Macally PowerLink Emergency Battery Pack with 2 GB Pen Drive for iPod and iPhone (Black)
by Macally
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List Price: Our Price: $16.99 You Save: $18.00 (51%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $8.99 (click here) Category: Network Media Player 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 Macally PowerLink Emergency Battery Pack with 2 GB Pen Drive for iPod and iPhone (Black)
Customer Review: Works well, could use some improvements
Summary: 4 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
I normally don't need emergency power for any of my devices when I travel but I figured I'd give this a try since it came with a flash drive as well. Hooking this up to my IPOD classic 80gb model provided me with approximatley 3 hours of battery life. I only played songs on my IPOD (no video) and a fairly high vlume. The MP3's were mostly encoded at 192kbs and I frequently changed songs so the backlight came on. For emergency power, I find 3 hours to be very good. I know most poepl that would buy this would be to extend the battery life of their IPHONE but I don't have one so I can't comment on length of time for that device. The packaging states up to an hour of additional talk time but I don't know, in practice, how that holds up.
A few things I found iffy about this device is that it came with no instructions outside of, "Please fully charge before using". You don't need to be a rocket scientist to use it but it would be nice if it contained some additional information about what this does and how to use it effectively.
Another area that seemed useless to me was using this as a synch dock. My IPOD did not sit well attached to the device without using the included USB extender. If I need to bring the extender with me on trips, I might as well just use the standard IPOD cord I have. It really doesn't save space for travel.
The 2gb storage is nice but doesn't hold a lot of media content if that is your intent.
All in all I would recommend this product to someone looking for some emergency battery power for your IPOD. I'm sure that it works well with teh IPHONE but don't expect any marathon battery life.
Impovements that I would like to see include a bigger flash drive and the ability to use this on other, non IPOD, devices. If this had some connection adaptors for use with other MP3 players or cell phones, this would sell a lot better in my opinion.
Customer Review: Multi-function, but is it necessary?
Summary: 4 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Ideally I'd like to rate this 3.5 stars, but I rounded up. This product seems to be getting beat up a bit in reviews, I'll try to cover some of the potential issues.
First, what it does:
It's a thumb drive (2gb), it's a (small) battery backup, and it's a way to connect your iphone to your computer.
As a thumb drive:
2gb's doesn't seem like much anymore, when this came out a few months ago it was probably pretty decent, unfortunately since then 4+ gb have become commonplace. It also has a cap (otherwise known as something you're going to lose) that covers the usb port (there is also a cap on the iphone dock connector also). The caps fit snugly, but still they are caps. As far as size, this little device is bigger than your normal 'small' flash drive, but really not much larger than the bulkier ones.
As a backup battery:
It has 250mAh of backup juice. The current iPhone has 1400mAh battery in it, that means this little device can give it ~18% of a charge. It's not going to get you through watching another movie, but if this is already in your pocket it could give you another 30 minutes of so of talk time. It's probably better to be thought of as emergency, and not a 'refill' or a 'backup'.
As a way to connect your iphone to your computer:
It does it, nothing much else to say other than it might be weird suspending the ipod if you don't have the (included) extension usb cable.
To sum up. This is much smaller than I thought it would be (just barely larger than a normal thumb drive), it's quite tricky in it's ways (connecting to a computer gives you both the iphone connection, thumb drive connection, and charges the battery), but it's probably not worth the price. I'd love to see one that was 8+ gb's and offered a 500+ mAh battery (and of course the same price :) ).
Customer Review: Not worth it!
Summary: 3 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
I received this item as a review unit from the Vine at Amazon. While I know I should not complain about a product I received for free...I know that I should be honest with future purchasers.
This product is a great concept which fails to impress me.
Pros:
It charges in any standard usb port.
Has a 2gb flash drive (nothing impressive these days).
Allows more listening time - juice.
Cons:
Does not CHARGE the iPhone or iPod (provides power).
Size is large.
Charging takes 3 hours plus for a full charge when its empty.
