Setup:

The unit I received already had a charge but wasn’t fully charged. So I pulled out a 120V to 5V USB adapter and connected the included cable to the power bank. While most people have several of these around from various devices it really would have been nice if this was included. Either way in a short time the device was fully charged and ready to go.



Performance:

Jump starter devices like these are super convenient but the truth is most will hopefully never need to use this to actually jump start a car. It really is just reassuring you have that option should you get stuck somewhere. But that doesn’t mean this is a waste of money, this device can be used as a back-up battery charger for your other devices. So let’s cover its performance in that area first. This battery pack houses a 6600mAh battery which they claim can recharge your device up to 4x. Given that most phones are around 3000mAh and they typically alert you around 15% left, your real world expectation should be 2x possibly 2.5x. But all of this is pointless if it takes forever to recharge your device. Thankfully that is not the case. While I don’t have anything to measure the actual current being output I was able to compare the rate of charging to an OEM charger that is rated for 3A output. In the first screen cap below you can see the rate my phone was charging using the built-in micro USB cable. The second is using the included but separate cable plugged into the USB output labeled 5V/2.4A and finally the last is with the 3A charger.



Looking at these closer you will see charging via the built-in USB cable we were adding around 0.65%/min, with the included cable and standard USB port we saw 0.59%/min and with the 3A stand-alone charger we saw 0.77%/min. These results line up pretty well with our expectations; the 3A charger should have been about 1.25 x faster than the 2.4A spec for the myCharge Adventure JumpStart. Using that factor you see the built-in cable was slightly better than expected and the separate cable was slightly worse, but well within reason.
Next up, the light. While this certainly wouldn’t be my first choice for night hiking, it is adequate to keep your night going from bad to worse. The light output is about the same as you’d expect from your mobile devices flashlight. Certainly this is plenty of light for you to find your battery terminals in the dark and get everything hooked up. Not to mention you don’t have to worry about getting under hood grime on your phone. This flashlight also has three modes, full brightness, strobe and SOS mode. The other big difference is run time, I had it running for 3 hours and it still had all four LED’s lighted.

Finally, we look at the jump starting capability. When I received this unit I was just about to finish up work on an old Audi that has a 1.8 liter turbo engine with a dead as a door nail battery. To be honest I didn’t hold out much hope this would work on this car since it has been sitting for about 9 months and it has a parasitic draw that I never found. But once I was ready to start the car up I grabbed this unit (fully charged) and followed the directions on the controller. At first I was not getting the green LED, but after the third try I saw the green LED and much to my surprise the interior lights came to life and I had hope. But this was short lived; after unsuccessfully trying to jump it several times the battery indicator on the myCharge was only showing 3 LED’s so as I recharged it as I tried to connect my battery charger. Initially my fast charger failed and indicated the battery was bad. I then measured the voltage on the battery and found less than 3V. So no surprise this couldn’t do the trick. I then connected up a trickle charger, for whatever reason this was able to slowly revive this battery from the dead. Several times during this trickle charging I reconnected the myCharge to see if it could do anything. Same result as the initial try; I had lights and could hear a click but not enough to turn it over. Finally when the battery voltage got to around 10V this unit had enough juice to get things running. I suspect this unit is more designed for those that say forgot to turn off their lights and went shopping for the day. In that case I think you are fine, but if you go on vacation and those lights are on for a week I think you’ll need something more powerful.