Reviews by The Church of Apple

Tag: Charge

  • ChargeCard Review

    The ChargeCard for iDevices with 30-pin connector is a unique charge and sync cord for the iPhone 4/4S, iPad 2 and 3, and the iPods (30-Pin). This cord is so thin, it literally fits in your wallet. That’s right, a charge/sync cord for your iDevice that fits in your wallet. How cool is that! Never will you forget to bring your charging cord because who leaves the house without their wallet? No one I know of. This unique device is available from the Charge Card Project for $25.00. Let’s see if this unique device is for you.

    Form

    As you can imagine, this device is THIN. We are talking credit card sized thin. The thinnest charge/sync cord I have ever seen. You may think to yourself “There is no way this incredibly thin cord card could possibly charge let alone sync my device”, well, I don’t know how it’s done but it’s done. Literally, it is the charger cord that fits your wallet. The card also is so light, it does not register on my scale. It is that light. The device comes in one color: black. It consists of a “half-USB” cord, meaning the device has the half of a USB port, the one that matters, the part that actually does the charging and syncing, the part with the technology. Therefore, it is half the size of a standard USB plug. It also is dynamic and can bend in any shape you want it to. This is a great feature since you are not bogged down having to turn it one way. The 30 pin connector is on the top of the card and is actually a part of the card. The cord attached to the USB and the card don’t provide much length but I would recommend using this device as a backup to your cord and as a replacement for when you go out somewhere but not a replacement for when you are at home. And that’s okay, that is what it is made for, to be a traveling cord, one that will almost always be with you. The uniqueness and innovation of this product easily make it excel in Form.

    Function

    Something I noticed about this cord when I used to charge my iDevice was that it actually was quick to charge. Don’t let the small size fool you. This device packs a punch. It will charge your device very quickly. I was able to get a full charge within an hour or so. That is about how much time it takes to charge it with a long cord that is a drag to carry around and that can’t fit in your wallet. In addition, I was surprised by the syncing. I thought that the syncing would be slow because of it’s small size. Again, I was fooled. The card synced my device just as it would on any of my other cords. I know that some of you may say “Well, where am I going to find a USB port to put this in”, well lots of places. There are USB ports in airplanes, laptops (which I know a lot of you carry MacBooks around to StarBucks, dittos to the hipsters out there), hotels, TVs, some appliances, gaming consoles, some cars have USB ports and I am sure a lot of you have USB car chargers, desktop computers, you’d be surprised. Unless you go deep into the forest, you are likely to find one very close. Therefore, this cord is perfect for travelers. Of course, you should always bring you’re charger along with you when going long distances but accidents happen, distractions happen and the ChargeCard has your back. Keep this in your wallet, find a USB port and you won’t be without charge.

    Conclusion

    Pros

    -Small, light and portable
    -Portable Charge
    -Fits in your wallet, not your pocket, your wallet
    -Full capabilities of a regular charge/sync cord
    -There when you need it, out of your way when you don’t.

    Cons

    -None

    Ways to Improve

    At this time, I see no reason for this product to be modified in any way to fix a problem.

    This is a great product. The portability of this device is astonishing and represents innovation at it’s finest. The creators of this product are fairly young and I believe that this is not the only great product we will see from them. Young, innovative minds are what we need in this country and I believe we have three of them right here with this product. If it’s useful and something I have never seen before, it is innovation. As a side not, another good thing I’d like to mention is that it is made in the US, helping to further our economy. It makes my patriotic heart sing when I see Made in USA. This is the cord to get for your iDevice, no doubt about it. This product absolutely gets five stars from me.

    Thanks for reading,

    Joe

  • The Portable Charge: myCharge Trek 2000 Review

    The myCharge Trek 2000 is a portable charging dock that you can take anywhere you go and add battery life to your dying Apple product should it be dying. It is available from myCharge for $55 at Amazon. Let’s see if it’s the right charging solution for you.

    Form

    The device may only come in one flavor of color, white and grey, but it does look like it is well made. Of course, that is because it is well made. The product has a white, glossy top with green buttons that light up and tell you how much charge it has left to give to your devices. It has a grey dock that unclips from the back and and comes up in a 95-100 degree angle, giving your device the perfect viewing angle. The cords that clip into the device are rather short but one of them is to charge the myCharge and the other is to charge the thousands of devices out there that use Micro-USB. The cords may be short but they seem as though they won’t fray anytime soon, or ever, which is good, a charger with a frayed cord won’t work nearly as efficiently. Of course, the aesthetics aren’t nearly as important than it’s abilities to charge so let’s dive into how the charger performs.

