Tech and life

If you spend a lot of time on the move and need to charge your mobile devices, have a look at the Powermonkey-classic charger from power traveller. I’ve just bought one on Amazon (£16 in the UK; about 25 US dollars) as my daughter is about to head out to Africa with a group to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and will be away from conventional charging facilities for at least 5 or 6 days. She needed a portable charging unit capable of charging her mobile phone and mp3 player.

Charging the Powermonkey

Charging the Powermonkey is very straightforward – it comes with a universal mains charger (which works in over 150 countries) with a selection of interchangeable plugs. You can also charge the Powermonkey from a USB port on a PC using a separate retractable USB cable. A red light glows when charging, green when charged.

Charging your devices

The Powermonkey is supplied with a selection of charging tips for various devices but if you can’t find one to suit your device, you can always use your usual charging cable (USB port to device) because crucially there’s a female USB tip for the charger (shown attached in the image above) – so it’s just like charging your device from your PC. Or additional tips for specific devices are available on the power traveller website.

Haven’t tried it out fully yet but the specs say it holds its charge for up to one year and delivers power for 40 hours iPod use, or 96 hours mobile phone use. I read a review on Amazon which said it would charge an iPod twice before it needed charging. Anyway, I’ll update this post when I’ve confirmed how often it can charge up our devices before needing recharging.

By the way, I don’t do paid product reviews, and I’m not being paid for this post. Just blogging about solutions which work for me.