The TravelCard from Go Design makes a whole lot of sense. It’s a battery charger designed to be discreetly stored away in a wallet, purse or bag.

Design

Although this $39 device doesn’t share the exact profile of a credit card, it’s a close attempt - as seen by our photos. It’s remarkably compact, measuring 9.1cm/3.58 inches in length x 6.2cm/2.44 inches in width and is just 0.4cm/0.16 inches in thickness. The slimness of the device creates a very pleasing product to hold; the sort of thing you can easily find yourself fiddling with for no reason. It has a smooth, sleek and sturdy design, using aluminium (available in blue, silver, black or red) on the top of the body and matte white plastic underneath. It even has a shiny strip on the front to reaffirm the ‘card’ inspiration within the design.

Charging

During our usage a fully charged TravelCard charger (1500mAh) will charge an iPhone 5/5s battery from 1% to roughly 50%. Now 50% is fine to nip in and out independently throughout a day, but if it could stretch itself to a full charge, it would make this a much richer and that bit more purposeful product. We say 'independently' because charging an iPhone or any other smartphone with similar charging products, other than something like the PhoneSuit Flex or a battery case, restricts the usage of the device. So we’d rather just let a smartphone charge independently, which is no hassle to do as the TravelCard Charger is fast at charging and does have either an in-built micro-usb cable or Apple Lightning cable tucked underneath, depending on the smartphone you own.

Battery Charge Status

Something we think could be improved on the TravelCard Charger is its battery indicator level readout. In summary: it will glow blue when its total charge is more than 80%, when it drops underneath this level it will glow orange and when it drops below 20% it will flash orange. Possibly not a huge concern for some, as only 1500mAh of rated capacity is onboard and the battery pack can be drained in around 30 minutes, but a three bar LED indicator would have been the cherry on the cake.

Overall

Overall the TravelCard Charger is the kind of battery backup product that can be taken with you everyday in your wallet or purse, to work or school, as an exemplary tidy emergency backup reserve. We like it, but would love to see it charge an iPhone battery to 100%, so that it became truly indispensable.