Amazon.com  Anker® Astro E5 15000mAh Dual USB Portable Charger Ultra-High Density High Capacity External Battery Backup Power Pack for iPhone 5S, 5C, 5, 4S, 4, iPad Air, 5, 4, 3, 2, Retina Mini 2, Samsung Galaxy S4, S3, Note 2, 3, Tab  (1)A few months ago I set out on a quest to find a recharg­ing device to take with me on the road and to have in the event of a SHTF of any kind.  I want­ed a bat­tery device that could recharge my mobile phone or pad device sev­er­al times if the pow­er were out, or in the event I found myself on the road with a dead phone, and need­ed a charge when not in the prox­im­i­ty of an elec­tri­cal out­let.  Enter a bunch of research, a lot of reviews.  Quite acci­den­tal­ly I came across the Anker Astro.

So what is the Anker Astro?  For all intents and pur­pos­es it’s a portable bat­tery with two USB ports for recharg­ing your devices.  More specif­i­cal­ly, it is a back­up bat­tery device to help you recharge your phone up to five (5) to sev­en (7) times before it needs recharg­ing itself.  Now, dur­ing Hur­ri­cane Sandy, this would have come in handy had I known about it, and allowed me to keep my phone on for longer peri­ods.  Look­ing at it from the pure mar­ket­ing per­spec­tive of up to sev­en (7) recharges would have allowed me to recharge my phone from emp­ty for the entire­ty of my peri­od I had no pow­er.  Accord­ing to the mar­ket­ing it also touts the abil­i­ty to recharge, Kindle’s, iPads, and Android pads, etc.

When I received it (after order­ing it), I of course, made sure it was ful­ly charged, and pro­ceed­ed to recharge my phone.  Which it did flaw­less­ly.  I’ve used it peri­od­i­cal­ly since, and it only dawned on me that this might be an impor­tant device for prep­pers today, weeks after own­ing the device.  I say this because, being in an urban and sub­ur­ban envi­ron­ment, I find my CB to be use­less.  Ham on the oth­er hand is some­thing I am still work­ing towards (call me lazy), but it’s on the to do list.  How­ev­er, until that point, I depend on my phone for com­mu­ni­ca­tions in three forms:  Email, SMS, and Voice.  As long as the tow­ers are up, and run­ning, I’ll con­tin­ue to depend on it.  This means that pro­long­ing my bat­tery life is very impor­tant to stay in touch with my busi­ness and per­son­al net­work both day to day, and in the event of an emer­gency.

So, here are some tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions for those of you won­der­ing about the Anker device itself:

  • Mon­ster capac­i­ty (15000mAh) charges the iPhone almost 7 times, large-capac­i­ty phones like the Galaxy S4 4 times or almost a full charge to an iPad 3,
  • Super-fast charge out­put (5V / 3A total) through dual USB ports (5V / 2A and 5V / 1A) allow for simul­ta­ne­ous charg­ing of your iPad, iPhone, Android, and more at high speed,
  • Smooth, ivory var­nish allows you to pow­er up in style, while 4 sta­tus LEDs keep you informed of remain­ing capac­i­ty. Built-in flash­light for dark or low-light envi­ron­ments,
  • Ultra-high den­si­ty bat­tery cells make this the world’s most com­pact 15000mAh exter­nal bat­tery. Use a 5V / 1.5A adapter (not includ­ed) for fastest charg­ing (9–10 hours),
  • Pack­age con­tents: Anker® Astro E5 Exter­nal Bat­tery, Micro USB cable, trav­el pouch, instruc­tion man­u­al.

It was the most pow­er­ful bat­tery I could find with the longest bat­tery life.  Here’s an addi­tion­al review  I found that actu­al­ly helped me make the deci­sion, and one that is MUCH more detailed than one I can actu­al­ly give.

I may, at some point, pur­chase anoth­er that I may keep in a fara­day cage, as it can be used with many dif­fer­ent devices, and may come in handy in the future…  I like the device, and keep it in my back­pack that pret­ty much goes every­where with me.  It would make a great addi­tion to a Get Home Bag.

 

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