The idea behind this product is to give you some power for your ipod/iphone when you need it. I tested it with my iPhone 3g and it works just fine...but it does not put the phone in charge mode. Only some sort of a AC Adapter mode...which is weird to me.
The box includes a tiny extension cable so you can keep this inline with your usb port while you sync your ipod or iphone - I guess you could use it that way...but why. Why not just use a different usb port. Charge this in one and use your ipod / iphone in another.
Now then - if your iPhone runs out of power - you can attach this for some talk time...but now you have this thick (size is about 2 packs of wrigleys gum) thing sticking out of the bottom....one wrong move and you could damage that iPhone connector on the botton..... Same goes for iPods.
I give this 3 out of 5 - because I believe it to be a good idea. But it is not something that will be in my back pack. I am certain other products do a much better job for the price.
ps. Also tested with a Nano to make sure I wasnt losing my mind...but a new 16gb Nano - fully dead - shows a full battery with this thing plugged in...it doesnt charge the Nano - shows it as fully charged.
Customer Review: Very curious little unit
Summary: 3 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
This unit does 2 things. It acts as a 2gb flash drive and it acts as an emergency power source for your ipod & iphone. It does seem to work fine with my 3g - and gave no errors. It says clearly in the manual that it won't charge your ipod or phone, but only provide emergency power to it.
All in all, I cant get too excited about this unit. Its not enough power and not enough storage to do the job. I don't think there are a lot of ipod - iphone out there thinking "gee if only i had a device that would power my phone for a little while and also provide a little bit of storage."
What it needs is at least 8gb of storage and the ability to fully charge the ipod or iphone.
Pros:
Simple elegant operation. Plug it into a USB port to charge or a USB power adapter and its starts charging.
Its tiny, throw it into your bag and you'll forget its there but if you need some extra juice, there ya go.
Works as advertised and seems to be work with ipods and iphones.
Cons:
It only provides about 45 minutes of juice. Thats great for emergency phone calls on your iphone but useless for ipod usage. Who needs 30-45 mins of extra life on your ipod?
You must leave the unit connected to power the device, it doesn't charge the ipod or phone - just powers it.
When you plug it into the USB slot to charge, you are also mounting the flash drive and if you unplug without (on osx) un-mounting, it barks you could damage the drive. It really means damage the data but I get the idea. It would be nice if you could turn off the flash stick part.
2GB for a flash drive is pretty wimpy these days. You can get a 16gb flash stick for under $50 easy. So while 2gb is ok, its pretty useless to me as storage.
Customer Review: Perfect for Travel
Summary: 5 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
I have to say that I didn't expect to like the MacAlly Battery Pack as much as I did. What I like most, is the simplicity of it.
First off, the size is great (about 1 inch wide by 3 inches long by about 1/2 inch thick). The ability to toss some files on the flash drive just makes it better.
I like to watch movies on my iPhone when I travel, and you never know when you will get stuck in an airport without access to one of the few outlets in the terminal. I also don't like to carry around an unwieldy battery pack and keep my laptop bag light. If you have little space and want to carry the least amount of weight possible, this little gem fits the bill. It's small, easy to throw in a laptop bag (without adding weight) and also has a nice 2GB flash storage to carry any files.
Now, the MacAlly WON'T charge your iPhone by itself, it's not designed to. But it will extend the battery life enough to get you by quite well if you can't charge your iPhone/iPod as soon as you'd like.
I also have a Richard Solo 1800, which is great to charge your iPhone/iPod Touch, but is a bit bigger and heavier than the MacAlly and mosre costly. When you travel, every ounce counts. Unless I needed to completely recharge my iPhone/ipod Touch, I would carry the MacAlly vs. the RS 1800.
I chose not to use the Data Sync feature, since I have my own method of managing my data on a flash drive and I didn't want to add "yet another" data management tool to my computer, but even without this feature it's a great deal.
The price is reasonable given it is a battery and a flash drive. The convenient size makes it easy to keep one in your laptop bag and another in your car. Simple and effective at what it's designed to do.