Momax XC Dual USB Mains Charger Review
If you’re an iPhone 5 owner who isn’t swimming in cash, you’ve probably very quickly realised that lightning charging cables and docks aren’t exactly as easy to come across as their 30-pin cousins.
As an iPhone owner since the 3Gs, and now holding fast on the 4, I love the near ubiquity of the 30-pin dock connector and take for granted the fact I can charge my phone practically anywhere. In the office I have no less than three 30-pin connectors on my desk, and at least another one elsewhere. At home I have docks, cables, universal adaptors and all manner of 30-pin connector endowed gubbins capable of charging an iPhone.
What I lack, however, due to not owning either an iPhone 5 or an iPad mini is a lightning connector. I don’t have a single one to my name, and that means when a friend pops over and needs to juice up their iPhone 5… they’ve got to carry their own iPhone 5 Chargers.
Our very own Johnus Maximus paid a visit not so long ago and left his iPhone 5 charger. No big deal I thought, he’ll just use another one, they’re everywhere! How wrong I was!
Anyway. I decided my immediate vicinity needed more lightning connectors, so I got my hands on the Momax Dual USB mains charger which is supplied with one.
There’s little you can say about a mains charger, but I’m going to give it a try. First off, the Momax is really good quality. It sports top-notch, ultra-shiny packaging, a great build quality and nifty visual design. For a mains adaptor, it’s certainly the cream of the crop, and is a far, far cry from the usual ugly, matte-black plastic, suspiciously lightweight nonsense you normally find. It’s every bit as good as the official Apple adaptor, except that it offers two USB ports instead of one. If your partner still has an old iPhone, you can get two charging for the price of one; not bad!
Now the Momax is only supplied with the one lightning cable, but as the USB ports are just that, standard USB ports, you can connect pretty much any other mains-charged device using the appropriate cable. If you’re greedy, you can charge a couple of your devices at the same time.
Having two USB ports is great for portability, although I’d guess the Momax XC isn’t really that much more compact than two separate Apple adaptors, or an Apple adaptor and any other compact single port USB mains adaptor. But it’s neat and tidy and still very compact for what it is.
The Momax XC USB ports can both deliver up to 1A. This is enough to charge most phones at their normal rate and possibly even faster, but you’ll find that iPads and other power-hungry tablets ( which normally have 2A+ adaptors ) may take twice as long to charge.
Overall I’d highly recommend the Momax XC Dual USB mains adaptor over picking up a spare official Apple one. It’s a good £5 cheaper for twice the functionality, and it looks good to boot.