The Dewalt DCB094K 20V Max USB-C PD charging adapter is now in stock and available for purchase!
Home Depot has the DCB094K available for $99 with free shipping. At the time of this posting, they are reporting 95 units in stock.
Other retailers do not have this in stock yet. One retailer reports that the charging adapter kit is currently on backorder, manufacturer has no ETA.
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In addition to being able to turn any Dewalt 20V Max (or FlexVolt) cordless power tool battery into a power bank for charging electronic devices, it also serves as a compact USB charger for the same Dewalt batteries.
The kit comes with the 20V Max battery adapter, 65W USB-C charger, and 100W-rated USB-C to USB-C cable with braided jacketing.
It’s possible that Dewalt is gearing up to ship inventory to more retailers, or this could be all they’ll have available for a while.
If you want one, buy it fast or be prepared to wait longer.
Price: $99
Check out our review:
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Robert
95 available. I hope that’s the allocation for Luxembourg. I’m pleased it’s PD. Dewalt is
stepping up it’s game, a lot of the tool company derived charging devices are way behind the times. Now only if you can get one.
Stuart
A lot of tech components are in short supply these days.
Robert
I totally get it. This Dewalt DCB094K 20V Max USB-C PD hasn’t even yet shown up with the scalpers on E-bay.
Craig
Will it power a JBL speaker in my shop?
Doug N
I feel a little bad for Acme and Toolnut, but I’ll probably cancel my acme order and get from HD. Too much uncertainty, been waiting almost a year for this thing. Thanks for the update Stuart.
Stuart
You’re welcome!
Home Depot seems to get fulfillment priority. I backordered a jig saw and PowerStack combo back in January, and by March I got tired of waiting and picked it up from Home Depot’s website at the same price.
Doug N
Yet another indication that Dewalt and HD are not parting ways, to reference an earlier post…
TimL
I almost pre ordered from ACME, but 100 felt a bit steep still.
Stuart
It does, but not when taking into account it comes with a 65W charger and the adapter is a two-way charger. There’s a lot of versatility here.
Pete
Still expensive even with the 65w charger and the PD functionality. DeWalt can get away with the $99 price only because it fits their batteries. As soon as some Chinese company makes an adapter the whole package will cost no more than $50.
I also understand that DeWalt has to recover some manufacturing costs that are higher than usual given the item is targeted to a limited customer base.
Jim Felt
I’m just annoyed how long it’s taken any of these techie-like companies to actually migrate to USB-C. Surely most all their respective employees must be aware of this Luddite situation?
Todd N
Why do people buy these, especially for $100!? If it was $20, I might consider one but why devote an expensive tool battery to charging phones? For $25 you can buy a 30,000mah PD power bank and it’s pocketable, unlike this solution. As for charging batteries, it’s not much smaller (with the power supply) than the compact Dewalt charger.
F
I think it’s for people who own 10+ DeWalt tools and have 6+ batteries so at anytime they have a battery ready and/or battery that needs charging
Kingsley
100w output, so can charge pretty much any laptop. Most powerbanks are pretty low output as they’re designed for charging phones.
Todd N
It’s 65W output, only the cable is rated for 100W.
Todd N
NM, I see that from a battery PD can deliver up to 100W.
Doug N
This plus a 5ah battery is slightly larger than a power bank, but holds 90,000mah, delivers 100w for a laptop, and can be swapped with other batteries as needed.
Also will be great for road trips and camping, as it allows me to easily charge my Dewalt batteries from my car’s USB ports, which I also use for a fan, inflator, and impact wrench (hopefully don’t need to use that last item often).
Philip Proctor
Those are my reasons for purchase.
Todd N
Using this to charge batteries from a car makes sense to me, especially since Dewalt’s car charger is pretty pricey. I wonder how long it would take to charge a 5AH battery this way.
Philip Proctor
Five hours roughly.
