The bottom line on the New Trent battery is this: it works. In the past I’ve tried several different reserve power supplies for my gadgets, and I have had mixed results. However, there is no ambiguity about this battery: it’s small, effective, and well designed.

In order to test this battery charger I decided to completely drain my small electronic devices so that I get as clean of an idea of this battery’s efficiency as I can. (As an aside, when you really want to discharge them, the consumer electronics has become really robust in recent year. It took me much longer than I thought it would. I had to blast music from my iPhone for hours and hours …) I discover that, with the unsurprising exception of the iPad, I was able to fully charge all of my small electronic devices with plenty of power to spare. Full charging usually takes between one to two hours. I’ve tested this battery with iPhone 4S, iPhone 3G, Kindle Keyboard, Mobee Magic Bar, Jabra SPORT Bluetooth Stereo Headset , and the aforementioned iPad (First Generation) (32GB, Wifi + 3G). Oftentimes I was able to fully charge two or three devices with just one New Trent fully charged battery. I was only able to charge my iPad to 61% of its full charge, but considering iPad’s size this is still really impressive, and on par with all the other batteries of this capacity.

To fully charge this battery it takes about four to five hours. This is much longer than some other such batteries that I have tested, and I think this is primarily due to the fact that it relies on USB connection for powering. The best way to charge this battery is to leave it plugged in overnight. You can plug it into your computer or a stand-alone USB charger.

This New Trent battery is beautifully designed and very compact. It’s also fairly light, and overall very convenient and portable. It is probably the smallest and lightest external battery of this capacity that I’ve come across.

The battery aslo includes a small LED and Laser lights. These can be turned on and off using just one power button that turns on the battery. This is a very efficient and ingenious design, but took me a bit to figure out all the various powering options. Laser makes this battery double as a presentation pointer, which is a very useful feature to have if presentations are a part of your work description.

One issue that I have with this battery is that by relying on USB port for its charging you lose the convenience of being able to charge it by just plugging it into the wall power outlet. With the ubiquity of USB devices and stand-alone USB power supplies, this is much less of an issue than it would have been just a few years ago. I am perfectly happy with this method of charging, but if you anticipate having to primarily rely on power outlets in your personal or professional life, then you might want to reconsider getting this battery.

Overall, I am very pleased and impressed with this battery charger. It is effective, portable, and very affordable. I would recommend it to anyone who travels a lot or uses their gadgets on the go all the time.

***** Review product provided by the manufacturer. *****