BESTEK Portable Car Jump Starter and Emergency Power Power Bank
I have been skeptical about this battery and its ability to jumpstart the car. However, after testing it for a few weeks I am now a believer: It really delivers on its premise. I have not tested it with the car, but with my John Deere lawn mower. It has a bad battery that needs replacing, but I haven’t had the time to do so this year. Instead I’ve been jump starting it using one of the large conventional jump starter batteries. It got the job done, but the setup was pretty unwieldy. Now with this much smaller and much more convenient battery I was able to do it really quickly and easily. I was amazed that a battery of this size can do such a thing, and do it repeatedly. That in and of itself makes it a really worthwhile investment. However, it also works as a conventional backup charger for all of your small electronic devices.
At 10,000 mAh this is a pretty medium sized battery. In terms of capacity it is certainly smaller than most batteries these days, yet it is much bulkier than almost all of them. This is not a very convenient portable battery to have around. I’ve tested it with several small and medium electronic devices, which I had previously completely depleted. I was able to fully charge first generation iPad and iPhone 4S from a single charged Bestek battery. I have not tested it with the latest generation iPad Air, but my guess would be that this battery would be able to fully charge it.
Unfortunately, I have not been able to use this power bank to charge a laptop. I only have Mac laptops, and this battery doesn’t come with the cables and connectors that will enable it to connect to a Mac. This is not just the problem with this battery – Apple is notorious for being very proprietary with their accessory connections, and I don’t think there is an independent battery manufacturer out there with a product that will work with Macs. There are some hacks that will allow you to get around this restriction (you can buy an Apple power cord or appropriate one from your old charger), but all such tricks require certain level of familiarity with electronics and willingness to improvise.
If you have any “regular” PC laptop, chances are that this battery pack will work with it. The battery supports 19V output and comes with several adapters that can fit most laptop power inputs that I’ve come across.
This is a beautifully made external battery. It is, as you would expect it, fairly large and heavy – it weighs about 13 ounces. It is a very convenient battery to keep around in an emergency, but I do wish it had a higher capacity. I intend to keep it with me in my car from now on though.
**** Product provided for review purposes. ****
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