In this post I will review the Mophie Powerstation XL External Battery, it can be found here (affiliate link).
Why We Needed It
We have talked several times in the past about how important it is to have an external battery for your phone while you are traveling. With so much of what we do during travel involving our iPhones, we just can’t afford to have them dead while we are out and about. Without our phones we would not have a camera, GPS, travel apps, boarding passes, audio guides, etc.
We have been using a couple little external batteries that we got randomly since we started travel blogging. But when we were preparing for our recent trip to Disneyland I knew we would probably need something more robust. Disneyland is notorious for killing phone batteries and I was planning on playing Pokemon Go while we were there. Add on top of that frequent use of the Disneyland app and lots of picture taking, and you know the batteries were going to be dying super fast.
Review
That is when I found the Mophie Powerstation XL external battery, and it has been absolutely amazing.
The Mophie Powerstation XL is extremely compact for the amount of power that it carries. It is about the size of two iPhone 4s stacked on top of each other. So it can’t fit in my jeans pockets very comfortably, but it fits well in a purse, backpack, or cargo shorts.
Using two iPhone 6s we can get about eight charge ups out of the Mophie Powerstation XL. I haven’t done any scientific testing, so I can’t say for sure. We also often charge other devices (smartwatches, iPads, Kindles, etc.) off the external battery.
The external battery has three ports. The middle port is a micro USB to charge it up. There are regular USB plugs on either side to charge your devices. This means that you can charge two devices at once, as long as you have two cords that is and your devices charge through USB cables.
There is only one button on the Mophie Powerstation XL. It is used to check the remaining battery power. When you press it four small LEDs on the front will light up indicating how much power you have left. Four lights means you are full or nearly full, while one light means you should recharge the external battery soon.
The Mophie Powerstation XL worked like a charm for us in Disneyland. As I predicted my phone especially was often running low on power but I would just plug it in to the battery pack and charge it right up. We never came close to running out of juice in the external battery. Since our trip to California we have used the battery pack on several other outings and trips and it has always worked well.
Sum Up
This is a great battery pack. The only drawback is that it is a little big to put in a pocket. But it gives you a lot of power for that size. At just $40 this refurbished deal on Amazon is really a steal for this battery. Normally from Mophie they coste $130. I would recommend taking advantage of this and getting a little peace of mind that you won’t lose the essential travel functions of your phone partway through a trip.
