Charging our devices will always be an absolute necessity. Some of us end up needing to charge multiple devices at once. Me, personally, I have to keep track of charging my wireless headset, my Moto 360, my current review device, and my daily driver Nexus 6P. Instead of fiddling with multiple chargers around a multi-plug, why not use a multi-port charging dock? If you’re on the go and you can’t find an outlet, why not use a portable power bank?
What about when you’re in the car and you need a quick top-up of your battery? Most cheap car chargers on the market won’t do a very good job of that. That’s why you’ll need a high quality car charger capable of delivering a lot of power (say – using Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0) to your device. But when you buy a new charger, you’ll want to make sure it’s not only as fast as advertised but also safe to use. There are many charger/cable accessory vendors on the market, but today we’re here to showcase some of the ones from Aukey.
We’ll be reviewing 4 of Aukey’s current Qualcomm Quick Charge compatible charging products: one power bank, one 6 port charging dock, one car charger, and one wall charger. In addition, we will be giving you a chance to win one of these products through a giveaway. Aukey is providing XDA-Developers with 5 of each product (meaning, 20 products in total) to giveaway. If you aren’t one of the lucky few to win one of these products or you’ve entered to win one product but are also in the market for one of the other products listed, then you’ll be happy to know that Aukey has also provided some discount coupons that you can apply towards the purchase of one of their products. But first, here is my review of some of Aukey’s Qualcomm Quick Charge line-up.
Testing Parameters
To test the charging abilities on each of these devices, I used a custom Tasker script to retrieve the estimated amperage, voltage, and battery temperature as reported by Android every 10 minutes and recorded a representative range of charging values that I could then use to extrapolate the estimated time to fully charge. Android’s battery reporting is known to be a bit inaccurate at the highs and lows of the battery range, so I wanted to stick to values between 20-80% whenever possible. In addition, during each 10 minute interval I polled the amperage, voltage, and temperature 50 times to make an average for each measurement to avoid outliers.
I wanted to pull as much information as I could about the battery to test whether or not a device’s battery stays within safe operating parameters. Of course, since these values are pulled from Android’s estimates and not from actual electrical measuring hardware such as an ammeter or voltmeter, they won’t be 100% accurate but for our general testing purposes it works out just fine.
My testing device this time is the Nextbit Robin (2680mAh battery capacity) which uses Qualcomm Quick Charge 2.0 over a USB Type-C connection. I stuck with the original OEM Nextbit Robin cable to ensure that there were no issues with QC compatibility. Although the Nextbit Robin does not support QC 3.0, the technology is fully backwards compatible with Qualcomm Quick Charge 2.0 and does not offer charging speed improvements over QC 2.0 (rather, it offers variable voltage adjustment) so it should not significantly change the data. All of the data collected below was from each individual product’s Quick Charge port as it is the performance of that port that most of our readers would be most interested in.
Aukey 16,000mAh PowerAll QC 2.0 Power Bank
First up, we have the 16,000 mAh power bank with two ports: one Qualcomm Quick Charge 2.0 charging port (the orange-colored port) and the other a regular DC 5V output. The device uses a micro-USB input for charging and also comes with an LED that switches colors based on the status of the power bank and can act as a flashlight when long-pressing on the power button located on the back. I haven’t been able to accurately test the actual battery capacity of this power bank, but during my testing of this device I was able to fully charge a dead Nextbit Robin 5 times, with some juice left to spare. It’s not fair to estimate the mAh capacity of this external battery pack using the methods I’m using to test the power output, since I do not truly know the battery capacity of the Robin itself. Nevertheless, you should at least be getting a power bank with a capacity somewhere in the ballpark of 16,000 mAh.
Above, I have plotted the battery capacity, current, voltage, and the temperature of the Nextbit Robin versus time. From the data, I can extrapolate that it should take 78 minutes for the Power Bank to fully charge my Nextbit Robin (2,680 mAh) from 0 to 100%.
Aukey QC 3.0 Dual Port USB Car Charger
Extrapolating from this data, it would take 85 minutes to fully charge a Nextbit Robin. Not significantly slower than the power bank, but still plenty fast anyways. The speed of this charger should be more than capable of keeping up with the battery drainage from running a music stream + GPS navigation, which it did for me.
Aukey USB Turbo Wall Charger
With an estimated time of 77 minutes to fully charge the Nextbit Robin from 0 to 100%, you shouldn’t have any issues using this stand-alone wall charger to replace your OEM power brick in case you lose it.
Aukey 6 Port USB Charging Station
Finally, here are the results for the 6 Port USB Dock. It should take an estimated 82 minutes to fully charge a Nextbit Robin using one of the QC ports. Thankfully, you have multiple other ports you can use to charge multiple other devices at the same time. I’ve tested the charging speed with multiple other ports being occupied by different devices, and it doesn’t really affect each individual port in my experience.
Giveaway
Remember in the beginning when we said we had 20 products to giveaway? I know you’re probably salivating at the chance to win one of these four Qualcomm Quick Charge charging products that I reviewed today. As mentioned previously, we have 5 of each product reviewed above to giveaway. All you need to do is meet the following criteria, and then fill out a quick survey on Google Forms to mark your entry.
- The giveaway period will last between now and midnight (CST), September 18th, 2016. We do not have a set date/time that we will announce winners on, as it may take several attempts at contacting users before we get a final batch of 4 users we can forward to Aukey (we learned this the hard-way during the CHOETECH giveaway). However, we will update this article announcing the winners once we have them all.
- Must have an account on the XDA-Developers forums that is in good-standing and has existed prior to September 10th, 2016. Accounts made after this date will not be in consideration. Winners will be sent a private message and must respond within 48 hours. If you do not respond, we will move on and message another winner. Check your messages, don’t rely on receiving an e-mail or push notification!
- Must be a resident of, or have a valid shipping address within, the United States of America. We apologize to all of our international readers, but stay on the lookout for future giveaways from us!
- Must have a valid e-mail address that you can submit to Aukey to receive your shipping confirmation (don’t worry, we will only solicit these after we have determined if you are a winner).
If you meet all of the above criteria, then click the button below to enter!
Aukey Giveaway Entry FormDiscount Codes
Aukey has graciously provided us with some discount coupon codes that you can use to save a few bucks on the products reviewed above. So even if you don’t win one of the products from the giveaway, or are otherwise ineligible for entry, you can still snag one of these charging products.
- Aukey QC2.0 16000mAh Portable Charger $22.99 with code XDAUKEY6
- Aukey QC3.0 Car Charger $12.99 with code XDAUKEY3
- Aukey 6 Ports USB Charger $29.99 with code XDAUKEY4
- Aukey QC3.0 USB Wall Charger $8.49 with code XDAUKEY5
These codes can be used until 11:59 PM PDT on September 16th, 2016. Happy charging!
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