Clusterfck
What if you had one charger to rule them all?
This is the state of electronics today. Each of your products may come with an excellent AC adapter which gives you unlimited power so long as you are by a wall outlet. But that’s exactly the problem–each and every one of your products has its own charger with its own tip that follows a different voltage and current. That’s a lot to carry around.
When you step away from that wall, you’re out of power for products that don’t have their own battery. And you still have to carry around that power brick that is now just a brick weighing you down. Imagine an AC adapter that didn’t just charge your product, but also kept a capacity of its own so you can stay powered later.
You have many alternatives to the cluster. The finest I’ve found so far is XPAL’s XP18000 external battery (rebranded by Energizer). Think of this as an universal AC adapter, power strip, and mobile wall outlet all in one. It can charge up to 3 devices at once, serving like a power strip: one via USB, 9-12V, and 16-20V. With the largest library of tips, the XP18000 can charge anything; I’ve gotten it to operate my microUSB phone, a Netgear WiDi box (kind of like a router), a 23″ LED monitor, an HP mobile printer, and of course my laptop (which is really a high-powered tablet).
“But if I get one, that’s one more thing to carry around!”
Not exactly. While it is true that the external battery itself uses an AC adapter to charge itself, you don’t need to carry it around so long as you’ve already charged it at home. Your phone or laptop already have batteries of their own, so this battery serves to extend that life until you get home in both the long and short term.
The XP18000 is advertised to give you another 6 hours on a laptop, but will definitely revitalize your cell phone many times over. With new ARM processors and Intel’s upcoming Ivy Bridge, you can expect their lower voltages to result in better battery life to get you through the 24hour constant of a day. Unfortunately, smart phones are a little too smart and laptops are still not at a point where their resources will carry you through the whole day, but this external battery might take you there.
I was not subsidized by anyone to post this. After cleaning up my whole room, I collected all loose cords and was just in shock that I had to share this!
