Mophie are very well known in the industry for their battery incorporated phone cases. But this product steps away from the cases and into the compact standalone external portable charging solution market. It’s called the Mophie Juice Pack Powerstation mini. Is it any good? Keep reading.
The first striking thing, is that the most gracious detail has been thought into the design. This is ‘Apple like’ on a grand scale. The sides are coated in aluminum with a cutout for the button, similar to how Apple places the antenna on recent iPhone’s. The top and bottom are coated in either jet matte black, red or (Apple Store Exclusive) white rubber. Making it very comfortable to hold and it grips well to surfaces. The whole construction and design can’t be faulted.
The only thing battery packs/ power station solutions can really compete on is the storage and unit size, other than that they all do the same thing. This is very small, actually it’s the smallest battery pack I have ever used, beating the very petite TYLT Zumo. But it packs 2500mAh of capacity, overtaking the the Zumo by 1000mAh. This is monumental, especially when the non mini and greatly bigger version of the Mophie Juice Pack holds 4000mAh.
However you can’t charge devices such as the iPad, due to the charging output not being of ten watts. This is a shame but Mophie don’t advertise this as an iPad or tablet companion, but lean it more to smartphone and mobile device owners.
One device can charge at a time via the single front USB 2.0 port. I tested the charging times and capacity using the iPhone 5. It managed to squeeze out one and a three quarter full charges from 100% drained. It just misses two full charges but this level of capacity is easily enough to be kept with you as a reliable backup solution. The time it took to complete a single full charge was two hours and twenty three minutes. The time it takes for an iPhone 5 to reach full charge via a wall outlet is around the two hour mark, so this isn’t too shabby.
Charging the Powerstation is done via micro USB, located next to the USB 2.0 output. To check how much capacity is left, press the only button on the unit, which is clearly located on the side. A total of four green LED’s will show if you have 100% capacity and each LED that drops off after this, represents a quarter of the battery.
Overall I found the Mophie Juice Pack Powerstation Mini to be a great product. It’s a small size, making it very travel friendly. But best of all, a more than adequate amount of capacity is stored. An all round great accomplice for mobile devices.
