Zebronics Power Grid Portable Charger Review: Second Life to your device’s battery

Smartphones have become an inseparable part of our life. They’ve gone beyond their basic usage of calling and messaging to become an ultimate convergence device used for capturing images, listening music, watching movies, browsing web, and much more. However, all of these functionalities come at a huge cost- cost of miserable battery life in our mobile phones. In fact, if it lasts even a single day of charge, many of us are ecstatic. However, in most of the cases, the mobile phone is put on charge as soon as we reach back home from office or vice versa. But, this is simply not possible when we’re travelling and what can be more frustrating then seeing your phone’s battery dying down just before that important call? Enter portable chargers. These tiny boxes can give some extra juice to the phone’s battery and ensure that it doesn’t die down halfway. We got a chance to test the Zebronics Power Grid line of portable chargers, namely ZEB-PG2400 and ZEB-PG7200 and here’s our thoughts-

Inside the Box

Both the PG2400 and PG7200 boxes contain the following items-

• Power Grid
• USB charging adapter
• USB charging cable
• Micro USB pin
• Mini USB pin

Specifications

Parameters	ZEB-PG2400	ZEB-PG7200
Capacity	2400 mAh	7200 mAh
Input Current	500 mA	500 mA
Input Voltage	5V	5V
Output Current	1000 mA	1000 mA/ 2100 mA
Power Rating	8.88 Wh	26.6 Wh
Battery Life	500 cycles	500 cycles

Design and Build Quality

ZEB-PG2400

The PG2400 charger is a compact candy bar shaped charger in a beautiful white color. Its compactness makes it very light weight and well suited to be kept in pocket or tucked away in bag easily. Talking about various buttons and ports, it can be said as a perfect example of minimalism as four out of six sides are completely bereft of any functional elements, apart from logo and branding. The top side has a row of LED’s in an arc shape and a power on/ off button beneath. The bottom side has a micro USB port and a full size USB port, along with a mysterious looking light.

ZEB-PG7200

In comparison to its sibling, the PG7200 is having a boxlike form which is also available in white color. However, it has considerable weight and though it may be kept in pocket, it’s better suited for a bag. Similar to the PG2400, most of its sides are free of any buttons or ports, except the front and back having the logo and specifications. The front side also has arc of LED’s and a power on/ off button. Instead of just single USB port, the base of this portable charger has two USB ports and a micro USB port.

How it works?

The charging level of the portable charger is indicated via the LED lights. The red light is always glowing to show that the device is charging, whereas the blue LED light show the charging percentage. Each light show charging percentage of 20%, which means if three lights are glowing, then the charger has 60% battery. Now the first step is to charge the portable chargers with the help of provided USB cable and the charger. The same USB cable used for charging the portable charger itself can be used to charge most of the Android smartphones as they’ve micro USB port. Company also offers mini USB pin, so the devices using this port can also be charged. Although, the review started with the need to charge the mobile phones, as obvious from the use of standard USB ports, the Power Grids can charge just about anything. This can range from mobile phones to MP3/ MP4 players, tablets and much more. Apple devices can also be charged, but since they’ve Lightning port, one will need a compatible cable. Remember the mysterious light we talked about in the PG2400, that’s a small LED torch which lights up when the power button is pressed for few seconds. We’re not sure how handy this small light can be, but never mind knowing that it’s there might help sometimes in emergency situation. The bigger sibling, PG7200 has two USB ports and its important to understand whether they’re different or not. It’s true that both these USB ports can be used to charge any device(s) or even two devices simultaneously, they’ve different output current of 1 A and 2.1 A. So, depending upon the current requirement of your device, it should be charged with the respective USB port. One can also charge two devices simultaneously with this portable charger. One can also press the power on/ off button to check the battery level, which as mentioned earlier is represented by the LED lights. The charger will go into standby mode automatically after few seconds.

Usage

The PG2400 takes around 6 hours to charge, but once it’s charged it was able to charge almost 70% my of smartphone with battery capacity of 2000 mAh in approximately 2.5 hours. But, afterwards the battery of the Power Grid was completely spent and died off. Taking into account of 2400 mAh capacity, it was pretty good. In contrast, the PG 7200 took more than 6 hours to charge itself. However, once it was charged, it fully charged my 2000 mAh smartphone with almost no charge in about 3 hours. Surprisingly the Power Grid ran out of juice after this charging, and I expected more from it considering its massive capacity.

Verdict

The PG-2400 is priced economically at Rs. 1200 and PG-7200 will cost approx.  Rs. 2000. Add one of these to your next purchase, if you’re an avid user of smartphone or own multiple devices. For frequent travellers, the portable charger will save the trouble of managing multiple chargers, since it unifies all of them (if they have compatible charging cables). Though, they should not be regarded as replacement for a regular charger as OEM’s charger is specifically made for the device and hence can charge it efficiently. The Good: Compact Design, Value for Money The Bad: Able to charge phone’s battery only once even after full charge in the Power Grid