Mophie Juice Pack Powerstation Duo
The Mophie Juice Pack Powerstation Duo is a solid high-capacity portable battery that will add significant power to a variety of mobile devices, but you'll pay a premium for its high-end design.
In the realm of consumer electronics, you often pay a premium for design. The Mophie Juice Pack Powerstation Duo ($99.95 direct) portable battery is a prime example, as it offers clean and attractive design cues while carrying a steep price. Luckily, the Duo also performed admirably in our battery tests, making it a good choice for those who value form as well as function.
Mophie's Juice Pack line features some of the classiest looking batteries around, with rubberized black plastic bodies and metal accents throughout. The Duo is the largest, measuring 4.3 by 2.3 by 0.8 inches (HWD) and weighing 6.9 ounces. It's not as heavy as the , which weighs in at 12 ounces, but it's not exactly thin or light, either. The Duo, like the Iogear, is a bring-your-own-cords battery with two full-sized USB ports for charging two devices simultaneously and one micro USB port for charging up the battery itself. On the side is a single Battery Status button, which activates four LED indicator lights that are embedded into the black plastic top, but are otherwise invisible when not lit.
The Powerstation Duo's 6,000mAh battery is slightly smaller than the Iogear's 6,600mAh battery, but it actually turned in better performance numbers in our batter rundown test. It added 28 hours of 3G talk time to an Apple iPhone 4S and 2 hours, 11 minutes of video playback to a New Apple iPad with Wi-Fi on and screen brightness set to max. The Iogear added 20 hours, 48 minutes of 3G talk time to an iPhone 4S and 5 hours, 47 minutes of video playback to an iPad 2. The iPad 2 is less power hungry than the New iPad, which alone only lasted 5 hours, 33 minutes on our video playback test versus the 7 hours, 30 minutes of the iPad 2 alone.
The Mophie Juice Pack Powerstation Duo is undoubtedly one of the nicer looking and feeling portable batteries out there. The large capacity battery will add some serious battery life to USB powered devices. Unfortunately, the price is too high, especially when compared with the Iogear GearPower Mobile Power Station, which costs around $50 from most retailers.