ChargeAll Is the Mother of All Portable Batteries [Review]

Yes, I know there are larger batteries out there, but they aren’t meant to be used for juicing up your phones or mobile devices. And of the dedicated portable batteries available for recharging phones et al, all of those only let you plug in USB cables. But what if you had something that, in a pinch, you could also use to plug in your laptop (or almost any other device with a standard AC plug)? Would that be useful?

The ChargeAll does that, in spades. Consider that the iPhone 6’s battery has a capacity of 1,810 mAh (milli-Ampere-hours). The largest ChargeAll has a capacity of 18,000 mAh (or, to be an engineer about it, 18 Ampere-hours). That means you could re-charge your iPhone 6 nearly TEN TIMES from the ChargeAll–or a family’s-worth of devices, while on a trip. Oh, and because it has an AC plug, you can also plug your laptop into it, and get a two to four more hours out of it when there’s no outlet handy. Obviously what you plug into it, and how much it draws, determines the actual extra time available.

Compared to other portable batteries, it’s large, but not so large that keeping it in your messenger bag with the rest of your tech is a problem It’s not unlike carrying an extra moleskine. And the piece of mind, if you’re on the road for work or on a family trip where it seems everyone else is looking to you, as the geek parent, to keep their devices running, is invaluable.

The ChargeAll comes in two sizes: 10,000 mAh for $149, and 18,000 mAh at $199, and is available at Amazon.

[ChargeTech supplied a review sample for this piece.]