External Power Supply Recommendations

[Chew]

Planning a bit of a road based tour soon, so looking into options around being able to charge up my ipod while on the road (a bit of motivational music to ease out the boring miles).

I’m planning on stopping somewhere civilized every 3-4 days so I’ll be able to recharge then, so not really looking at solar options.

Any recommendations?

[greenmug]

I went through several different options when I was heavily using iphones for work (which involved days away). After trying several fancy options I found that you can get external iphone batteries on ebay for £5. These plug into the ipod/phone and the normal charging takes place as if on mains. Some charge in parallel (power in the base, output into the ipod). So for the weight of about two AA batteries you can have guaranteed power for the between-charging-opportunities.

Even the cheap ones gave me 50-60% iphone charge from a full battery charge.

I can send you one if you like to test. It works with the iphone 4 large style connector. I don't have the iphone now so it is spare.

[Lughnasadh]

I recently got one of these;

http://www.amazon.co.uk/15000mAh-Portab ... nker+astro

Really good. Will charge my Galaxy S3 around 6 times from flat to full and does it pretty quickly in about 80 minutes. I would imagine the battery on an ipod is a fair bit smaller than that on a smart phone so you might get a fair few more charges than 6 from it.
Can also charge 2 things at once (a 2A and a 1A).

It will take around 7 hours to charge it from empty to full using a 2A USB wall charger though.

[mountainbaker]

+1 to the Anker charge packs, I have the 13000mAh version, it's great. Also has 2 usb ports, one 1Amp and one 2Amp (which the Garmin 800 likes better). I've used it on multi day rides to charge phone, garmin, and even my Exposure Toro once.

[Taylor]

I've an Anker, 10000 mAh which will fully charge an iPhone 5 around 5-6 times.
It was about £25-26 from amazon.
Diablo charged off it too.

[johnnystorm]

I had some iphone specific ones but three things let them down for me:

1) iphone only, no charging garmins, etc
2) Not many charging cycles until they started to lose capacity
3) placed a big lever on the charger port compared to a cable. At best it meant they regularly got levered out in my bag & made the phone half as long again. At worst I worried about damaging the port.

Those Ankers look good and the PowerBank from 7dayshop for £10 mentioned on here looks excellent and comes with a 3 way lead that covers micro/mini usb & apple 30 pin.

[danielgroves]

I'd vouch for an Anker on too. Got one ready for this summers adventures, but I've used it a few times recently (including last night). Seems pretty good, think I got 5/6 full iPhone charges from mine when I tested it but can't remember if I went for the 13k or 15k mah now.