I frequently travel through Asia on 48+ hour trips with no hotel stay. I sleep on the bus or plane. At first, these long trips were difficult for me because I had to use my gadgets carefully, trying to conserve battery power. I would also instinctively try to seek out a place to plug in my iPod and two iPhone’s. Living my life constantly worried about battery life is no way to live. Sure, I have a Macbook Pro that boasts 8-9 hours of life. But let’s be honest, it’s more like 6 hours…which is still fantastic but ultimately still limiting. Plus, as soon as you plug in an iPod or iPhone, it drains much of the Macbook Pro’s battery. I badly needed an alternative.
I’ve seen those portable battery packs either that click into the bottom of the iPhone or that are integrated into a case. Those intrigued me but I was looking for something more “robust” that would let me charge several different devices and not just the iPod/iPhone. In addition, I didn’t want a backup battery that could charge my phone one time and then run out of juice. I never really know when the next time will be when I get to wall power so I needed something that could handle multiple charges. While in Taipei Taiwan, I found just was I was looking for. The box and manual were in Chinese but on the case it says: Portable Power.
The model number is ZT-9801. I found only one source on the Internet that sells this device for about $35. I bought mine for around $16. The battery itself is in a shiny black aluminum case. It’s about the size of 2 iPhones stacked on each other and has a hefty 5200mAh Lithium battery inside of it. Most backup batteries are 1800-2500mAh for comparison. The devices charges by plugging into the wall (either 110 or 240 VAC) and it fully charges in about an hour from 0. Also included in the box were at least a dozen adapters to plug in all kinds of portable phones, PDA’s and other rechargeable devices.
The key selling point for me however was the USB port built into the battery pack. Now I can power anything that runs on USB power. I’ve used the Portable Power unit several times now and I always come away impressed with how much charge it has. There are 2 LED lights on the unit. One that is either green or off that indicates on/off. A second LED moves from green to orange to red based on how much charge the portable battery has left. I must say that the battery moves from green to orange fairly quickly but it stay’s orange for a very long time. On three 48 hour trips so far, I keep trying to push the limits of the backup battery and always come away with two fully charged iPhones and a fully charged iPod with more charge in the backup battery to spare.
So now I can power anything that runs on USB such as the things listed here. I really like the USB chargeable AA batteries. I might try to find those on my next trip to Bangkok.
