Review: Proporta USB Mobile Device Charger

All electronic gadgets need to be charged eventually (unfortunately), and nothing is more annoying than not having the right charger with you when they run out of power or, if you have the right charger, not being able to find a power plug.

I remember a very long stay in Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport when my iPod had run dry and I didn’t have the proper regional power adapters with me, having left them uselessly stored in my checked luggage. With my then iBook on my lap, I alternately charged up my iPod and my Tungsten 3 while waiting for a painfully delayed flight. It wasn’t a pretty thing, and it wasn’t a convenient thing, but it did work. Now, I don’t always carry my laptops with me—that’s what pocket portable devices are for, right?—but the iBook did make a very effective Palm and iPod charger. After this, I sort of thought that I might be able to find a portable USB-based charging solution that did not need a laptop to carry it around in.

At that time, however, I found nothing. Not a halibut.

A couple of years later, still looking on and off, I eventually found a very heavy NiMH-based battery pack that could charge anything. Very large, very heavy, powerful enough to run my laptop even for about an hour. Heavy duty, but also heavy heavy. So I kept looking.

Well, eventually, the market caught up with my ideas (ask me what I think the iPhone SHOULD do, and we’ll see if Apple catches up in a few years too, hmmm?), and a number of small USB battery packs started creeping onto the market.

Proporta USB Mobile Device Charger is one of these wonderful little devices.

The Proporta charger is a much much smaller-than-brickish unit that fits the bill just fine for two of my favorite devices, my iPod Video and my Palm Tungsten 3.

It is splendid.

Why?

Well, it’s small and light, very small and very light. And it doesn’t look goofy, matching a bit of that iPod white look-and-feel thing, but is otherwise generally pretty unassuming. As well, it comes with a number of different plugs so you can charge a variety of mobile devices. I mostly just use my devices’ supplied USB adapters with this, but there’s a specific iPod adapter and a handful of other plugs that I suspect are for small game devices and different cell phone models. If I can ever pry the Nintendo DS Lite out of my wife’s hands, I’ll see if one of these fits.

I could throw tons of specs at you here, but they’re all on the website. Suffice it to say that the Proporta USB Mobile Device Charger is small and convenient, can charge up my iPod (and Palm) three times and itself charges from most USB ports, such as those on your laptop or a wall or car adapter.

You might want to check their site for compatibility with other devices, but if they have the adapter, pleasantly enough, they’ll send it to you for free! No kidding!

The Proporta site is huge, and they have a vast collection of peripherals for all manner of electronic gadgets.

If you’re inclined to follow my recommendation and buy one of these USB chargers, and plan to purchase it from their site, www.proporta.com, take a look at their Cable Tidy wire management solution. It’s a very cheap and effective way to keep your cables from hanging out all over the place. It’s a simple thing that’s hard to describe or rate, but I find myself using the Tidy all the time.

And there are dozens and dozens of similarly interesting, compelling, and well-thought-out sundries here that I haven’t even begun to have a chance to consider. Very impressive. Go take a look and maybe you too will find something that you never thought you’d need until you saw that someone had actually invented it. I can almost guarantee that you will.