I think I may have mentioned in passing recently that I’ve been camping for two weeks without any access to power to recharge my much loved Smartphone. As you can imagine, this is a bit stressful for me. While I fully understand the idea that disconnecting from the internet can be good for you, it’s not ideal when some of your family is in different places and you’ve no transport, so the chance to review the Oxpwr One came at a perfect time.
The unit is compact and sturdy, which is good. It charges via USB – with the number of PCs we have littering our house this is no big problem. There are nifty little connectors to charge a variety of different items – as we’re an Android household, all our phones run off the flat small USB connector, so we didn’t need the whole range of connectors. I think that’s the mini one, and it’s the micro one that the unit needs to charge (although it could be the other way around) so I don’t need the full range of heads. Checking out the website I see the review on there mentions a handy bag to keep everything in – I don’t remember seeing one in my box, so I’ve queried this and will update later.
It holds a charge of 2000 something or other (it really would have helped if I’d brought the box with me to do this review wouldn’t it? I’ll come back to fill in more details later) which appears to be nearly enough to fully recharge my HTC Sensation, but not quite. Still, given that I’ve now learned how to stretch out battery life to several days, it was ample to see me through the second week of camping. I let the phone charge overnight in the tent – on another test I took the charger with me into London and discovered how very slowly my phone charges. It took hours – but I do think that’s my phone, not the powerpack. When I had an iPhone for app test purposes on loan from Three I do remember it charging much more quickly, and apparently the Oxpwr products are designed for iProducts.
All in all, this is a clever solution to the convoluted world we’ve now built for ourselves, with smartphones so power hungry that they don’t last a day of activity. Carry a pack around the size of your smartphone and you can recharge to make it through to evening. I did find it worked much better in the car than the plug in to cigarette lighter method, so it kept the satnav running on the way back from Butlins this week.
If you pop over to Oxpwr you’ll discover that they do a range of different devices, starting at £30 for the unit I tested, and going up to one that will recharge your iPad *and* iPhone, and for the next month (17th July to 17th August), if you use the code “makingitup” at checkout you can get 10% discount and free delivery. Not a bad deal eh? Let me know how you get on with it if you buy one!
(Disclosure: I was sent this product free for review, have not received any further payment, and all opinions are my own.)
Leave a Reply