The IT Nerd

This seems to be the year of the battery pack for me. I’ve reviewed a number of them this year, but this latest one is the most powerful one that I’ve had to date. Meet the Asus ZenPower:

Asus calls this is “no bigger than a credit card.” It fits the dimensions of a credit card with the exception of thickness, which makes their credit card analogy a bit flawed. But I see their point. It is small and it is pretty light at 215g. But it packs 10050 mAh. It comes with a MicroUSB to USB cable. You’ll need to supply a USB to AC adapter if you want to charge it from anything other than your computer’s USB port. It has an aluminum outer casing and has a smooth finish. It also is available in five colors.

It has a Micro USB port for charging the ZenPower and a USB port to plug your device into with the cable of your choosing. You’ll note that there are four lights of which only one is on. Each light represents 25% of the total charge that the ZenPower has. You also get a button to start the charging process and check on the current state of charge. You can also start the charging process by plugging in an USB cable.

The question is, how much power can the ZenPower provide? To find out, I charged it for 6 hours and did this test to find out how far it would go:

• I took my iPhone 6 that had a 36% charge and charged it until it was full. There were 3 dots on the ZenPower which meant that it had 75% or less of a charge.
• Next, I took my iPhone 6 that had a 78% charge and charged it until it was full. There were 3 dots on the ZenPower which meant that it had 75% or less of a charge.
• From there, I took my iPhone 6 that had a 78% charge and charged it until it was full. There were 3 dots on the ZenPower which meant that it had 75% or less of a charge.
• Next up was my iPhone 6 that had a 57% charge and charged it until it was full. There were 2 dots on the ZenPower which meant that it had 50% or less of a charge.
• Then I took my iPhone 6 that had a 90% charge and charged it until it was full. There were 2 dots on the ZenPower which meant that it had 50% or less of a charge.
• Now I drained my iPhone 6 which was at 20% and charged it until it was full. There was 1 dot on the ZenPower which meant that it had 25% or less of a charge.
• From there I took my iPhone 6 that had a 78% charge and charged it until it was full.  There was 1 dot on the ZenPower which meant that it had 25% or less of a charge.
• Next up. I topped off my iPhone 6 from a 95% charge to a full charge and it still had 1 dot left.
• At this point, I was wondering what would finally drain it. So I took my iPhone 6 with an 85% charge and after fully charging it, the ZenPower still had 1 dot left. But at this point, the dot was blinking quickly. That implied that it had very little charge left.
• What finally drained the ZenPower was taking my iPhone 6 with a 80% charge and taking it up to 96% before the ZenPower ran out of juice.

That’s a lot of charging capacity. And it’s fast too as it took about a couple of hours to charge my iPhone from 20% of a charge. That makes the ZenPower perfect for people who are going to be away from an AC outlet for an extended period of time, but who need all the power that they can get to recharge all their devices. Expect to pay about $60 USD $30 CDN for one. And based on these results, it will be money well spent.

This entry was posted on October 27, 2015 at 8:15 am and is filed under Products with tags Asus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.