Style is something this RavPower Exclusives power bank certainly has. Encased in a one-piece solid metal jacket with chamfered edges and a high-gloss jet black connections panel at one end it looks a cut above many of the plastic power banks we review. There are no sharp corners or rough edges in sight, leading the RavPower to look and feel not only tough and durable but professional, too. Also see: How to charge your phone’s battery faster. This is a high-capacity power bank, so its 422g weight comes as no surprise. That it’s weighty is not neccessarily a bad thing and, if anything, adds to the feeling of the RavPower being a premium, substantial device. You might not want to carry it in a pocket, but you won’t be concerned about leaving it on display. And since you likely don’t have an actual Porsche for transporting it, RavPower supplies a soft carry case for getting it from A- to B. At one end you’ll find two full-size USB outputs and a power button, and a slightly different take on the standard four-LED capacity indicator with a stylish row of dashes rather than dots. We would have liked to have seen an LCD on this device, particularly at this price, but given that Porsche is one of the few luxury car companies that doesn’t make use of head-up displays simple information panels are perhaps not its forte. To be fair to the RavPower, LCDs are not the norm for power banks, even if we would like them to be. Also see: How to improve smartphone battery life. So the RavPower Exclusives Power Bank performs well on style, and pleasingly isn’t overly extravagant in pricing. But in raw performance it is more of a pace-setter than a champion, sufficiently fast and able to keep going long enough to outperform many of its weaker rivals, yet at the same time lacking the grunt necessary to take home the trophy. Also see: Best MiFi 2017. At a time when we’ll soon be expecting to see power banks appearing with support for Quick Charge 4.0, the RavPower Exclusives doesn’t support Quick Charge 3.0… or 2.0, or 1.0. The max output of either of the USB ports is 2.4A (12W), which is still very fast if your phone or tablet can accommodate it, but it’s not the fastest you can find. We are, however, pleased to find that both outputs can be supported at full-speed when required, although iSmart technology means they will output the optimum amount to safely and quickly charge the connected device. The Micro-USB input is rated at 2A (10W), which is in line with many power banks on the market, but at the same time it’s not as fast as the many 3A USB-C-input power banks you can buy. And at this capacity, how quickly you can refill the device is important. Fortunately the RavPower supports passthrough charging, which means you can charge both it and a connected device at once. Speaking of capacity, then, the RavPower is advertised at 20,100mAh. With an efficiency rating of around 70 percent you should see a little over 14,000mAh available to your devices. The company says you’ll charge an iPhone 7 seven times, an iPad mini three times or a Galaxy S7 4.7 times. If you have a different device you can work out how many times the RavPower will refill its battery if you know its battery capacity – simply divide 14,000 by that number. Read next: Best desktop chargers Marie is Editor in Chief of Tech Advisor and Macworld. A Journalism graduate from the London College of Printing, she’s worked in tech media for more than 17 years, managing our English language, French and Spanish consumer editorial teams and leading on content strategy through Foundry’s transition from print, to digital, to online - and beyond.
