The Odd Things – Face Brush Batteries

Greetings and welcome to Dinosaur Bear,
(here’s hoping the back-end changes I made actually result in the emails going out this time!)

Kicking off 2022 here on the blog we have our first “The Odd Things” since November 2018.

As I sit here with a foot that is (probably) broke, again (hey that was posted two years ago to the day! neato, insofar as broken feet go), I can’t help but wonder about the seemingly miraculous longevity of a powered face brush I got for Christmas 2020. If you have an exceedingly good memory you’ll recall that this isn’t the first “The Odd Things” to focus on lasting power. The brush in question is this unassuming little thing made by Liberex.

It’s a pretty mundane looking brush really. Just a standard cleansing brush that was a replacement for an old and no-longer-manufactured Clarisonic model. What isn’t mundane about this little ol’ brush is the battery. It seems to be infinite. Yes, Liberex, which by all accounts is just a SEO-ladden run-of-the-mill personal care product company, seems to have perfected perpetual nuclear fission inside of this modestly priced face brush. With no apparent power generation method besides its internal battery, this brush is practicing some sort of voodoo power magic absent battery technology that would leave NASA salivating.

As mentioned, I’ve owned this thing since Christmas 2020. I began using it promptly thereafter. When I first received it from Santy I charged it, as one is wont to do when getting new battery powered devices. About 1.5 months later I moved across the state. I charged it again right after moving because why not. That was roughly February 8th 2021. Since that day I have not charged this brush a single time. Further, the brush has three intensity levels. I use it on max power each time. I use the brush daily unless I’m traveling. The brush runs a 60 second cycle (I think, I haven’t timed it precisely but that’s the most common cycle time for these face brushes). So, let’s say I use the brush 300 times per year (which is probably too conservative especially in the age of Big Rona). That’s 18,000 seconds of max power use. Or put more obviously, 300 days = 300 minutes. Now you might be thinking, my phone lasts longer than 5 hours! Well, first, check your phone privilege (*cries in 3.5 year old phone*). Second, there’s a good chance your phone has a bigger battery that Apple/Google/Samsung/LG/etc. spent 500 million dollars fine tuning for the most precise of battery conservation techniques. Third, 300 minutes is probably too conservative and also doesn’t even factor the time since February 8th of this year. So the real runtime is probably closer to 350 minutes or so, thus far. Also, this is a uh.. face brush. I’ve never seen a face brush maintain this level of battery life before. In fact I’ve seen no powered brush of any kind last this long.

So naturally, mirroring the deductions of my 15th century forebearers, the only conclusion is witchcraft. I have a face brush powered by Satan himself. There is simply no other explanation. That or perpetual nuclear power. Who knows. Regardless, I have a phone call in with the Department of Energy about this bad boy. I’m thinking we start by powering all of Manhattan with it then going from there. A brush can dream.

Fittingly, today’s music sign-off is:

Roy Orbison – In Dreams

Until next time,
-Taco

[Update: The brush finally needed a recharge on April 10th, 2022. Roughly 14 months and a handful of days since its last charge. To be fair to the brush it wasn’t even ‘dead’ it just started behaving erratically so I had to recharge it to get it back into proper working order. How long it would have lasted beyond that beyond, the world may never know.]