Product review: Compact 12000mAH Portable Car Jump Starter

This is my second unit of a very similar construction. To jump a car a battery needs to produce 12V of power and I used a volt meter to check that it does. However nothing is better than actually seeing it do it. I had a chance to actually help a co-worker's jump a car. It worked! Since I have two similar units I now keep the first one in my car and the second one at work for common use.

New Brights Portable Car starter external battery can be used as a charger for mobile devices and a battery to jump a car. My main interest in this external battery is for its car jumping capability. As I mentioned earlier to jump a car a battery needs to produce 12V of power. To test the jumper cables, I attached the volt meter to battery clamps. As you can see in the video the reading is 11.70V.

The battery pack itself can be recharged in two ways either from the car port or from AC. To jump the car the power pack should be more than half full of charge.

The battery comes with a nice plastic case that holds the battery, the jumping cables, the AC adapter and the car charger. Also included in the package is 4 headed cable - one USB cable one end and 4 cable on the others end (two Apple cables, and two USB cables). The jumper cable output ports are under a cover on the side of the external battery. The battery pack also has a built-in flashlight. The flashlight is quite bright and has two modes: steady light and flashing light. It is one of the brightest flashlight I have seen on an external power bank.

The power bank weighs 14.8 oz and is 6.5" x 3.125" x 1.25" in size. It is is rated as 12000mAh. Since some capacity is lost to inefficiencies such as heat you can expect to get about 9000mAh out of it. I was able to charge my Samsung Nexus phone with 3800 mAh extended battery 2 times from almost empty to full, with some power still left in the battery.

To tell how various battery packs perform I measure their performance with a current monitor. This allows me to compare different batteries to each other. I use Samsung Nexus phone and iPad Mini for testing to give me a Android and an Apple mobile devices. I test all my chargers using the same charging cables and starting all tests at same charge level of the phone to account for non-linear charging.

This battery pack works with both the Nexus phone and iPad Mini devices, but neither of the devices were chargered at the optimal speed. Note that you can charge the devices at the same time as the power bank itself is charging. This battery pack has clear charge level indicators, it comes on for about 2 seconds when you press the button and then turns off. The manufacturer recommends fully recharging the power bank every 6 months, this is important if you are keeping the power bank in the car for useing the jumper cables.

TEST RESULTS:
Samsung Nexus phone:
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1 port: 0.82A/4.91V
2 port: 0.78A/4.85V
(for comparison the best charging monitor result for this phone is 1.00A/5V)

iPad Mini tablet:
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1 port: 0.94A/4.79V
2 port: 0.93A/4.79B
(for comparison the best charging monitor result for this tablet is 1.70A/5V)

Overall, for charging phones it is not a speedy charger, but it did an excellent job in its main function and was able to start a dead battery.


You can find it on Amazon by following this link

Ali Julia review ★★★★★