Powering up your festival experience
| Pros | Cons |
| Thin Great I/O Selection Supports fast charging for larger devices | On the heavier side Cables are a little bulky Cables could attract the wrong kind of attention. |
The sun is out, beer is flowing and music is loud that can mean only one thing, it’s festival season and like it or not technology and particularly our phones have become a massive part of the festival experience from being your tickets, personal planner for setlists and even your way of capturing special moments and keeping in contact with your friends you are sure you left just there in the crowd!
No matter how good your phone’s battery is with any amount of light use it will inevitably die leaving you high and dry. There are a ton of options when it comes to keeping topped up at festivals and I went away bringing a range of battery packs to test out just how much battery is enough and what is the best for you. So I packed the essentials, tent, beer, food and of course, battery packs and took to the donington park race track for the 4-day rock music extravaganza ‘Download 20’.
Charge Candy
While at festivals you have no doubt seen the ‘Charge Candy’ stalls scattered about, on paper this is a great idea for those here for the day or travelling light, for £30 you get a fully topped-up charger you can use throughout the day and when it dies you can exchange it once for free. cool right? well no, not really. at just 5,000Mah these packs will realistically give you just over 1 charge and in practice I saw many people at download and complaining online the pack simply didn’t last or was handed out half charged and thats problematic, to say the least. for £30 you can absolutely get bigger and more capable packs but at a pinch £30 for 2 full charges may be enough for you!
Is bigger really better
Like everything in life battery packs come in a range of sizes big and small, though it’s worth airing on the side of caution when buying, particularly from third-party marketplaces such as TEMU, WISH and even Amazon, some battery packs will claim 30,000mah+ (milliamp hours) of juice and to the untrained eye this may sound like a great deal but alas 9 times out of 10 these values are greatly exaggerated. To be on the safe side I would recommend name brands such as ANKER or going with a pack that claims around 20,000 Mah of power in the £80 to £100 range. this will give you enough juice to charge an iPhone 13 pro around 5 times.
You can, of course, go even bigger still by buying something like a power station, these are normally in the hundreds of pounds but offer a much greater amount of power as well as outputs so if you are someone who simply can’t live without your straighteners I would firstly question your life choice and secondly look at something like the ANKER 535, that will not only charge your phone a whopping 20+ times but also allows for standard appliances such as straighteners to be plugged in too, though of course you will be paying a pretty penny for the privilege and these sorts of units are far from light.
Statik Ultimate charger
My choice for the festival however was the Statik Unlimate charger, for just shy of $100 you get a 20,000Mah battery pack with a few key tricks and advantages up its sleeve.
Let’s start off with size, this little charger is thin, how thin? Well, coming in at 14.4mm it’s actually thinner than the latest models of MacBook Pro! now that’s impressive in its own right and I found came in handy while travelling as it didn’t add a ton of bulk to my bag and was thin enough to slide into a man bag pocket for use around the festival ground.
More impressive still is the power delivery system and the I/O usually with battery packs, particularly those found on festival grounds and cheaper online will trickle charge your devices meaning you leave them for hours at a time while you impatiently wait for the rechange, that’s not the case here though with 65w fast charging from a single port, juicing up your phone watch or even your laptop in a matter of minutes rather than hours, of course, though the more devices you charge (you can change upto 3 at a time) the less power draw you get from each port with a maximum of 15w per port though my wife and I found this plenty while charging up overnight. In terms of I/O you get 2 USB A ports and a USB C for outputting charge to a device and for when your pack needs charging you can use either that USB C input or even the included Lighting port meaning you will really only need 1 cable no matter your device and I found this to be invaluable especially when trying to travel light around a festival ground.
The all-metal body has a nice finish to it as well making it look and feel sleek however it is on the heavier side coming in just shy of half a kilogram, in the grand scheme of things for a 20,000 Mah pack that’s pretty standard however it can feel a little heavy and cumbersome at times. One other major gripe I had with the Statik was simply not knowing the charge level, sure there is a 5 led array on the top of the device to give you a rough indication however I would much prefer to see an exact percentage level here and even an output wattage as this is becoming more and more common on higher-end packs such as this one.
Did it last the weekend?
Much like myself, the battery pack was truly put through its paces over the course of the weekend, charging an iPhone 13 Pro, Apple Watch and iPhone 12 a whopping 2 and a bit times each before dying, this was enough to get us through 3 of the 4 days at the festival grounds and this felt like more than an acceptable amount as most festivals will only last 2-3 days anyways. This is certainly a battery I can recommend to anyone needing to keep juiced up at a festival or just on the go with its great I/O and focus on thin and portable form factors there is very little like it on the market right now.
Charging in style
Alongside power banks Statik also sell LED Charge cables they call ‘Globright’ cables and of course being a festival these felt like the perfect companion.
Each cable comes in either Red, Green or Blue, its a shame they didn’t have a rainbow effect cable but its understandable why this wasn’t an option. alongside the lighting effects through this cable has a bigger and more efficient trick up its sleeve and that is magnetic charging. alongside your cable in the bag you will receive 3 charging ports, lighting, USB C and of course, Micro USB just plugging in the end of the charger into your port is simple and holding the cable near by will of course mean you get a secure charging connection quickly and painlessly.
Why is this useful though? Well it means less bulk, if you have multiple devices that all use different connectors like I do having to fumble around with 3 or 4 separate cables that all become tangled together can be an absolute nightmare so just being able to carry 1 cable that can charge them all along with the ability to quickly change devices receiving charge is genuinely a life saver.
I mean sure the LED lights are a little tacky but are certainly a head turner on the festival ground with the LED’s pulsing down the cable towards the device as if to simulate the energy moving through the cable, its an effect that really has to be seen to be understood, the only true downside I see to these cables are in order to get the LED effect the cable needs a large port on the USB A end which can feel and look a little bulky and could easily get caught on something. secondly the effect does turn heads but this can also be a bad thing, it almost advertises to suspecting criminals that your phone is charging and can easily be swiped especially due to that magnetic connector so just be especially vigilant when out in public with these cables.
All product links directing off-site will be affiliate links when possible and where applicable, and may result in commission earned on qualifying purchases. Find out more about our promise to you.
