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I always have at least a couple of phones on the go for work, at least one I'm testing plus either my personal Android or another test phone. It's a pain and a constant juggle to keep everything charged, especially throughout a busy day. And I have a new MacBook that I lug around with me most days, too. But there's a new portable USB battery from Cygnett that has utterly changed my attitude to keeping everything topped up.
Yes, I know, it's just another power bank. But this one does three things:
It charges phones and tablets — quickly. Charging standards may seem dry and boring, until you realise you've bought a battery with the wrong one. The Cygnett ChargeUp Pro USB-C supports USB-C's 15-Watt default charging standard (5V 3A), it supports Qualcomm's Quick Charge 3.0 (up to 18W), it supports USB Power Delivery (up to 27W for phones, up to 45 Watts for laptops), it supports good ol'-fashioned USB charging at 10.5 Watts (5V 2.1A). There's literally nothing this battery can't do with any half-decent smartphone.
It charges new laptops, too — quickly. Because of that 45 Watt USB-PD support, it'll push pure Wattage into any compatible Power Delivery-compliant laptop or tablet. I've tried it with a new 15-inch MacBook Pro, a Samsung Galaxy Book and a new Dell XPS 13, and had it deliver fast charging every time. And that's so useful when you're away from a wall charger, whether it's while you're driving or flying or anywhere other than at a work desk or at home. A battery is portable by design, and while the fact that it can top up a laptop isn't the most useful thing everyday, when you need it you need it. One annoyance: Cygnett doesn't include a USB-C to C cable in the box.
And it charges itself back up — quickly. The Cygnett ChargeUp Pro USB-C can recharge itself at a maximum rate of 30 Watts, which means if you plug it into a high-powered wall charger — like the one that comes with your MacBook or other USB-C laptop, for example — you'll get faster recharge times. Now, this is still a huge battery, and putting 20,000mAh back into a dead cell is still going to take six hours. But charging this overnight, and then charging everything else throughout the day as you need it, makes so much more sense than lugging around my laptop charger plus a USB battery and cables for my smartphones at the same time.
The ChargeUp Pro USB-C is $169.95, and it really looks quite pleasant in teal — but you'll probably buy the black.
