SANYO 5000 mAh eneloop Mobile Booster and Charger, compatible with iPad 2, iPad, iPhone 4/3GS/3G, iPod Touch, iPod, HTC, BlackBerry, Motorola, Samsung Galaxy S, LG, Nokia, PSP, Nintendo DS Reviews - The leading Shop, News, Guides, Reviews, and Videos for Nokia devices

I hate running out of battery on my iPhone 4 when stuck in a bus or airplane, so I decided to buy a “booster pack” of some sort. There are several “booster cases” available, such as the Mophie Juice Pack, but these cases suffer from several disadvantages:

1. They make your iPhone bulkier and heavier in the hand.
2. They only work with that particular device.
3. The battery capacity is disappointing.

After doing some research, I went for the Eneloop Mobile Booster. I was already a user of the excellent Eneloop rechargeable NiMH batteries, which keep their charge and can be recharged for many more cycles than other brands. It’s important to note, though, that the internal battery of this product is a Li-ion battery, so it’s not the same technology as their nickel-based batteries.

This product has a remarkably high capacity for its size and weight: 5000mAh, or 3 1/3 times the capacity of the Mophie Juice Pack Air booster case, a popular alternative. That means that, assuming perfect efficiency, it can charge your iPhone 4′s 1420 mAh battery 3.5 times over. (The Mophie pack could only possibly provide one recharge). Of course, there are probably losses somewhere in the circuit, but I think you can safely assume it provides 3 full charges. If I used other USB portable devices (which I don’t, as the iPhone pretty much eclipses them all), it could do them too. All for less money than the Mophie or other “booster cases”.

That 5000mAh was easily enough to power my annual odyssey home from Asia to Canada, which involves 24 hours of flight time, with heavy iPhone use. And the trip back. The Mophie just wouldn’t have cut it.

The Mobile Booster features 2 USB ports, so any device that can be recharged over USB – 2 of them at a time, in fact – can be plugged into it. I simply used the charging cable that came with my iPhone, and kept the mobile booster in a tote bag or in the seat pocket in front of me.

So far we have a 5-star product, but the next issue is what makes it lose a star for me. It comes with a 5V AC adapter to charge it from the wall, and another USB cable to charge it from a computer. The unit itself has two recharging inputs: a round AC adapter socket and a USB Mini-B slot.

For me, this arrangement ruins the otherwise simple, elegant design. The included AC adapter is largish, of a decidedly uglier design ethic than the main unit, and has a very long lead. The other option, the USB cable, is also rather long. Their combined bulk is more than the unit itself, yet you need to bring them both along if you want all your recharging options on the road.

But why don’t they just settle on one input socket, and one cable–perhaps a standard USB cable–and one small, rounded AC adapter like you can buy aftermarket for charging the iPhone? I have one of those, and the AC adapter part, a 120/240v compatible one, is only about a 3cm cube. If you want to recharge from a USB socket, just plug in the cable directly. If you want to recharge from the wall outlet, just plug the little adapter in between the wall and the USB cable.

Considering they could save costs by manufacturing one less input, and providing less cabling, and that it would really improve the elegance and small size of the overall product, I don’t know why they didn’t do it from the start.

An even cooler solution would be to have flip-out AC prongs and built right into the unit, as Sanyo themselves have for their nice Eneloop AA charger, and a complementary flip-out USB connector as well.. The product could stand a small increase in size and weight as it’s already packed with capacity for its size. We’ll have to see if something like that happens with the next version of the product.

Overall, though, I’m very impressed with this thing, and once you have it charged up, it’s a very small, elegant, high-capacity power booster for the longest of hauls, and I highly recommend it.

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Kanishk Rastogi “Freelenser” (Albany, NY United States) –

  

  

A well designed device, this little square piece contains a lot of charging capacity and can be used easily as your travel companion. It weighs around 0.6 pound and being 2.6″x2.5″ in size, it is is small enough to be carried in any shoulder bag or backpack.

After a full initial charge it was able to charge following devices in succession:

iPhone 3G: From 20% to 100% in 1 hr
iPhone 4: From 37% to 100% in 2 hrs
iPad2:From 42% to 60% in 2 hrs

By the time iPad2 was at 60% I noticed that the charging rate is not increasing a all and hence concluded that the Mobile Booster is out of power now. During charging time, none of the device was used in order to measure the true charging capacity of this Mobile Booster and Charger. You will notice that the charging time increases and slows down a bit (even considering the different batteries of all of the tree devices).

I then fully charged it and used it to charge an iPad2. This time it took 2 hrs and 45 mins to provide 35% of battery juice.

Once fully discharged, SANYO 5000 mAh eneloop Mobile Booster and Charger, compatible with iPad 2, iPad, iPhone 4/3GS/3G, iPod Touch, iPod, HTC, BlackBerry, Motorola, Samsung Galaxy S, LG, Nokia, PSP, Nintendo DS takes about 6-7 hrs to get completely charged through a wall socket, which is really a very long time. It is good to charge it overnight and then keep it as a back-up.

Overall, I think it is a good device but could be a bit cheaper, somewhere in the range of fifty bucks.

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Jeffrey Phillips “Innovation and Team Product… (Raleigh, NC) –

  

I travel quite frequently as part of my job, and I am one of a number of those sad wanderers who seek, more than anything, a spare outlet in the airport terminal. You’ve seen us, staring under chairs in the gate area, hunched up next to outlets in the corridors, leaching electricity in the bathrooms. But no more for me. Now that I have the Sanyo eneloop, I carry a powerpack of recharge in my briefcase.

I ordered the eneloop Mobile booster on a lark, actually. I’ve looked for years for a powerful but lightweight battery recharger, but they’ve often failed on one or both of those criteria. Either they were bulky and heavy, or they didn’t provide much juice. The eneloop does both. I used it to recharge my iPhone, an MP-3 player and my son’s iPod, in a number of different circumstances. It is a simple device – just a powerpack with a couple of USB ports, but it does what it should, and it is small and lightweight for the power it packs.

Now, I don’t wander the corridors nearly as much, or try to squeeze that last minute or two of battery life from my handheld electronics. With the eneloop I am fairly confident I won’t run out of battery power for those gadgets. Now, to get the Sanyo folks to squeeze more power into the eneloop so I don’t have to carry a cord for my laptop anymore, and I’ll be in nirvana.

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