pretty great to have like a meter built in
that maybe for some people they don't really care.
But for me, for testing purposes, when I like to know
how everything's running, I thought this was a great little
value add on the screen.
I think the battery looks great too.
Again, you know, you can question my objectivity here
because this guy's face,
look at him creeping in there in the shot.
But it's great. I like this sort of, you know,
glass look on the front that fits well the screen
and makes the screen sort of seamlessly blend in with it.
And then on the sides it's got a really nice grip.
It almost feels a bit like a silicone on the side,
but it's a really nice grip.
And that grip has a really strange application
that is totally niche
but kind of cool if you're using your camera
and then you pull off your lens cap, right?
And you want to put it somewhere,
you can actually stick it right on top of the bat.
I know this sounds stupid, but because
of the grippy stuff on top and
because it's like the perfect size
for the 82 millimeter lens caps,
you can stick 'em right on here and they don't really slide
around too much, which is nice.
And I've just been kind of setting my lens caps
on top of these batteries.
Okay. I kinda like that for them.
Let's face it, there's not a lot
to say when it comes to batteries.
It's not like we can do exhaustive testing on dynamic range
and rolling shutter and that kind of thing.
And again, when it's Caleb's battery, what am I gonna say?
Other than I love it but I do, I've been using them
for the last, I don't know,
couple weeks anyway on all the rigs
and they've been working great.
I've tested different things like how, you know,
how much do they discharge if you just have them sitting on
you know, on the table doing nothing.
And I think I lost maybe like 6% in a 24 hour period.
But the fact that again, that you can have 'em juiced up
while using 'em with the USB-C is great.
So it's not really an issue like with other batteries
where if you look at them
and you press the indicator, you go,
oh, they're only about halfway.
That's all you're gonna have to work with.
This battery could say halfway
and it could stay halfway the entire time I use it
'cause I can run power into it while using power out of it.
So it's great. I also use them on my lights as well.
I have a 600c Pro over there with two V-Mount slots.
And so I grab two of these batteries, put one on each side
and now you're only able
to use a 600c Pro at 50% when using the, you know,
14 point whatever volt, V-Mount.
You need the 28 volt V-Mounts if you wanna
run it a hundred percent.
And it worked well and I ran them down to zero until
the light shut off just to make sure
there was no funny business going on.
And they worked great. Pretty much everything I've done
with them they worked great for
and I just keep being pleasantly surprised.
It's probably the best V-Mount battery that I've used.
The feature set is just terrific. The aesthetics are great.
I've run into no issues with it
and if anything it's just solved problems
where if you don't have a rig like this,
you could probably get the battery on its own
to do a huge portion of the work for you.
And then all you would need is just a really simple,
not even electrified lock system,
just to hold it to your rig.
You know, I still prefer to have a rig like this
because I like to be able to swap out the batteries.
I don't like to connect things to them on a rig.
I'd rather be able to swap them out.
But really this would do everything for you.
And unlike a camera rig,
it can do a lot of things outside of that too.
Like I said, you can run your like
laptop off of this, anyway.
They're just great.
How much more can one say about a battery?
Really? I think this says it all right here.
Alright... I'm done.