I’m becoming a wireless charging convert, the ease of just slamming gently placing your phone or tablet onto a pad on your desk to charge it so quick and easy. The more devices I buy that support Qi charging the more I want to use it, have already purchased a few Nokia pads for around the house and for my work, I thought I’d see what some of the competition charging pads were like.
So let’s start with my good and bad points for the Ravpower charging pad.
Good Points
- Slightly higher output of 1A means it charges quicker than my Nokia chargers
- Micro USB input means I can use almost any cable
- Large size is nice for tablets
- Ease of use
Bad Points
- No non slip elements to it so your phone COULD slip off
- Makes a beep when it’s done which is a little annoying in the night
- large size makes charging smaller phones a little fiddly
Design
The Ravpower pad has a pretty basic design, it’s just a white plastic pad and it measures 145mm x 80mm x 8mm. The pad doesn’t have many features, a Micro USB port at the rear, a little LED light at the front and four plastic feet on the bottom.
In Use
In use the theory is pretty simple, you put the phone on the pad and it charges. In reality I soon realised that the charging coil in the pad and receiver coil in my devices were all over the place. I’m used to charging a Lumia 925 which is quite small compared to the pad, so to get it to charge I had to place it further up the pad. Larger phones and tablets didn’t really have this problem.
When you place the device down it let’s out a beep to notify that the pad has started to charge something, which with a smaller device means you know when you’ve hit the spot. The other nice thing is that the range of the pad is a few mm so you can charge your device with a case on, I charged my Nexus 7 with its cheapo eBay TPU case on with no problems.
The beeping is a bit of a two edged sword, it beeps to say “Yay it works” but it also beeps to say “Yay it’s done” which once or twice occurred in the night. I suppose I shouldn’t charge things right next to my head in bed.
The face of the charging pad didn’t have anything to anchor my devices to, so if I tried to charge on a slant the device would invariably slide off. Which some higher cost pads have a non slip strip to keep hold of your phone.
Conclusion
Overall the Ravpower Qi Wireless Charging pad is a pretty useful piece of kit to own, it will allow you to cheaply expand your wireless charging device range. Although for improvement I would have added some sort of non slip material on the face and also possibly on the feet, I might change the beeping behaviour as well. But with this I am happy, it can charge my Nexus 7, my Lumia 925, my Note II and soon my Note 3.
The plate is available in the UK or the US on these links Amazon UK: at £25.99 and Amazon US: at $39.99