    Function

    The first thing I noticed about the charger is that it charges fast. My iPod touch went from 0 to 100 in about an hour, on my computer it would be charged in 2 hours and on it’s own charger about 2 hours. My iPhone was similar, charged from 0-100 in an hour and a half to 2 hours while on it’s own charger charged it fully in 3. There is a great speed that this dock charges at. I can not make a claim for an Android device since I do not have one, however, it does charge 1000s of Android devices because of the added Micro-USB cord that it has. It has a charge indicator which tells me if I need to charge the myCharge or not, which is nice since I will now know exactly how much charge the charger has before I leave for somewhere. It also plays a sound if a device is put on it, if a device is taken off of it and when it is plugged in. The first and third sounds are useful since it gives you a confirmation that either the device is charging or the charger is charging which is useful since with most chargers like this one, you can not tell if it has charged or is charging until you have wasted time. The fact that it plays a loud sound when it comes off the charger is necessary for two reasons. One, if the device is in the charger and you want it to charge, you don’t want it coming off so if it happens to come off when you don’t want it to, you will know immediately that it has been unplugged. Similarly, benefit two is that if someone tries to steal your device while it is on the charger, it will tell you like a car alarm tells you of a burglar. With some luck and an incredibly stupid robber, you can prevent your device from being stolen while it is on the charger. One bad side that I do see about the device is it’s practicality. iOS device’s batteries, at least for newer devices, are built to last. You also probably charge your device at night anyways, so when it is night time and your phone still has a charge from the morning, it’s going on the main charger anyways. Another thing is that you can not use the device effectively while it is on the charger. Of course, this is a dock and that is why it won’t be very comfortable using your device on it, because it is a dock. My iPhone 4S, after extensive use, does drain so I do find myself using the dock to charge it but I want to be able to use the device while it’s charging and that can not be effectively done. An old iPod touch I used to have lasted maybe half an hour off of it’s charger, it’s battery was toast. This charger would have made the device much more effectively used since it did charge fast (the old iTouch could charge in 30 minutes, probably due to he fact that most battery cells were dead and charging the remaining ones was a snap). However, despite the fact that I can’t use it on the charger, does it really matter if I can’t? The device can charge my device is about an hour or two anyways. The charger, despite the flaw in practicality, works really well and I would recommend it.

    Conclusion

    Pros

    -FAST Charge
    -Great Aestethics
    -Not just for Apple products
    -Charge an Apple product and Android product at the same time
    -Different sounds to indicate different actions
    -Portable and light
    -Great dock viewing angle
    -Wrist strap to attach to your wrist
    Cons

    -Can not use device effectively while it is on the charger
    -Wires are very short

    Recommendations to improve the Product

    This is probably a section I should have added a little while ago, when I first started reviewing but we learn along the way. Anyways, recommendations to the company would include to lengthen the wires perhaps by utilizing the space that the cord currently uses to put a retractable wire. Also, putting a USB port on the device would allow the user to plug in his or her cord to the charger and still effectively use the device. Of course, they can leave the dock there since I know people prefer to dock their device whenever possible, perhaps when they are at a desk and working. When their phone rings, they can pick it up off the dock. I think a dock/USB power bank is what I am going for here. It would be a great improvement.

    This charger, for $55, will serve you well. I would consider other chargers from myCharge since they have USB power banks too but if you are a dock person, I would recommend this charger to you. I give the charger 4 stars for doing what it should being doing quickly, charging. The effectiveness of using the device on charger or a lack thereof, prevents from it receiving a five star rating.

    Thanks for reading,

    Joe

    Image Courtesy: myCharge and Amazon

  • Kanex Sydnee iOS Charging Station

    The Sydnee, from Kanex, is a four device charging station available direct for $149.00. This sleek, minimalistic and space saving machine will charge four iOS devices at maximum charging speed, providing a full charge to your smaller iPod touch/iPhone devices in an hour or so to a full charge to your big boy devices, your iPads, in about two hours. If you have a shortage of cords, don’t worry, they provide you with three small but long enough cords to charge with so you only need to come up with one more. Let’s see if this charger is worth it’s high cost.

