Our latest ‘gadget’ purchases seem to be all about keeping mobile devices juiced up, and this one’s no different. The £12 PortaPow 2.5A Quad USB Wall Charger is a mains transformer with 4 USB outputs. You can charge 2 iPads at the same time, 3 smartphones or 4 feature phones and it will reduce to a trickle once charging is complete. Of course it will charge all your other USB powered devices like your iPod, GPS etc too…
The PortaPow has 2.5A (12.5W) of total power and the ability to output 2.1A from one USB socket. In plain English it can charge more gadgets at the same time and at a faster rate. Its still backwards compatible with devices which charge at a lower current, the PortaPow will not charge your devices any faster than they were designed for.
The LEDs will change from blue to purple when a device is being charged, and back to blue when they are no longer drawing power. One LED represents each of the USB sockets. The charger shows that some devices actually continue to charge for some time ever after displaying 100% on screen, and shows when the device’s battery is truly fully charged. The charger has short circuit protection, and it will switch to trickle charge once your device’s battery is full.
4 USB sockets – charges two iPads simultaneously at high speed, or 2-3 smartphones, or 4 normal phones/smaller devices, or any combination in between.
We’ve setup a PortaPow behind the bedside table with Apple Lightning and 30 pin cables, plus mini and Micro USB too. While we’ve yet to have had more that 2 items charging at once it’s very convenient not having to hunt for a lead or plug in a different charger behind the night stand each time.
To make things even easier we’ve stuck some of these Bluelounge CableDrop cable management doohickies to the back of the table to keep the wires tidy and ready to use .
The PortaPow Quad is a great unit for travelling with too, so often Hotels only offer you a single socket and this means we can charge everything from that. We now have 4 of these on our house – recommended.
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Last update on 2024-04-08 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
I have had one of these for 6 months now and it hasn’t let me down. I travel a lot with work and it saves me carrying a different charger for each device I carry.
I’m fond of the Maplin ‘Jelly’ 5.1A 4 USB charger which has one 2A output and 3 1A. You can take it out of its ‘skin’ if it’s too bulky when travelling.
Sadly ours lasted about 3 weeks before it failed.