Summary
Every DeWalt cordless owner ends up in the same spot. You’ve got a row of 20V packs sitting fully charged between projects, doing nothing while they wait on the next drill or saw. I’ve spent years leaning on tool batteries for backup power, whether the grid went down in a storm or I was working somewhere with no outlet in reach, so DeWalt’s spin on the idea got my attention. The DeWalt DCB094K USB charging kit snaps a small adapter onto any DeWalt 20V MAX or FLEXVOLT pack and turns it into a power bank that pushes 100W over USB-C. That’s enough to run a laptop, not just a phone. The pack is already sitting on your shelf.
What comes in the DeWalt USB charging kit
A palm-sized adapter that charges both ways
The kit is built around the DCB094, a yellow adapter that seats on a battery the same way a tool would. Two ports sit up top. The USB-C port does the heavy lifting at up to 100W, and a second USB-A port handles older cables at up to 12W. A small indicator shows how much charge is left in the pack, so you aren’t guessing when you pull it back off.
Everything you need to run it both directions ships in the box: the adapter, a 100W-rated USB-C cable about a meter long, a 65W wall supply, and a belt hook for lugging it around a jobsite.
That two-way port is what sets it apart from a basic USB dongle. Power flows in or out through one cable. Wire the 65W supply to the wall and the adapter turns into a charger, topping off a DeWalt pack without the standard base. Clip it onto a charged pack instead and it flips into a power bank feeding your devices. One accessory covers both jobs, which helps when your outlets and counter space are already spoken for.
100W is what makes it more than a phone charger
Real laptop charging from a tool pack
Plenty of gadgets pull power from a tool battery, but most stop at phone speed. The bargain adapters push 5V out a USB-A port and little else, fine for a phone and useless for anything hungrier. The adapters I keep on my own Ryobi packs sit squarely in that group. DeWalt’s 100W USB-C Power Delivery rewrites that math. It’ll drive most laptops mid-task, with room to spare for a tablet or a portable monitor. Runtime comes down to the pack itself. A mid-size 5Ah battery holds around 90Wh, roughly one full laptop charge or several phone charges.
The larger the battery, the longer the adapter lasts, and this is where DeWalt’s FLEXVOLT packs pull ahead. A 9Ah FLEXVOLT battery carries close to double the stored energy of that 5Ah pack, so a laptop that drained one standard battery will barely dent the big one. If you keep a range of packs on the shelf, save the small compacts for a quick phone charge and clip on the heavy hitters when a device needs to run for hours.
Where a battery power bank earns its place
From a bare jobsite to a campsite
The whole pitch clicks the moment you step away from a wall outlet. On a jobsite that’s framed but not yet wired, a charged pack keeps your phone alive all day without hunting for the one working receptacle. The batteries are already in the truck, so the only new thing in the bag is a palm-sized adapter and a cable.
Slip it into a carry-on and a long flight brings laptop-grade charging minus the bulky power bank. When a storm takes out the grid, two charged packs keep phones and a tablet running through the worst of it. Campers and tailgaters gain the same edge, pulling from batteries that sit dead between weekends anyway.
What to know before you clip one on
Where the kit stops short
A few limits keep this short of a full power station. Everything runs through USB, with no AC outlet on the adapter, so a corded fan or lamp is off the table. If you want household plugs during an outage, DeWalt builds larger power stations for that, and this kit isn’t one of them.
Battery health is the other thing to watch. DeWalt’s 20V packs lean on the tool to cut power before the cells drain too far, so it’s smart to unclip the adapter once your device hits full rather than leaving a pack bleeding out over a weekend. The onboard charge indicator makes that easy to track. On price, the kit hovers around $95, which only pays off when you already own DeWalt batteries. Buying into the platform just for this would run well past the cost of a standalone 100W bank.
DeWalt 20V MAX* FLEXVOLT ® 5 Amp USB Charging Kit
- Color
- Yellow
- Tool Type
- Charger
- Voltage
- 20V Idle DeWalt packs finally have something to do If your garage already runs on DeWalt, the DCB094K is a small buy that stretches what your batteries do beyond the workbench. The packs you’ve charged for the next project can moonlight as laptop and phone chargers on the days you’re nowhere near an outlet. It stops short of powering your house or running a corded appliance, and it isn’t trying to. For anyone sitting on a shelf of 20V or FLEXVOLT batteries, it turns dead time on the charger into a backup worth having. That’s a lot of function for a palm-sized adapter and a cable.