Perry
This dewalt puts out from 3a 5v up to 5a 20v, giving it the ability to charge laptops and other devices that require hogher voltage. You’re not going to find that ability in a $25 power pack. Plus it gives me the ability to charge batteries on a road trip, or in the car during power outages (happens a lot here in the mountains) so I can keep phones, laptops, led lights, etc… going
Frank D
Because maybe people don’t need this for their daily commute. But there’s a power outage from time to time, and they have a bunch of power tool batteries, figure they can use them as needed when needed; and don’t have to worry about another thing with a built in battery to charge up, that may fail when needed or not be charged up …
I have a couple power adapters. One for USB, one for low wattage 110v. Besides a small and medium gas generator. Hurricane season. Winter storms. Somebody knocking down a telephone pole.
And I trust my power tool batteries to be safer than the fly-by-night usb battery banks.
I picked up a battery bank on sale ( like 20k for $20 or 25 at Home Depot ). Bit of an impulse buy, but it seemed like an established brand, figured it might be handy in a pinch when traveling, etc. Plugged it into the wall. Charged fine. Plugged in my phone. Charge symbol comes up. Cool it works. Unplugged my phone. Left the battery bank unattended on my desk. 5 min later I get a whiff of something burning. Then I see a stream of smoke coming from the battery bank. It smelled awful toxic. Ran outside with that thing as fast as I could and put it in the middle of the driveway. … fortunately it did not engulf in flames or explode.
Its replacement. Charged up … sitting by my currently unused travel bag. Dead as a doornail. I know I charged it up a couple months ago.
J. Newell
It may not satisfy as far as answers go, but the less capable Milwaukee TopOff is $100 also.
JoeM
Okay… Gonna keep an eye out for this North of the Border… Hopefully Atlas Tools will get it… I don’t want to give Home Depot any more money than I have to. I’ve already settled on getting the ToughBuilt C700 saw horses there, and maybe a bit of lumber to make a tabletop for them… but the service and prices are better at Atlas.
I just freakin’ LIKE this particular charger. And yeah, $100 USD seems like a huge amount for it… Then I remember, they had to get the cable and the power block commissioned somewhere, as they don’t make those in-house… As a “Kit” it’s a charger-level price… I just spend $140 CAD on a 12 Amp DeWALT Rapid Charger… Having a Portable USB edition of it (scaled down in power as well, obviously.) seems to let it fall within similar (Similar, not the Same) range.
Jared
Wiseline tools is advertising it in Canada now. $150 though, which seems like more that a currency exchange…
Kingsley
It’s been out in Europe since May and comes with a 100w power adapter (although it’s huge).
Kingsley
With the 100w adaptor it actually charges a battery quicker than a DCB115
Michael
Where can I buy the European version? I would much prefer the 100w power supply.
Michael
NVM I found it.
J. Newell
Thank you – went back to your earlier posts on this. It looks very interesting, though like many I could wish it was either (1) a little less expensive or (2) there was a purchase option without the AC adapter, though that’s probably unrealistic at least for now.
Q: any guesses how much performance would be increased b stepping up to, say, a 140W adapter?
Inventory at HD is dropping slowly this morning. Sixty-two for sale as I write this at 10:20 ET.
Ct451
It can’t use anything over 100w so you’re going from 65w to 100w even with a 140w supply. That being said charging batteries is not max current throughout the whole charging cycle so actual performance increase will be different.
J. Newell
Stuart, I have been poking around your site this morning looking for information on the other more or less similar products, like the Milwaukee Top-Off.
As this general product category is growing, it would be great if the tagging made it easy to find and compare your (excellent) write-ups.
If you’re ever looking for an article idea, a feature comparison or even a performance shoot-out would be really great reading. Against my better general judgment, over time I’ve bought tools from various manufacturers and the result is that I currently have a lot of Milwaukee 18v (and 12v) batteries and a lot of DeWalt 20v and FlexVolt batters, along with more than I’d like to own of Ryobi and Makita 18v batteries. My recollection is that the Ryobi and Makita 18v USB power source products don’t compete strongly against the Top-Off or the new DeWalt charging adapter, but it would still be interesting reading.
Thanks!
Stuart
Thanks! I’ll see what I can do.
I have found that most readers seem to use search for things like this (e.g. for “USB adapter”) than category or tag links.
There are too few inverters like the M18 Top-Off for that to be its own category, but perhaps “USB Adapter” is a broad enough classification?
