 What's up boys time for another tech consumerist video where I tell you what stuff to buy Well, well, okay. This is my think pad x2 20 You know that this channel is not about spending a lot of money on stuff wasting a bunch of money on stupid things that you know Just came out last year this computer. What is it six seven eight years old something like that doesn't matter It works great think pad x2 20. I'm doing this video because I got a new accessory for it And it's an accessory that's actually a little bit expensive now I got this thing used for 90 bucks and the accessory which I'll go ahead and show you is this slice battery This came in a little above a hundred bucks So it's actually a little bit more expensive than the computer But I wanted to do a video on it just to I guess you know since I have a platform I might as well because other people might be interested in buying this thing now before I talk about the battery itself Well, I'll go ahead and tell you it's probably obvious what it's for it's for extending the battery life of your computer Now by default I want to say I have one of the nine cell batteries the ones that stick out Usually when you have think pads you could have the nine cells And I think the six cells that don't stick out and I got the nine cell because you know I wanted longer battery life and I actually like I actually like holding it back here It's probably dangerous or something, but you know, whatever Now the nine cell battery on Linux I want to say it gets maybe four to five hours of usage depending on what you're doing of course I mean, whatever you're doing is going to change drastically your the kind of time you have if you're doing something more intensive like rendering a video It's gonna run out of battery really quickly But you know, I'd say four to four to five hours is your typical nine cell battery battery life depending on what you're doing Now if you use think pads, you know that one mainstay of think pads are of course the ultra bases Now this is not the same thing as the slice battery. They just look nearly the same I'll go into the specifics of both of them in a second, but you know ultra bases. I've done videos on them They have extra USB plugs. They have, you know VGA cords HDMI or that's display port not HDMI and Most importantly for me, you can put in a Well, it comes with a DVD drive You can replace it with a caddy for hard drive and that's what I use this thing for and of course It's just also very convenient to keep this thing plugged up all the plugs, you know At your house and then you come home and put your think pad on top of it And it's a very nice and convenient. Now, you probably know about ultra bases I know a lot of people have them, but I don't know anyone before me who actually owns a slice battery One of the reasons I wanted to try it out But anyway, let's let's go ahead and look at well, okay Let me compare how they look first off now Obviously, both of these are gonna add some Thickness to your laptop, but you can see that there's a big difference So the one on top is the ultra base the one on the bottom is a slice battery So you'll see that the ultra base is considerably thicker now part of this thickness if I show you the whole thing You'll see that it actually rises at the end. I actually like this one thing I like about the ultra base is that when the laptop is on it I'll go ahead and put it on It actually sort of leans leans upward and that's very nice for when you're typing You know at a desk or something like that. I find that very convenient So I actually like this about the ultra base, but if you're taking the slice battery from place to place That might not necessarily be so convenient. So the slice battery is pretty much the same width all the way through Now anyway, so let's talk about what well, I should say one other thing I'll go ahead and say one thing I don't like about the slice battery and that I've used it so far You'll notice. Let me put back on the ultra base Now the ultra base to remove it. It's the easiest thing in the world You probably saw me just do it a second ago. There's this latch here. You just undo that latch take it off and that's it Well, really, I think you're supposed to press the button first first, but you know, I never do that Now the slice battery Here's the slice battery it goes on in the exact same way you really just put the computer on top of it But there is no latch on the side There's no simple release in fact the release on the slice battery is a little weird to undo it you have to flip it over basically and there is There's a little unlock mechanism and then there's a switch and this unlock mechanism It's not like it sticks in the unlock position So you really have to do this with like multiple fingers. Actually, it's hard to do with one hand I all pretty much always have to two-hand this but that's how you take the slice battery off Now that can be good and bad. Obviously, it's a lot more difficult than the ultra base to remove So that can be very inconvenient but the thing about this is When your computer is attached to this if it if it sort of comes off at an inopportune time your computer will in fact Think it has no battery and shut down So that's very unfortunate and I will say that is one thing that's happened to me with this slice battery a couple times There there have been a couple times when you know, I'm using this and maybe I pick it up funny Maybe I pick it up by the computer instead of by the slice battery and it just I guess it sort of disconnects for a second And it'll turn off so that's one downside to the slice battery But anyway, I'm saying all these bad things about it I should tell you what kind of things it actually gives you now as I said usually the think pad x220 with the 9-cell battery gets you around five or five hours at the most Something like that the slice battery now. I haven't timed it out all the way But all I estimate that the slice battery probably triples your battery length so you could pretty much take this thing Really to work or wherever where you're gone all day and expect it not to run out now The only time I've actually gone all now I've owned this thing for I well I it's a long story I ordered this thing a couple months ago, but I couldn't pick it up I had ordered it like to my dad's house accidentally and I never went there for months So I just picked this up a couple weeks ago from there But I had an opportunity to try this out where I was taking it on a bus from Atlanta to Chattanooga and That's that's a you know around a four-hour drive for a bus Which is about the length of this battery length But what I was doing during that period is I was doing really hardcore rendering really hardcore you know some compiling and a bunch of other stuff really rendering videos and stuff and That was extremely intensive and with the slice battery it actually lasted the entire time There's no way that would have happened without it But I would estimate you know in in real life the the battery probably triples your battery time now I don't want to even give you a Rigid estimation of how long that's going to be because frankly batteries could just be different your usage can be different depending on what Operating your system operating system You're running depending how intense it is that can change a lot So just I would say probably about three times your your typical length. That's what you're going to get with this thing Now as I said the downside I'm going to have to remove this thing Downside is taking it off um now one other thing Oh, jeez gotta actually think about this You can see