Power banks come in all shapes and sizes, and of course all kinds of prices too. The key difference between most is going to be between a couple of important pieces: compatibility of ports and accepted chargers, and the battery capacity and quality. Any manufacturer can stuff huge cells in a battery, sell it for cheap and call it a day. Manufacturers that really care about the end user’s experience, however, will find themselves putting a little more quality into their product to protect their good name. This is the idea behind Choetech’s latest power bank, the 15,600mAh power bank, and it packs not only high quality Samsung batteries inside but some pretty special ports on here too.
The general nature of a power bank is simply to charge whatever device you have in your possession, no matter who makes it or how it charges. After all they are mostly just a USB port or two and a giant power cell to grab from. Choetech made a more intelligent power bank that not only dishes out Qualcomm QuickCharge 2.0 power to phones and tablets that support the solution, but also accepts said power levels to more quickly charge those high capacity batteries. 15,600mAh is somewhere in the ballpark of 5 times the size of the average phone battery, and 3 times as much the size of the average tablet battery. It doesn’t take a genius to realize just how valuable having something like this around would be, especially when you’re in a pickle and can’t just plug your phone or tablet into a wall or car charger. These types of products have come in handy more than once when away from home for me, and I personally find them invaluable.
One of the things that makes this product more valuable than plenty of others out there is its ability to not only scale the voltage and amperage depending on your product to charge it as quickly and safely as possible, but the support for Qualcomm’s QuickCharge 2.0 brings this over the top. Any phone with support for this technology will charge unbelievably fast, a trait that’s highly desired in a product that’s designed to get you back up and running as quickly as possible when you’re on the go. QuickCharge 2.0 doubles the charging speed from the QuickCharge 1.0 standard, and promises to charge your battery from 0-60% in just 30 minutes. For a phone packing the average 3,000mAh battery this means an extra half a day’s usage or more on a mere 30 minute charging cycle. Phones not compatible with QuickCharge 2.0, like my OnePlus One for instance, still charged 35% in that same half an hour, in my case bringing the battery from 15% at the end of my work day to 50%, easily carrying me through the rest of my evening. It’s important to note that you’ll need to press the power button any time you plug something in to charge, a safety feature that’s likely there to keep the battery from erroneously draining.
The design of the Choetech Power Bank is elegant and shiny, although its shiny nature makes it a bit of a fingerprint magnet. There’s a single power button on the top front of the device with a 4-LED battery indicator next to it displaying the current battery level when the power button is pressed. On the front of the device a blue USB port signifies the QuickCharge 2.0 port, while the other black USB port is the self-adjusting voltage port. There are two ways to charge the power bank, the first is with a standard microUSB cable as you would charge a phone or many other Bluetooth accessories. Next to this port is something special for Apple users who may not have a microUSB port; a lightning port that charges all of Apple’s latest mobile products. Yet again it’s this flexibility that adds significant value to the Choetech Power Bank and makes it something that we can recommend over plenty of others on the market. For $40 you’re getting one of the best power banks on the market, especially at this massive capacity, and one that’s not going to weigh down your backpack or die quickly either thanks to quality batteries from Samsung. Pick one up at Amazon today!