Product review: Aduro POWERUP 11000mAh Portable External Battery

♦ size: 2.875" x 5" x 0.875"
♦ weight: 9.95 oz
♦ number of ports: 3
♦ flashlight: no
♦ passthrough charging: no (i.e. the battery can not charge while being charged itself)
♦ cable: 11" charging cable.

This external battery is fairly compact for its 11000 mAh capacity. I got the attractive Chevron design. It has three ports and fairly bright charging indicator.

To see how well different chargers and external batteries charge my mobile devices I use a Nexus phone and an iPad Mini to test each of them. I do my tests with the devices charged to the same level, running the same applications and using the same cables to keep everything the same. This allows me to compare them to each other in a fair way. I use the current monitor to see what current is delivered to each device which tells me how well each external battery is working. In addition, I also test to see if the battery supports pass-through charging (i.e. whether the battery can charge mobile devices while it is being charged).

In these tests Aduro POWERUP performed very well for my Android phone on all ports. My iPad Mini performed all three ports the same, i.e. it was drawing the same on 2.1A port as it did on 1A port. On 1A port it performed average for 1A, but below average on 2A port as it was getting the same charge as 1A port.

The battery does not support charge through charging. The current monitor shows that the battery shut off charging as soon as I connected it to AC source and began charging the external battery.

For Android devices it matters if a cable used to charge the device is a charging cable or a data cable. In a charging cables the two data connections are shorted together (rendering the cable useless for data transfer), but this fools devices to see the cable as an AC power connection and thus the battery accept a higher current for charging. Most of the time external batteries come with a charging cable, but every now I run accross a manufacturer that enlcloses data cables with external batteries. It is easy to tell which cable is enclosed using a current monitor, as people can improve the performance of the battery by switching to a charging cable.

Aduro package includes a charging cable which performed very well in my tests. It is a keeper!

Samsung Nexus phone:
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2A port: 0.99A/5.01V (excellent)
1A port: 0.99A/5.01V (excellent)
1A port: 0.98A/5.01V (excellent)
(for comparison the best charging monitor result for this phone is 1.00A/5V)

iPad Mini tablet:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2A port: 0.93A/5.08V (below average for 2A port)
1A port: 0.93A/5.08V (average for 1A port)
1A port: 0.93A/5.08V (average for 1A port)
(for comparison the best charging monitor result for this tablet is 1.70A/5V)

iPad Mini tablet and Nexus phone at the same time :
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2A port: 0.93A/5.08V (iPad Mini)
1A port: 0.89A/5.01V (Nexus phone)

To summarized this external battery performed best with Android devices. I would not recommend it for Apple devices.


You can find it on Amazon by following this link.



Ali Julia review ★★★★☆