Have you ever needed to give your cell phone a little bit of juice to get through a call? Were you near a socket when you needed to do it? If not, then you might wish that you had carried the USB AAA Battery Charger with Torch from USB Fever with you. It’s now become something I never leave home without.
The charger holds 4 AAA NiMH batteries and is very compact. It will fit in your khaki pocket, purse or gear bag very easily.
The charger comes with a cable that has 2 USB A connectors on each end; just connect the cable to the charger and the other end of the cable into a powered USB Port. Charge time from the USB port is around 2 and half hours. That seems like a long time, but isn’t bad. But if time is of the essence, then you might want to get a quick charger to keep at home for faster charging. This charger can power 2 or 4 batteries so if you just want to use it just to charge batteries, then that’s possible.
If that’s all it would do, then it would still be handy. You can flip the switch from Charge to Use and plug in any device that will charge off of a USB port. Devices I have charged have been my LG enV, a Nintendo DS Lite, a iPod Nano, a Insignia Pilot and my Insignia Bluetooth Headphones. The USB AAA Charger will charge anything that can charge from a USB port. I was able to fully charge my iPod and still have plenty of battery left to charge other things or to use the next feature.
If all it did was charge batteries and then use the batteries to charge many different devices, how much would you pay? How much would you pay if it was also a LED flashlight? The torch in the name is a LED flashlight. The LED is on the opposite side of the USB port and is very bright. It’s nice to have a small flashlight in your bag, you never know when you’ll need one!
The USB AAA Battery Charger with Torch is such a versatile device that it has earned a permanent spot in my gear bag.
It is available from USB Fever.
MSRP: $14.99. Mobile phone or game connector tips are $3.00 each and retractable iPod cables and other USB cables that work with the charger are $4.00.
What I like: It is very portable and takes almost no space up in the gear bag.
What needs improvement: I dislike all of the little bits. It would be nice to have a small case come with it to hold the different adapters and cables. For now, I store it in a Ziploc bag.