    Form

    I have very mixed opinions on this one. The Sydnee has it’s positives and negatives to it’s design, the negatives mostly applying only to those who receive a poorly constructed product. First off, the Syndee, out of all the multi-device chargers I’ve seen, takes the least amount of space on my desk. It is compact, allowing it to be stored anywhere. The product is made out of what seems to be a hard plastic with rubber pieces. It is very elegant in design and looks particularly great on my black glass desk, as the one I received is black, it comes in white as well. It does look tacky from the back having four cables coming from the back of it but if the Sydnee is against a wall, you won’t see them anyway. Also, the charger is light, consisting of a lot of air so it is easy to carry around. There are a few problems with the form of the case, not what it looks like, but how it was built. The rubber piece inside of the charger, as soon as I took Sydnee out of it’s box had already come off. Now this isn’t a small rubber piece, it’s a padding for any device that it has in it. If this said device did not have a case, it could be scratched, therefore that space would be unusable. Also, let’s not forget that you pay $150 for this charger and as soon as you open it, it already is falling apart. However, I will give the product the benefit of the doubt, provided that I probably just received a faulty product, and not all are. However, zoom up a few weeks later, and a provided cord had the connector part come out partially when I unplugged it from the iPad. It did go right back in and was still usable but the point is, it shouldn’t do that. It is not a good pattern. In addition to these two incidents, there is another thing that bugs me as well. The whole thing is black, chrome black, except for one part that is yellow. The rubber part that is yellow, a part that is actually quite useful to the charger (I will explain it in a bit), does not fit with the rest of the charger. It’s just there and it looks a little weird. It is a little nit-picky but it is not to be discounted as everything goes in a review. As a wrap-up, the Sydnee has it’s highs and lows, (more lows than highs here) in the Form category but will it be so in the Function category?

    Function

    The answer is no. The function of the charger is much better than its form. First of all, like I mentioned before, the charger does charge devices incredibly fast, faster than the Apple chargers, at least to what I have seen with it. The charger takes up little room whether on a desk, shelf etc. The charger has a pretty neat cord system as to hide the cords as much as possible. Because of the amount of power this charger provides, 2.1 amps per device, it can charge 4 iPads at the same time from 0-100% in a little over two hours. This is pretty good. Of course, not everyone has four iPads so you can charge a mixture of different Apple products and some other non-Apple products as well. The product is mainly for Apple products but it does charge other companies products as well, provided the charger is compatible with the said product(s). The device itself is pretty well protected, though I recommend that you make sure that there are cases on any device that you put on or in the Sydnee considering that they can fall right off/out of it. Fortunately, Kanex thought of this and they made it so that the device can be small enough to go anywhere, but yet open enough to where an iPad with just about any case could fit, allowing it to keep it’s protection should it fall out. I think that the best thing overall, is it’s ability to charge four iPads at the same time, charging them all in a short amount of time. That, after all, above all else, is what they advertise it will do, and it does it well.

    Conclusion

    Pros

    -Charges FAST, up to four devices, the most I have seen out of one product
    -I use it everyday
    -Cord management is effective
    -Takes up little room
    -Simplistic, yet useful design
    -Sleek black color looks great on any surface

    Cons

    -Pieces falling off (Big problem for me)
    -Not a lot of protection for the iPads themselves
    -Yellow piece doesn’t match with the rest of the charger, subtracts from elegant look of the charger
    -Three cables, four ports. Why?
    -HIGH Price

    Out of all the products I have reviewed, this charger is a true test of Form vs Function and which one is more important. I believe that if a product doesn’t perform well but looks great, it isn’t as worth as it as one that works really well but has cosmetic issues. This is the case with this charger. The charger isn’t the greatest in the form, but it does everything it promised it would do. The product definitely received a 5/5 in what it does but it receives a 3.5/5 in its form, it would have been a 2/5 with the pieces falling off, however I realize that most people’s chargers would not fall apart like mine. At what point does the Form influence the final score? I think that as long as Kanex doesn’t send out chargers with rubber pieces coming off, then I will give the benefit of the doubt and give the Kanex Sydnee a 4/5. I believe that there is not a product quite like this one on the market at this time, considering the low space it takes up and the amount of things it can charge at one time. However, the price and the poor construction make it so that I can’t give it anything higher than a 4/5. I hope that Kanex can just put a little more glue on their product and take a little less money for the product and I would definitely raise the final score. Good job Kanex on a product that performs well and meets and exceeds it’s advertised abilities.

    Thanks for reading,

    Joe