I received 5200mAh external battery pack for testing from the manufacturer to write an honest and unbiased review and you will find both pluses and minuses of my experience in this review.
I am attaching a collage of 3 photos that I will be referencing in this review.
The external power battery dimensions are 4" length x 2" width x 7/8" thickness. It weight 4.7 oz. It comes with a 6 inch charging cable and 4 connectors: Mini USB, Micro USB, PSP, iPhone.
The battery pack should be fully charged before the first use. It took overnight for it to reach full charge. The manufacturer states that the battery life is over 500 cycles.
Photo #1 shows how each adapter connects to the USB cable. The adapters are a weak point of the design, they feel a bit flimsy and it is easy to loose all the small pieces.
A button on top of the unit turns the unit on and off (hold it for a few second to turn off). Note that the unit does not shut off when not in use. It wil continue to drain power unless you turn it off manually.
There 4 blue lights on top of the unit. A single light on one side of the button indicates on/off status. The three lights on the other side of the button indicate the charings status (3 lights full, 2 light 30 to 80% full, 3 lights charge is 80% or more. The power pack also has an LED light, which can be used a flashlight.
The 5200mAh Yubi Power has one USB outlet. I tested my four electronic devices using both my own USB cable as well as the manufacture cable+adapter. I wanted to see the difference between
the cables, and the difference was significant.
The provided adapters fit Samsung Galaxy Nexus phone, Nexus 7 tablet and Sansa Clip MP3 (as they take regular USB-to-micro USB cable) but none of the provided adapters fit Galaxy Samsung 7.7 Tablet (so for Galaxy I could only test with my own USB cable).
I used Battery App by Elvison to determine how each device recognized the charging source. 'AC' status means the charging is at full charging rate. 'USB' status indicates charging at a lower charging rate. 'Discharging' status means that the charging rate is below the power that the device is consuming so it slows down the discharge rate but does not re-charge.
The key findings:
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(1) The power pack worked well with Nexus devices,but did not work at all with Samsung Galaxy 7.7 tablet.
(2) Using Yubi Power charging cables vs generic cables made a significant difference
Difference between a power cable and a data cable:
Charging cables short the two data connections together (rendering them useless for data transfer), but this fools devices to see them as an AC power connection, and thus accept the higher current of the charging source. Both my generic cable and Yubi Power cables used in my tests are charging cables.
Description of my tests:
I tested each devices charging them for 10 minutes using Yubi Power cable and using my own charging cable.
The table below summarizes my findings.
Samsung Galaxy Nexus Phone (photo #1)
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generic cable ...... USB source ... 1% charge in 10 minutes
Yubi Power cable ... AC source .... 6% charge in 10 minutes
Nexus 7 Tablet (photo #2)
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generic cable ...... AC source .... 0% charge in 10 minutes (barely charging, enough to power the screen and not loose charge)
Yubi Power cable ... AC source .... 4% charge in 10 minutes
Samsung Galaxy Tablet 7.7 (photo #3)
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generic cable .... discharging
Yubi Power cable -- no adapter, cannot be used
SanDisk Sansa Clip+ MP3 Player
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generic cable ........ works
Yubi Power cable ..... works
The MP3 player recognized the charger on both outlet, however it behaved differently than charging from the charger it came with.
When I charge Sansa MP3 with a standard AC charger, the MP3 player goes into charging mode, displaying the charging animated icon. When it was plugged into the Yubi Power external battery it continued to play the content. I listen to books on my MP3 player so this caused me to move forward in my book and I had to manually reset my position by a few chapters to get back to where I was when I started charging. The positive side of this, is that is possible to continue listening while MP3 is recharging. This is very handy for Sansa MP3 player since it has built-in battery that cannot be swapped for a charged one.
To summarize:
I liked:
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1. Good behavior with Nexus devices.
2. Solution for MP3 player with built-in battery
I did not like:
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1. Does not work for Galaxy Tablet 7.7 (with my own adapter, no Yubi Power adapter)
2. The multiple piece connectors are flimsy and easy to loose. I prefer a one piece charging cable I bought as a replacement.
Overall, I am pleased with this unit and recommend it for the devices I tested with the exception of Galaxy Tablet.
You can find it on Amazon by following this link.
Ali Julia review ★★★★★
Excellent review! I knew there was a difference in the charging USB cables and data USB cables but didn't know what it was. Thank you for clearing that up for me.
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