how painful it is, but I guess it is partially for safety now You can plug this thing in and you can charge it at any time It does not have to be connected to the computer. So you can just keep this at home plugged in. There's a little uh Indicator thing here a little button you can press and it'll tell you how full the battery is Mine is that right about a hundred percent because I let this thing charge yesterday Now in terms of how useful this thing is um Well, okay. Well one thing related to that is as I mentioned before size Now I said the ultra base is a good bit thicker As you can see so if you are carrying these things in your backpack I'll note I'll just say that the slice battery although it adds some width It doesn't really add enough to really be noticed So the ultra base is a good bit heavier than this. I haven't weighed both of them But I'll say that the slice battery it barely adds anything. I I don't know this thing Couldn't be more than a pound or so. It's it's not really anything And it doesn't really I mean I kept this thing in my backpack And when I have my think pad with my ultra base in my backpack I can tell that the ultra base is on it's big enough, but this this thing isn't so Uh encumbering so I wouldn't necessarily worry about it So in terms of like how to use this thing or when you're going to use it Um, I guess the decision you have to put up with or grapple with is Do I want to take a charger or do I want to take this thing? Or do I want to take both and I'll say in My daily life. I don't really see myself using this very much now As I said, it's been useful to me because I took this on a bus And where I didn't really have consistent access to power they did have plugins, but they didn't really work very well So it was very nice to have this thing Or if you know, you're on a plane that doesn't have power outlets Or if you're somewhere else if you do work outside or something like that This can be very useful for this But in terms of daily life When I go out with my think pad, I think I'd rather just take the charger and plug it up while I'm somewhere else instead of using this Now that's not to say this thing is super useless or something. In fact, it's very convenient in that Uh, one thing you can do if you're even if you're just lounging around the house and doing random work from day to day one thing that you can do is keep this thing plugged up and Go around the different parts of the house to work on your laptop. That's often what I do And when it's almost running out of battery plug it up or something like that So I should tell you what actually happens when this thing is plugged up. Um now by default, so if I just put this thing on And let it run What it's going to do is it's going to run through the slice batteries battery power first So this thing is going to go from 100 to 0 Percent after that's done the only then is it going to use the laptops batteries So that that's sort of what you expect it to do It'd be really bad if it were the other way around like if you used the slice battery And although it kept running after a period it the you know, it runs out of the laptop battery In the same way if I were to plug this thing up right now and again You plug it up the slice battery Even though you put the ac adapter into the slice battery It's really going to be charging the laptop. Now once the laptop reaches 100 percent. It's fully charged Then it will start charging the slice battery And again, that's pretty much what you you'd want Because you don't really care and you care more about your laptop than your slice battery. So So that's basically how it works and now you could theoretically Plug in an ac adapter to both ports, but uh, well, there's actually a part Well, it's on so I can't show you but they tell you not to do that on the slice battery It's like no no on this so although I did it and nothing terrible happened But someone who knows more about electronics can probably tell me how terrible that was But either way this thing has been very helpful and uh recently I don't know now for my purposes. I certainly don't regret buying it because of course I also get to do a youtube video on it and a lot of people are going to learn about it because of that So that that's sort of worth it. If if it's worth is it worth actually $100 for an average user? I don't know. It depends on what kind of work style you're working with Um, I will say things that as I said, thanks that don't bother me It the size of it is not too intrusive. So if you're worried about that, I wouldn't fret it too much It's not going to be a big deal. Um, I I guess if you want to think about if you're going to buy this thing It's just an issue of um, am I actually going is it going to get me $100 worth of goodness out of it And that's the only thing you you should really consider. I guess I wouldn't worry about that much else My only gripes again are the difficulty of it. Oh, I yeah, I don't know if I mentioned before but aside from it being difficult to remove Every once in a while if you lift this thing up in a bad way, I might be able to replicate it Okay, maybe not. Um, but there have been a couple times where I try to lift the laptop up And not the slice battery and it will become disconnected for just the second and it'll go out Uh, that's one of the reasons it's so the slice battery is so difficult to remove. But anyway, um What was I saying? Yeah, so I think this thing it depends on your work style if this thing is actually worth it Maybe throwing a hundred bucks on it is not a big deal. I will say you can't get these things Both new and used. Um, my experience is that used batteries are pretty much always bad or Extremely depleted or they don't charge properly. So I bought this thing new. It's the only new think pad Uh accessory I've gotten in quite a while actually I actually just bought a new keyboard for this So that's one other thing But typically I don't get new products because they're usually not really worth the money But in the case of batteries, I always buy new ones and if you get one of these A new battery is going to put you back about a hundred bucks If you go on ebay, you can find Used ones for a good bit less, but I'm not going to vouch for any of those. I don't know how they're going to be I mean, they might be fine. They might be fine refurbish, but I'm just not going to vouch for them But anyway, so I hope this has been informative. Oh, well, you know what? I should add something else There are others. So this is the x2 20 this slice battery will work for the x2 20 and the x2 30 Other kinds of think pads have different slice batteries that are a little different Some more recent think pads will have a slice battery that only Fills up the back of it. So it's not like the full body They're only on the back side. That's like the more modern think pads I've never used one of those and another thing you can get I don't know what models this is for but you can get an ultra base where instead of having a cd drive a dvd drive or a Hard drive caddy, you can actually put in a kind of battery pack and that's another option for some thinkpads out there I don't know if that works for the x2 20 I think maybe the only thing the x2 20 has is this slice battery that I have But you might want to look it up yourself. It's just I don't have any direct experience with that kind of stuff But anyway, uh, hopefully this has been informative for those of you guys who might be interested in this If you have any other questions about it, feel free to put them in the comments section Anyway, well, see you guys. See you guys next time