Stuff summer essentials: The best travel tech for charging
Upgrade your getaway with these on-the-go gadgets
ELECTRIC DREAMS
Remember the good old days, when in-flight entertainment was limited to an airline magazine and the closest you got to noise-cancelling was two pieces of cotton wool? No? Probably because those days were rubbish. Travel might be a tonic for the soul, but without the right tech it’s just a whole lot of moving around with bags. Thankfully, we’ve trawled the tech aisles for those travel essentials that will give your summer getaway the upgrade it deserves. Here are some gadgets that’ll help you keep your tech fully charged, wherever you are in the world.
GOAL ZERO VENTURE 30
If your idea of a gentle getaway is lathering yourself in bug repellent and going off-grid for a month, the Venture 30 is your kind of backup battery. Like a bushwacking Bear Grylls in your local Waitrose, it certainly stands out from the crowd – but, unlike Bear Grylls, it’s also weatherproof, equipped with a pair of high-speed USB ports and carries a 7800mAh capacity good for charging your phone two times over.
ANKER POWERPORT SOLAR LITE
Tanning is a classic example of clean energy transfer. You sprawl by the pool for the best part of the day. Solar energy pours itself upon your pasty skin. You become a lobster. It’s science in action – and the good news is that those rays are good for more than crisping your epidermis: this featherweight foldable solar panel will boost two USB devices whenever the Sun is shining. Compact and weather-resistant, it’ll deliver juice at a speedy 2.1A, while its bigger brother can do the same at 3A.
BOOM TRAVEL+
The best travel adaptors are, well, adaptable – and few can do as much as the Boom Travel+. Besides being compatible with sockets in more than 150 countries, it packs a built-in 6000mAh cell, so you’ll have plenty of juice for those Netflix shows you offlined in the departure lounge. Once you’re back at the wall, it’ll zap a plethora of tech simultaneously thanks to a pair of USB slots above the main plug – provided you’ve remembered your cables.
EASYACC MONSTER POWER BANK
Want to be the popular one on your next group getaway? Forget picking up the bar tab: bag this power bank and you’ll have friends practically flinging their tech at you. Equipped with a whopping 26,000mAh capacity, it’s capable of juicing an iPhone ten times over and, with four USB ports at its disposal, clever charging tech can automatically deliver optimal current to connected devices. And you’ll need plenty of them to give this Monster a challenge.
FLIGHT001 4-IN-1 WORLDWIDE TRAVEL PLUG ADAPTOR
Three flights and four time zones away from home, your efforts to cram a three-pin plug into a two pin socket could almost be forgiven. Almost. Put paid to conversion confusion with this handy adapter: its compact 4-in-1 setup will sort you out in some 150 different countries. What’s more, those colour-coded blocks should make plug selection a cinch, even for jet-lagged brains.
