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In-Depth Review
Mophie Juice Pack
Thursday, May 8th, 2008 at 1:00 AM - by Bob LeVitus
According to Mophie, the Juice Pack iPhone battery extender provides an additional 250 hours of standby time, 8 hours of talk time, 6 hours of internet use, 7 hours of video playback, and/or 24 hours of audio playback. After using this puppy for close to a month, I can't confirm that those numbers are 100% accurate, but my gut feeling is that they're not far off the mark. Before I started using the Juice Pack I had to recharge my iPhone every single night, and even then it occasionally ran out of "juice" before dinnertime or not long after. Now, with a fully-charged Mophie Juice Pack, I've gone as long as three days between recharges! That rocks.
The Juice Pack is beautifully designed and fits your iPhone like a glove as shown:
It's really quite attractive, as you can see from the picture above and three views below:
The blue LED lights on the back let you know how much "juice" is left in the Juice Pack and it's intelligent about how it uses its "juice." It will exhaust itself first, so when it's empty you can pull out your fully-charged iPhone and continue using it for another few hours. Sweet! And, you can recharge your iPhone and the Juice Pack with a single cable.
The Juice Pack is a fantastic product and I love it to death. Even so it has a couple of features I don't like so much....
The first is minor -- although the Juice Pack has a standard 30-pin dock connector and you can recharge it using any cable or dock you can use to charge your iPhone, you can't sync your iPhone without removing it from the Juice Pack. You have to remove your iPhone from the Juice Pack and plug the cable into it when you want to sync. It's not a huge deal but I thought it was worth mentioning.
The second issue, however, is more disturbing... The Juice Pack is coated with a nice "soft-touch non-slip finish." It feels and looks great. Unfortunately, it's not very durable and has begun to peel off both of the Juice Packs I tested. I thought I might have received a defective unit so I requested a second one, but the same thing happened after a couple of weeks.
Here's what my Juice Pack looks like after about 30 days of use:
And here are both units side-by-side:
As you can see, it's not very attractive. And although it doesn't affect the Juice Pack's functionality, it is unfortunate in such an otherwise handsome product.
Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't say that the Juice Pack definitely adds some bulk to your iPhone. That said, I have had no problem carrying it around in my pants, shirt, or jacket pocket. It's slightly bigger, heavier, and thicker, but not enough to bother me most of the time.
The Bottom Line
The Juice Pack lets you use your iPhone 2 or 3 times longer between recharges, adds relatively little bulk to your iPhone, and is intelligent about the way it uses "juice." If it weren't for the issue of the coating peeling off it would be a five-star product for sure.
Just The Facts
Pros:Doubles or triples time between recharges, adds relatively little size and weight, drains itself first leaving you with a fully-charged iPhone when it's empty.
Cons:Rubberized coating may peel off.
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