Belkin BoostCharge Pro Power Bank for Apple Watch reviewed

Belkin’s take on a power bank made for Apple Watch owners, the BoostCharge Pro brings convenience to the wrist of iPhone owners with money to spare.

One of the downsides of phone and smartwatch ownership today is one and the same: battery life, it’s just not super reliable.

You can typically bank on a maximum of a day for most phones and watches, and yes, some manage to get beyond that. Buy a bigger phone and you’ll typically see bigger and better battery life, and the same is often true with wearables, as well. The larger Apple Watch Ultra 2 offers much better battery life than the smaller Apple Watch Series 9 model it was released alongside this year, and the same was true comparing the first Watch Ultra to the Series 8 Apple Watch, as well.

Spend more than a year with an Apple Watch, and you can expect the battery life to drop, as well. It’s just part and parcel of how batteries work as we use them, seeing life diminish bit by bit by little bit.

With phones, we typically have a solution to deal with this issue, as power banks become a regular inclusion in our day to day, but they’re just not made with wearables in mind.

That makes Belkin’s BoostCharge Pro power bank an interesting proposition, as it brings together an Apple Watch charger together with the regular power bank we’ve all come to know and love. Granted, it also shares a name with another Belkin gadget, the BoostCharge Pro 3-in-1 charger, which means Belkin isn’t making its naming schemes remarkably easy to understand.

Fortunately, the BoostCharge Pro power bank aims to impress iPhone owners with an Apple Watch, giving them a little more than yet another power bank.

What is the BoostCharge Pro power bank?

A power bank with a seriously long name, the Belkin BoostCharge Pro for Apple Watch is a small-ish power bank sporting one USB-C port and a solid 10,000mAh of power to go, with one special feature virtually no other power bank offers: an Apple Watch charging pad built into the design.

Yes, this is exactly what it sounds like: a small power bank that can also charge an Apple Watch. It’s encased in a soft silicone material and next to impossible to keep dust-free, particularly if there’s a dog in your home that sheds.

What does it do?

The charging pad should be obvious to anyone with an Apple Watch, Apple Watch SE, or even one of the more expensive and premium Apple Watch Ultra models laying around, because this little white circle can recharge your watch from a power bank. Voila, just like that.

If you struggle to make it through a day because you Apple Watch battery isn’t faring as well as it once did, or you just happen to work it hard, this little power bank can give you a bust of energy using a 7.5W charge. Easy.

It’ll also recharge your phone or anything else using the single USB-C port on the side, so you can give two birds a little more life at once, making it a handy gadget to travel with.

Does it do the job?

There’s a good 10,000mAh in the BoostCharge Pro with support for fast wireless charging on the Apple Watch at 7.5W, while the phone can handle up to 20W fast wired charging at the same time. For owners of a recent iPhone, that means you can recharge both gadgets you may own in a pinch all too easily.

We found in using the BoostCharge Pro that an Apple Watch may not always hold magnetically as kindly as you expect, so it’s not the sort of thing you just want to leave about in your bag, recharging an Apple Watch as you go about your day. Instead, leave it on a desk or something as you work.

You may even find you want to recharge a pair of AirPods Pro 2nd-gen on the Apple Watch charging pad, something they support, which brings together the iPhone owners package quite nicely on this little compact charger.

What does it need?

But you know what we’d love? An extra USB port, or even a built-in Type C plug alongside that single USB-C port, and here’s why: you can’t charge the Belkin BoostCharge Pro while you’re charging your phone from it.

You can totally charge the power bank back up while you’re recharging your Apple Watch, thanks in part to the built-in Apple Watch charging pad. But due to the inclusion of only one USB-C port, you’re either charging something from it or charging the bank up.

It would be really nice if there were two USB ports, or even one USB port and one USB-C dongle, much like the Anker Nano Power Bank. If it had both of those, you’d be able to recharge the bank and recharge your phone, and that would give the Belkin BoostCharge Pro an extra use for travelling.

In one shot, this power bank could have been both a watch and phone charger to go, handy for bedside tables overnight.

Instead, it only gets halfway there, and does it for a fair amount of money, too.

Is it worth your money?

Priced at $140 in Australia, the Belkin BoostCharge Pro isn’t necessarily a cheap power bank, but it does do a decent job, thanks in part to that handy Watch charger.

A spare Apple Watch charger will normally set you back a minimum of $49 in Australia from Apple, and third-party models can range for between $19 and $89 depending on who makes them and the tech they have.

If you consider that the BoostCharge Pro is basically Belkin’s $80 USB-C BoostCharge 10K power bank made to be slightly slimmer and with an Apple Watch charging pad mounted to the top, the price doesn’t seem too far off kilter, but it’s still a fair amount for a charging bank that could do with improvements.

Yay or nay?

There are definite reasons to love what Belkin has made, and also improvements the company could make to version two. An extra USB port on the other side or a built-in Type C cable are where we are for the latter, but we can see it also impressing folks today.

The point, however, is that Belkin’s BoostCharge Pro achieves something phone and watch owners are always looking for with a power bank: convenience.

The very point of getting a power bank is so that your phone always has power in a pinch. It’s why so many of us always carry one everywhere we go. It’s a reliable addition to any bag or backpack.

Apple Watch owners probably aren’t carrying around an Apple Watch charging pad everywhere they go, though. An extra costs money, and they may not want to risk bringing it with them when they could just wait until they get home. Unfortunately, not every watch will last the full day, especially when you don’t know what your day will look like.

If that’s you on the regular and you’re tired of getting home with a flat Apple Watch battery, Belkin’s Apple Watch-charging power bank will make sense for you. The Belkin BoostCharge Pro is a logical addition to the bag of any Apple Watch owner.

It may need the odd tweak here and there, and is a little high on the price tag, but it’s a solid shot at convenience.