This is the Ridge Power Bank, it’s a portable power supply with 10,000 mAh of capacity, and it can charge both wirelessly and via the built-in USB-C capable.
The Power Bank was developed as a one-stop charging solution for both regular travel and weekends in the wilderness, it’ll give you two-three full phone charges, and it can keep your GPS, two-way radio, and other devices topped up too.
History Speedrun: Ridge
Ridge started with a Kickstarter campaign – in 2013 Daniel Kane, then a college student in California, and his father Paul made a wallet from a pair of aluminum plates screwed together over a money clip. The goal was to raise $12,000 USD, but by the time the campaign closed, it had taken in $266,622 USD.
A second Kickstarter campaign later the same year, for a redesigned wallet offered in aluminum, titanium and carbon fiber, ran for 48 days and raised $126,873 USD from 1,523 backers against a $14,000 USD goal. Kane’s first hires were his father and his sister, the company was now well-enough funded.
Revenue went from $30,000 a month to more than $350,000 a month between 2014 and 2015 on the strength of social media-based sales alone.
The company has worked closely with online content creators and it’s continued to grow fast, revenue is now measured in the millions, and Marques Brownlee, who has more than 18 million subscribers on his MKBHD channel, took an equity stake in the company, as well as a board seat and the title of chief creative partner.
The Ridge Power Bank
The Ridge Power Bank is a 10,000 mAh portable battery, Ridge calls it a five-in-one as it has a magnetic wireless charging pad on the face, a second smaller pad in the top edge sized for an Apple Watch, a captive USB-C cable, a captive Lightning cable, and a USB-C port in the base that both refills the pack and can power a device.
Inside you’ll find a lithium polymer cell rated at 3.85 volts. Ridge’s spec sheet gives the capacity as 38.5 watt-hours. Wired output tops out at 20W over USB-C delivery, the watch pad runs at 2.5W, and the main wireless pad is quoted at 15W, 10W, 7.5W or 5W depending on what’s charging on it.
The outer shell is polycarbonate and ABS with a matte finish, it has a fold-out kickstand on the back and a small LED window that reports remaining charge as a percentage. It measures in at 4.13 x 2.68 x 0.63 inches, and it weighs 7.37 oz.
Ridge claims up to three full phone charges, though this will depend on which specific smartphone you have as their built-in batteries can differ in capacity quite significantly.
The Ridge Power Bank is now being offered for sale through the outfitting store Huckberry in your choice of 7 colorways, and you can visit the store listing here if you’d like to read more.
Images courtesy of Huckberry + Ridge
Articles that Ben Branch has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
