Question: What do you get for technology enthusiasts who have every gadget they could desire? Answer: an external battery that can keep their gadgets running all day long.
Rechargeable batteries that quickly charge mobile devices are all over the place. How does a battery maker stand out from this highly commoditized crowd?
Instead of throwing in the towel, Jackery has made the effort to differentiate its products. They sent me a Jackery Air to show me their efforts.
Appearance
The Jackery Air is about the same size as my 5th-generation iPod Touch. The copper-coloured shell reminds me of the colour that, more than a decade ago, made the then-uniquely-sporty Nissan Murano pop whenever you saw it on the streets.
The charging ports (in and out) are located where you’d find the iPod’s headphone hack and Lightning port. A button and light are arranged as two half-circles creating a whole circle in the bottom corner of the copper-coloured facing. If this light is green, the battery is full(-ish). If it’s blue, the Jackery is halfway charged. If it’s red, the Jackery needs a boost. A blinking red light means the Jackery is gasping for breath and likely won’t charge a thing. The user guide says the Air can take up to 6 hours to fully charge.
Charging
A fully-charged Air got my 3rd-generation iPad from 57% battery capacity to 94% before it gave out. A fully-charged Air sank to maybe ½ a charge to get my nearly dead 2008-era Blackberry fully charged. It also got my girlfriend’s iPhone 4S from 39% to full very quickly, sinking to ½ charged as it did so. The website for the Air contains a list of devices and the number of charge cycles the Air can provide for each device (from 0.2 for tablets to more than 1 for phones).
It’s difficult to tell just how much juice the Air has left after a charge – more on that later.
Mobile app
Looks are one thing, but how do you distinguish a brand of external rechargeable batteries for electronic devices? Jackery offers a mobile app that, for some reason, requires me to sign in (i.e. register with) the company to use. (I had already tested an LED bulb that I could program from a mobile device. This app did NOT call for me to register with the company before it let me work with the app. It just paired quickly with the bulb, and off I went. Why Jackery has this requirement, I don’t know.)
Once I created my account, I was able to see how much charge was left in my DEVICE’S battery – not the Jackery. It also estimates how much time I have left before the device dies, and it notifies me when the device reaches 50% charge, 20% charge, and when it needs a charge.
OK, fine. Frankly, this and the other information the app provides is more than I really need. All I care for is the standard battery icons found in a corner of my devices’ screens.
It might be useful to know what the charge is in the Jackery itself. But all you get on the device itself is one light that flashes three colours. (I prefer the eight lights that glow when I press the button on the side of my Mac – 8 buttons each signify 12.5% of the battery’s charge. Eight lights means a full charge. Any less, and it’s easy to guess how much battery life you have left.)
The app also contains an area where the Jackery “community” can chat. This isn’t exactly a heavily used forum full of erudition. Why anybody would participate in a community centred around a manufacturer of rechargeable batteries is beyond me. Even Jackery seems to have lost interest in this part of the app. The last time I looked at this forum, the one item in the “coupon” tab was a 10% off coupon dated June 21, 2014.
Conclusion
Not unlike most batteries, I expect rechargeable power packs like the Jackery to remain mired in commodity status. About the only thing that differentiates these products are customer reviews on retail websites. (Form factor can count should a battery also serve, for instance, as a protective case for a mobile device.)