Testing and Usage

Before you use the Ravpower external battery you need to charge it and that’s done with the included cables and the microUSB tip. Charging takes a while as it is a big battery, but the charge time will depend on how much battery is used.

 

To check the power levels you just press the button lightly and the bar lights up in segments, four of them to indicate 25% each. The 1400mAh battery will be able to charge most phones seven or eight times before it needs charged again. As far tablets, it all depend on the tablet itself, something like the iPad can be charged three or four times, but how many charges you’ll get all depends on how much battery is left on the devices your charging.

 

To turn on the LED flashlight you need to long press the button and it comes on, same thing to turn it off. The LED is fairly bright and would be great for emergencies.  To be honest the first thing I thought of when I saw the light was ‘why don’t all external power supplies have these on them?’. The second thing I thought of was ‘this would be great for camping or hiking, but camping especially as you’ll need the power and the light will very much come in handy surely’.

 

To test the Ravpower I charged a few things I had on hand. The first thing was my HTC One and I used the included microUSB adapter, charging was just like charging over regular USB, same amount of time. The Ravpower does have an automatic shut off so when your device is done charging it shuts off and stops charging.

 

 

The Ravpower also includes tips for Apple and Samsung and they are virtually identical and sadly they aren’t labeled so I had to try them to see which would fit my iPod Touch. I found the right one and plugged it in and it started charging with no issues.

 

 

Portable gaming is popular and I decided to see if the Ravpower could charge my PS Vita and to my amazement it could, of course I had to use the Vita cable but it worked fine. Other batteries I own and have reviewed could not charge it, I believe this is only the second out of many that could charge it. That’s one of the great things about the Ravpower, it has standard USB ports so you can charge anything with a USB connection as long as you have the cable.

 

 

The last thing I tried was my Le Pan TC970 Android tablet and I found I had to use the second 2A USB port for the tablet, but it worked and my tablet started charging when I plugged it in.

 

 

The last thing I did to test the Ravpower was to charge two devices at the same time, and it works just fine. Charging two at one time will run the battery down faster, but that’s to be expected.

 

Back in May I reviewed another large battery, the EagleTech Neptor which is 10,000mAh in capacity so I thought a quick comparison of them would be in order. They are about the same size even though one is a larger battery. An odd thing I found was that the Neptor could not charge my PS Vita like the Ravpower could. The Neptor doesn’t have a light built-in either. The main comparison I wanted to make was the size versus capacity and well as you can see they are very similar in the pictures below.

 

  

 

So that’s it, I’ve tested it and I’ve used it and I will continue to use it as I like it and I find it to be very useful in this day and age where everything is battery powered.