Powertraveller PowerMonkey > Reviews > Never leave home without it

Author's product rating:   

Reliability	Good
Quality	Good
Value for Money	Good

Advantages:	Light, compact, doesn't leak, value for money, handy
Disadvantages:	Easily switched on & drained

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Have you ever experienced this? Your miles from home & attempting to make an important telephone call with your mobile phone & the battery goes flat leaving you totally stuck.
Or you are trying to get a particular photograph of something very special & just when you get the opportunity, the batteries in the camera let you down & you lose your one & only chance of a picture.

It's annoying & frustrating & happened to me on a few occasions, if you are familiar with that situation & then consider a power monkey.

I travel a lot for my job and when the funds allow, for pleasure. I carry with me most of the time a mobile phone, a battery operated Bluetooth ear piece device, pocket PC & when on holiday a camera. If my partner is with me, she too has a mobile phone, MP3 player & a camera that she often carries along.
Carrying battery chargers for those items would be impractical & take up all my luggage space. Instead I carry one simple power monkey.

A power monkey is a small oval shaped device that holds about one hours charge up to one year & that charge can be transferred to most small devices when you need it. Officially it is an external charger of 2200 mAh.
The RRP is £34.99, I paid £17.99 from Amazon but the most expensive I saw was at Belfast airport at £39.99!

It is about 9cm long & around 3.5cm at it's widest point, it weighs just 100g. At one end is a small wire with a simple connection at the end of it, the other end has a socket to allow the device to be charged from a wall socket. There are two warning lamps, one in red & one in green & a simple on/off switch.
When you first purchase it you need to charge it up, a power monkey is no use to you if it hasn't got a charge, it's like a having a pen without ink or a pencil without lead.

The plug that fits into a wall socket has interchangeable ends so it can be used in USA/Canada/Europe/UK/Asia without an adaptor. However, should you decide to travel to Outer Mongolia for some nature rambling, I would suggest taking a travel adaptor just in case!

Whilst charging the red light is lit & once you have sufficient power the green light comes on instead. The first charge takes about an hour but if you leave it on by accident & drain it completely it can take up to three hours to fully charge.
The other end of the power monkey has a permanent connection which can fit many other adaptors depending on what device you have. They device is supplied with:

1 x mini USB connection to fit many new phones & pocket PCs from Samsung & HP to name just two.
1 x connection for ipods.
1 x USB female connector for Sony MP3 players.
1 x connection for Motorola devices.
1 x connection fixed to the wire for older Nokia phones.
1 x smaller connection for later Nokia phones.
1 x connection for Sony Ericsson devices.
1 x connection to fit Tom Tom sat navs.
1 x USB connection with retraceable lead for USB powered devices.
1 x connection for Panasonic devices.

Some of these connections will fit many other products but you need to check out their web site for a full list www.powermonkey.co.uk
I needed to purchase an additional connector for a Sony camera, from their web site it was only £2.65 & for a reasonable postal charge, it was delivered within 24 hours.

Power monkey comes with a small cloth bag with drawstring to house the device plus a handful of connectors. It fits into a pocket, handbag, rucksack or car glove box without too much problems. It is easy to switch it on by accident & drain it completely if something comes in contact with the on/off switch. What use is a flat monkey?

So how does it work? If your device goes flat, plug in the appropriate connection into the device & plug that into the power monkey. Switch on the monkey & it will start charging your phone/camera/MP3 etc. In an emergency it will immediately allow you to continue using a mobile phone.
It becomes a truly indispensable little device that you won't want to leave home without. It doesn't have enough power to charge up a lap top /notebook or even a portable DVD player but it is quite capable of charging up a portable games device.

Any drawbacks? Three minor ones, the small Nokia connection for the later model phones doesn't make a particular good connection into the phone. On one occasion I used it to charge up a Tom Tom device which it did, but it wiped off my favourite listings, luckily it was backed up but it was still a nuisance.
The other problem is when you go through baggage security at the airport, the people who study the 'X' ray machines always ask to have my bag checked. You can understand why when they see a little oval shaped object with a wire dangling from it!

I would recommend this little charger especially if you travel from home quite a lot.