THINKWARE iVolt Mini External Dash Cam Battery (Hardwired)

Bought a dash cam and wanted to get a battery for it to save my car battery and not have to worry about it not starting at some point. I bought the Thinkware iVolt Mini BAB-50 battery and it is being used with a BlackVue DR750X-2CH Plus. I just installed it this evening and everything went very well. So far, it seems to work great! Got 14 hours of parking time out of it.

Very affordable when compared to Cellink, Blackvue or Blackbox external batteries. I didn’t have a need for Bluetooth connectivity or a phone app for constant battery monitoring…just wanted a dedicated battery source specifically for parking mode and this was a simple cost-effective solution. I paired the iVolt with a Q800Pro front and rear dashcam. I did have some issues with the install but that was more so on my end and not Thinkware’s fault. I generally don’t post reviews, but I thought they earned it. Customer service was very responsive and really went above and beyond with troubleshooting and installation support. Parking mode is working great, just doing some fine tuning to see what mode works best. At some point, I’ll be back for the 4K upgrade. Thanks again for the Great Support!

I bought three ivolt mini batteries 4 months ago along with separate 12v charging cables. After installing the charging cable, the charging cable failed in 2 days....stopped powering on the ivolt battery. I went through Amazon to resolve and sent the cable back. A new one was sent back to me. Plugged it in to the ivolt mini battery and it stopped working in 2 days again. The battery was not recharging. I went back to Amazon to message Thinkware regarding this....back and forth. Was asked to send video documenting it is not powering on. However, Amazon messaging only allows 10mb to be sent. So the rep tried to help me diagnose the issue to no avail and asked me to contact via thinkwarestore.com. I did exactly that and basically went through all of the hoops and time wasting of explaining it all over again including the basic of seeing if the battery is powered on. Finally, it came to needing me to send that the video, which is 45 seconds long at 296mb. I told the rep that it cannot go out by email due to size as gmail only allows for 26.2mb attachments. Rep then advised me to set up a dropbox account and upload video......I'm pretty sure anyone reading this is starting to sense my frustration. These batteries are not cheap and I bought 3 of them. Keep in mind the other 2 are working fine in my 2 other cars. If there is an issue with your battery pack, you are going to jump through hoops dealing with them. I do not recommend

So this first review is testing of the battery pack in a controlled environment to ensure it worked before putting it in my car. So the dashcam battery comes with a few fuse taps, fuses, a cable to connect the fuse taps (from an ACC type fuse slot) to the dashcam battery, and an output 3 wire cable from the dashcam battery. That 3 wire cable goes to a separately purchased VIOFO HK4 Acc Hardwire Kit then to my VIOFO A119 Mini 2 dashcam.In my test environment I used a 0-30V 10 amp max power supply to act as my ACC input and set to 12.4 volts. I then hooked everything up and set the dashcam battery setting switch to low charging (5A or so max) for this test. Note that you should not go by colors of the wires, and instead go by the name labels on them when connecting the 3 wire output cable to the HK4 Hardwire kit. I then charged the battery via the power supply, although the battery was already about 95% charged out of the box. I then verified the dashcam was running in normal recording mode. I then shut off the power supply and the camera went into parking mode as expected. Previously I had set the camera to run a max of 24 hours in parking mode.So the camera did run 24 hours in parking mode then the camera shut off automatically. It probably could have run longer but I didn't check that out. The HK4 Hardwire kit connected to the dashcam draws some 182ma of current at the HK4 input (where the dashcam battery connects to it) when the dashcam is in low bit rate recording parking mode. So theoretically the dashcam battery could supply at least 4500mah/182ma = 24.7 hours at say around 12 volts or so in parking mode (more since the dashcam battery output is above 12 volts for the actual output at this mah rating), so the battery worked as expected. It is helpful knowing what your dashcam draws in parking mode at 12 volts to gauge how long the camera will run in parking mode before dying.I then turned the power supply back on at 12.4 volts and it took approx. 1 hour to charge the dashcam battery back to full (green light on) while the dashcam was still hooked up with the dashcam starting in normal recording mode at the start of this charging. Current draw during this charging was approx 5.6 amps max (which occurred at the start and slowly dropped off)So far, so good, and the external dashcam battery has operated as expected. Next part of the review will be after I have installed everything in the car.Update 2-17-2025: So have now installed it in my car and it works as expected. At around 32 deg F temperature it powered my dash cam in parking mode (my single dashcam in low bit rate parking mode draws 182ma of current at the 12 volt output of the Thinkware battery) for at least 24 hours. So now the only thing to see is if it last over time (how many years) and how much it degrades over that time.

The thankless is awesome and I’m thinking about adding a 360 degree camera as well as giving as a gift

I like the compact size, the way it charges when car is driven. And the increased time for parking mode. With no stress on car battery.

When my dashcam was hardwired to work off of my car battery I would only get about 30 mins of parking mode due to my car having a low voltage detection circuit. Now with this battery I am getting 20-24hrs of parking mode and motion detection. Installation wasn't that hard. The great part is it recharges very fast. My commute to work it's fully recharge within 15 mins of driving. The battery has been maintaining a steady 13.8v.