GADGETS | Out and About With The Griffin Reserve 18,200 mAh Power Bank

What is it?

Griffin Reserve Power Bank 18,200 mAh
Aailable in Black or Grey
£42 Buy it here

Technical details

• Two USB ports: max-rate charge port -12 watts of power (5 volts at 2.4 amps); standard-rate charge port – 5 watts of power (5 volts at 1 amp)
• Recharge from any wall charger, car charger or laptop with the include micro-USB charge cable
• LED charge gauge
• Smartphone – Up to 7.3 charges
• Smartwatch – Up to 55 charges
• Large Tablet – Up to 2.5 extra charges

What I thought

Use of the power bank did not get off to the best of starts it has to be said! The packaging states that the unit comes charged, but it didn’t, and it took nearly a day to fully charge, but once it was we were off!

I am a pretty heavy phone user, and need to recharge at least once in the day, and so I wanted to see how long it would keep me going for, without using anything else. The Griffin Reserve Power Bank looks like it means business, with a solid, simple design (no instructions included, and none needed).  Most importantly I was immediately impressed by how fast it charged up my phone, and how long it lasted – it kept my phone going for five days, and I was deliberately hammering it on usage.

It is bigger and heavier than I had realised, I don’t usually carry much with me when I’m out and about though – If it was with hiking or camping kit in a rucksack you probably wouldn’t notice, but if weight is an issue and you’re out hiking, it might be better left at base-camp than carried with you.

I decided to time the recharge time once I had totally run it down, and it too just over 9 hours to fully charge – this is going to be par for the course as there is a lot of battery to recharge, but it is worth bearing in mind, and charging it needs planning in advance, rather than a quick hour burst before you run out of the door.

If you’re out and about and on the go, one of the smaller Griffin Power Bank models might be more suitable for you.

The verdict

The charger was very impressive in terms of the sheer amount of charge in it and in how quickly it charges devices, but it is heavy and quite bulky – which is unavoidable as the charge has to have physical storage space.

We will be giving it another test run with two phones and two iPad to charge for a long weekend in August where the usage will be lower, and we can leave it in the tent during the day – and for camping I think this would be perfect.

Instinctively I feel that if I was doing serious walking, and was space limited, I might be tempted by taking a couple of smaller charge banks which would more easily fit into side pockets, that you could charge in parallel, but that may be false economy.

It is an impressive piece of kit, and at £43 it is good value for money too as well as being easy to use and it delivers what is promises.  I will certainly use it again and again.