Lenmar ACUSB4 AC Travel Adapter for up to 4 USB Powered Devices (Black)
by Lenmar Battery Solutions
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List Price: Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Lenmar ACUSB4 AC Travel Adapter for up to 4 USB Powered Devices (Black)
Customer Review: Charge like a champion
Summary: 5 Stars
Who tired of lugging masses of chargers around, or having a clusterf*** on their desk? This charger is a four-seat lifeboat for you!
Obvious benefits: charge all kinds of gear on a single jack, wherever in this small world you go. Basically everything short of my toothbrush uses USB to charge now anyway.
Pleasant surprise: if you remove the AC plug (the exchangeable thing you stick into the wall port) you can use a regular "figure eight" AC cable. This is amazing. If you want the charger on your desk, but keep the power strip on the floor, just grab an old 2-pole cable from a laptop, printer or similar and you're golden. Leave the AC plugs in your briefcase and quickly grab the charger when it's time to go, instead of climbing behind your desk each time. Or if you show up in Paris and couldn't be bothered to bring the big pile of AC adapters, just borrow a local figure eight cable. (Note: only non-polarized IEC C7 cables will fit.)
Also nice: the subtle amber light is refreshing in today's "OMG lets add 8000 lumen blue LEDz to make it look hi-techk!!" design era. This is a charger, not a nightlight.
Cons:
It doesn't have infinite ports
It doesn't stop bullets
It doesn't charge my laptop
It doesn't fast-charge (some) Android devices, which need the two central data pins on the USB plug connected (i.e. "shorted") together in order to draw a full 1 Amp and thereby halve charging time. With this charger they will only do the regular charge at 500mA that they would get from your computer port, unless you mod your USB cable or the charger. I've tried, and it isn't easy to open the charger's case. I docked a star for this.
Customer Review: Excellent product
Summary: 5 Stars
First off, this is a wonderful product. It has four USB ports with two amps total capacity. It should be capable of charging four standard USB devices or apparently two high-draw one-amp cell phones at the same time. I haven't been able to find anything to back up that second claim but my phone does appear to charge more quickly on this than it does on the 500mA adapter it came with. The interchangeable supply plugs are a plus if you travel out of country, though they aren't held very securely by the latching mechanism--you have to be careful when removing it from the wall.
That said, my experience has been slightly less positive. I bought this for a trip with my girlfriend and her kids. The kids all have iPods, we each have Droid phones (HTC G1 and Motorola Cliq with Motoblur), plus video and still cameras that will charge from USB. Having four ports came in handy a few times. However, I've had unlimited trouble finding a USB power adapter that will charge her Motorola CLIQ. The one that it came with claimed 850mA @5vDC yet this still can't provide enough to charge the phone at all. I've tried close to a dozen different adapters with no luck. As for the loose plug connection, I've added a bit of black electrical tape to hold the US plug more securely to mine.
I'll absolutely be keeping this and can recommend it to my friends in good conscience, so long as they aren't trying to charge a Moto CLIQ with it.
Customer Review: Charges my iPad, iPhone and headset at same time!
Summary: 5 Stars
Great charger! I got it because it has 4 USB sockets. When I traveled, I used to leave my laptop on all night to charge all my USB devices (didn't want to bring all the separate chargers). Now I turn off the laptop and charge everything from one AC socket with this handy device.
This is 2A total output, with the standard 500ma per each of the 4 ports. If I plug in my iPad, iPhone and Jawbone bluetooth headset at the same time, it will readily charge the latter two and maintain/very slowly charge my iPad. Turn the iPad screen off and it will more quickly restore the charge on the iPad. It easily charges the iPad back up to 100% overnight, even while the other devices are plugged into the charger. Interesting that unlike other standard USB ports, it does indicate it is charging on the iPad's power icon - must be slightly more than 500 mA going to the USB port.
It doesn't charge anyway near as fast as Apple's dedicated 2.1 amp charger, but it works for my "plug everything in when get to hotel, work for a while and then go to bed" scenario.
I'm happy that it doesn't seem to get warm while it's charging. Also handy that it has adapters for UK, continental Europe and even New Zealand. One minor thing is that the prongs don't fold up for travel. But it is pretty compact and if you want to, you can separate the prongs from the charger to save a little extra room in your bag.
Customer Review: Solid inexpensive charger
Summary: 4 Stars
With both my wife and I getting new phones in the past month we found that our "Charging Station" had gotten out of hand. We ended up with a 2 to 6 wall plug and then an extension cord to plug in the chargers for each of the phones as well as the head sets and ipods. It was made worse by the fact that each of these devices had their own wall wort and most of them were just USB based chargers. So I bought this in the hope that it would work. So far a few weeks later we have been able to remove the wall worts and have just this one charger plugged in with the various cables for the other devices.
So far it has been able to charge everything we have thrown at it. Motorola Droid, Droid Eris, iPhone, iPod Classic and Nano, Bluetooth head sets and head phones.
The issues I have with it is that it comes with 4 different plug types for traveling. This would be great if you were traveling but if you never leave the states this just means that sometimes you will end up with a loose connection between the brick and the plug for the outlet. It would be nice if that connection was more solid or locked into place in some way.
Over all I would recommend this to anyone that is trying to reduce the clutter of a number of USB based chargers.
Customer Review: Works great, know the limitations
Summary: 4 Stars
First off, judging from the reviews this product is either loved or hated. That's probably more due to (unfortunately) the newness of using USB as a charging system: While definitely a good idea to standardize charging cords, it's not foolproof yet. My own personal experience has been great. I haven't tried charging more than two devices at one time (which works fine), but the best thing about this device is being able to leave up to four USB charging cables plugged in all the time, then you just plug your phone in to the USB cable whenever you need a charge; no need to hunt down the other end of the cord or the thing that plugs into the wall. I also bought this charging station to go with it: Shift3 Charging Station (there are others available, search Amazon for "charging station" or "charging valet") and they make an especially good combination since the charging station keeps all the wires hidden.
Back to this product, I would've given it more than four stars if it were rated for more than two amps since I'm pretty confident four devices would draw at least that much. But this product has a lot of things going for it and is definitely worth trying out.