We’ve all been there. You’re on the train home, idling away the inexplicable delays with a game of Flappy Bird, you’ve negotiated more than 40 sets of pipes and you’re on your way to an unbelievable score - then shut down. You’re out of juice. Nightmare scenario, right? Worry no more: if you’re ever running low on digital gas, the new, credit card sized Monster Powercard portable charger can emerge straight from your wallet to save your smartphone or tablet. That’s the theory anyway - will it actually rescue you in a pinch? We charged one up and popped it in a pocket to find out.
The good
You might have heard of Monster before - they’re the AV gurus that helped bring the Beats By Dre headphones into the world. Granted, there was an acrimonious split up, and they’re no longer involved in Beats Audio, but the point still stands: these guys know how to make a good looking product. That much is clear with the Monster Powercard, a card sized portable battery with a sleek, faux brushed metal finish that looks more like an Amex or an elite membership card than a spare charger for your smartphone (Five colour options are available: yellow, black, blue, white and red). It’s tiny, and above all discrete, unlike a gigantic iPhone case with a built in battery.
Here’s how it works. It’s just thick enough to house a USB port (and a micro one for charging it up in the first place) - plug in your smartphone and it instantly starts topping it up from its 1,600mAh reserve. That’s about a two thirds charge for most modern smartphones, and should help see you through a long day of work or weekend away from the mains. Better yet, it pumps phones up on the double thanks to its USB 1amp quick charge skills, so you can rescue your flatlining phone even quicker than with your regular wall charger.
The bad
Although it’s roughly the height and width of a credit card, at about 6mm deep the Monster Powercard is substantially thicker than any Mastercard. That means you may struggle to fit it in more slimline wallets, and you should look to other portable chargers - some keyring clip ons that can juice up smartphones go for under a tenner on Amazon these days, making them much better value for the skinny jeans wearing brigade than the £35 Powercard. On the other hand, Monster’s effort is perfect for purses, handbags and slipping into your backpack or even your travelcard wallet.
There’s one other big drawback with spare batteries and portable chargers for your phone, but it’s also one that there’s little way of avoiding, and can’t be levelled at Monster alone: if you use it regularly, you also have to remember to charge it regularly, and alongside your phone. At some point, you’re inevitably going to forget to do that, leaving you and your power guzzling ways stranded and bored on the train. Still, until somebody invents a phone charger that powers up from kinetic motion, that’s just something we’ll have to live with.
The bottom line
The Monster Powercard is a well designed, efficient way to top up your phone when it’s running dry, and aside from the minor inevitable annoyance of having to remember to charge it up too, certainly worth the price of admission. Just remember that there are other form factor portable chargers out there - and smartphones with truly all day battery life too.
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