TechLife Australia

Cygnett ChargedUp Pro

ALL THE ON-THE-GO JUICE YOUR GEAR COULD POSSIBLY NEED.

- [ DAN GARDINER ]

THIS BEEFY 20,000MAh power bank from Cygnett is pitched at tech enthusiast­s who need lots of juice while out and about. While it’ll technicall­y fit in a small shoulder- or handbag, its biggish footprint and 450g carry weight means it’ll make its presence known wherever it goes.

Still, it does deliver when it comes to performanc­e. With Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 support, it can juice-up most Android smartphone­s at top speed — with our Samsung Galaxy S9+, it matched our wallcharge­r’s speed, going from 10% battery to full in around 90 minutes. We squeezed five full recharges (plus around 15%) of our S9+ test unit (which has a 3,500mAh battery) out of the Cygnett before it was drained, and it also managed 4.5 refills on a Nintendo Switch console.

Design-wise, there’s not much to it — a matte-rubber finish on the outside makes it feel good in the hand and it’s not as ‘sticky’ as most silicon cases, so it’s easy to slip in and out of a bag. There’s a discrete bank of five LEDs (four blue, one green) in that black band that wraps around the top — which indicate remaining charge — and three upward facing USB ports, two of which are USB-As (one for up to 12V/1.5A fast-charging and the other for up to 5V/3A regular-speed), plus a USB-C, which is used for recharging the bank itself or providing up to 20V/2.25A (45W) of power for more demanding devices like portable laptops. All three of those ports can be used simultaneo­usly.

Using that latter USB-C port to power a 13-inch MacBook Pro at full screen brightness, we managed to get an impressive 4:30hr runtime — a great result that’s around 60% of the 6–7 hour running time we get from the internal battery. It’s worth noting that you need to use that USB-C port to power laptops — using USB-A, our MacBook refused to draw further power from the ChargeUp at about 40%. At that battery level, the Cygnett doesn’t seem to be able to output the higher voltage needed to keep a running laptop happy.

The only thing we don’t like about the ChargeUp is how much time it takes to recharge that 20,000mAh battery. Using the S9+ charger, that took just under 10 hours — although that was cut to just under 4 hours with a higher-powered MacBook charger.

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