I get a lot of these portable battery packs sent in. Reviewing them isn’t a big deal, but I do find it hard to write more than a couple sentences about it. What can you say really? It’s a device which is about as slim as your smartphone but you charge it from the wall and then, via the two USB ports on the top, it’ll pump out the voltage to charge your smartphone (or any other device) when you’re out and about.
Boom. Done.
Another review finished. Here’s a video ..
OK, a bit more detail then. This one has a smooth rubber finish to it and measures in at 11.8×6.5cm. It’s just 0.9 cm thick and only weighs 100 g, so you can put it in your pocket very easily indeed. It comes with a small USB-to-microUSB cable which is about 15cm long. You can use this to charge the power bank and it’ll show blue LED’s to let you know how full it is as you do so. If you’ve got a phone or device with a microUSB port, you can switch the cable around and charge your gadget on the move.
Inside the battery is a 4000mAh Polymer Lithium-Ion “Class A” unit which features a “longer cycle life and less capacity loss”. Both ports output 2.1A, which means you can charge even the most power-hungry devices and it’ll fast-charge most other gadgets.
Inside there’s lots of cleverness to ensure that your device isnt’t over-charged and there’s short circuit protection too.
The battery in here is, as we said, a 4000mAh unit. My current smartphone has a 3000mAh battery, so this gadget will charge your phone fully once, then you’ll need to replenish the battery.
If you need a USB-C cable then you’ll have to carry it with you, although the same goes for any cable really – including the supplied microUSB one.
The Parkman H1 costs £10.99 from Amazon UK or $15.99 from Amazon US. They also have higher-capacity (but thicker) versions with 8000mAh capacity which will charge your phone up twice if you’d like them instead.