A comparison would be tricky, since different brands’ accessories are very differently featured.
Makita and Ryobi USB adapters indeed aren’t very competitive against Dewalt and Milwaukee offerings, but as you can’t cross brand lines, would a comparison really be helpful?
J. Newell
You are probably right – there’s such a feature spread that it might be of only theoretical interest.
From memory, the Ryobi and Makita are basically as slip-on USB interface. They’re both in the $25-30 range.
The DeWalt has powerful (haha!) charging features, while the Milwaukee has an inverter. Those are far more useful, but they’re not really checking the same feature boxes. FWIW, they’re both $100.
And a question – am I the only one who over time has wound up with pretty significant purchases (I don’t think. you can easily say “investment” in this area…) in several of the battery-powered tool lines? Most of my tools are Milwaukee 12v and 18v and DeWalt 20v, but that’s still three, and I have some tools in several other lines.
J. Newell
Accidentally posted that before I finished…I was going to say I hope I’m not the only one who’s done that, but perhaps it’s true! 🙂
Micah
Just canceled Acme and picked this up at HD this morning!
eddie sky
I wonder why not just put a USB-C/USB-B connectors on next line of batteries? That way, you can use the tool, and if you need a charge, plug in the phone while another battery is charging…or put a USB port on the chargers… right?
Stuart
Skil did this – some of their batteries have built-in USB ports.
Some brands have chargers with built-in USB ports, but only on certain models.
Makita had a dual-port charger with a USB charging port, but quietly removed it.
Big Richard
B+D had a USB on their Bluetooth SMARTECH batteries, too.
MM
That is not so simple. Such a battery would need to contain electronics which which convert the battery voltage down to 5V, etc, as needed to run the USB device. And those electronics will sap a bit of power from your battery even if the USB function is not being used, slowly draining the battery.
I learned about this when I purchased an adapter to run a Makita tool on my Dewalt 20V max batts. This adapter happened to have a built-in USB power socket. I didn’t think anything of it at first but I was confused as to why the battery on that tool was going dead so fast. At first I thought I had failing batteries until I figured out the culprit. I ended up taking the adapter apart and removing the USB power module entirely and the problem disappeared.
Koko The Talking Ape
You’re right that USB circuitry can draw current continously.
But it’s also true that such circuitry can be designed to draw no current when not being used. Don’t you think your adapter was just poorly designed?
Lil_Justin
How do you remove the USB power module?
Unmesh
Not everyone knows this but USB-C is just the connector which is often, but not always, used with USB PD charging circuitry that offers several charging voltages and currents through negotiation with the device being charged. This makes a good/full implementation quite a bit more expensive than, say, a fixed 5V/1A circuit behind a USB-C port
I have a number of high quality USB PD charger blocks but have stopped assuming that the presence of a USB-C port implies USB PD in consumer devices since a large number don’t. Smartphones and laptops being the prominent exception.
Koko The Talking Ape
I think other people have said this, but if they offered it without the PD wall charger and cord (because I already have those) for maybe $50, I would consider it. More charging options are always nice, especially when you’re on the go.
But like Eddie, I wonder if they’ll ever just build a USB-C port into the battery pack itself. That would obviate the need for dedicated chargers.
someloser3000
I ordered this last week from Home Depot. It just came in today. I was able to fast charge my phone, but not ‘super fast charge’ as my wall charger does. I’ve tried several cables, but I was not able to charge a chromebook or a laptop.
Any ideas?
Do I need the 60 battery? I only have the 20 volt batteries.
Stuart
That’s strange, and I’m not sure what to tell you. Maybe it’s defective?
I haven’t tried it with a laptop yet, but it handles cameras and other non-smartphone loads well so far.
Doug N
I’ve used it for my laptop which came with a 65w usb-c wall plug. So far I’ve only seen 40w out of the new Dewalt adapter (measuring with a Klein usb meter).
If your computer requires more than 40 watts maybe you’re having the same issue as me.
Charging rates seem to vary based on the battery level of a phone or computer. I plan to keep monitoring it, hope to see higher wattage output eventually.
20v vs Flexvolt shouldn’t matter but I can try a Flexvolt battery tomorrow.