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Recharging your laptop with a battery stored in your laptop bag is more possible than ever, and HyperJuice’s latest joins the ranks.
Your phone running out of power is a regular struggle, but what about your laptop or tablet? When you’re travelling, ensuring you have power for your laptop is a real issue, especially these days.
Fortunately, there are meaty power packs available to help deal with that issue, and not just sizeable offerings, but some able to meet the needs of even the most demanding of laptops.
The Targus-owned HyperJuice 245W power bank is another of those varieties, delivering plenty of charge and power for folks carrying a laptop, phone, and maybe a few other bits and pieces.
What is the HyperJuice 245W battery pack?
A sizeable power bank from the Hyper brand (and seemingly imported by Targus in our region), the 245W battery pack joins the list of large power banks designed to recharge and revive not just phones and tablets like all of the small ones, but laptops, too.
Packing about the largest battery you can equip safely (especially for flights), the HyperJuice 245W power bank includes 27000mAh of capacity, and offers two 100W ports and two 65W ports, with a small OLED screen up top to show both voltage in use and remaining capacity of the battery pack.
It is relatively sizeable at 765 grams, but designed to be packed flat, making it suitable for luggage.
What does it do?
As expected, HyperJuice’s 245W bank is meant to charge devices with USB-C ports, now the international standard thanks in part to a push by the EU to make that happen. Why, even the iPhone supports it, as does pretty much every other phone, tablet, and laptop out there in the world.
With four USB-C ports onboard pushing out a maximum of 100W on two and a max of 60W on the other two, there’s a fair amount of juice that can be achieved from this thing, though you’re not going to find 100+100+65+65 as the front of the gadget suggests.
It’s 100 plus 100 covering in and out, plus 65 and 65 out. However it’ll never really max out at those numbers, unless you’re only getting power from one or two at once.
While the combination of numbers all up is 330W, the maximum output is 245W, and we’re tallying closer to the 242W mark, but who’s counting? To get the 242W, you’ll want to laptops with hefty power needs, maxing out at 96W each, and then using the remaining ports at 30W and 20W, totalling 242W.
That’s not bad, mind you, especially when charging packs for laptops typically don’t hit the 96W mark at the best of times. Typically, that 96W charger only arrives on larger laptops, such as the 16 inch MacBook Pro.
Does it do the job?
To make it work, simply plug in your USB-C cables and get cracking. If you have a Mac, that could be the MagSafe cable or even a Type C option, while Windows devices will likely lean on a Type C cable and connection.
The power pack is easy to work with — plug in a gadget and it works — and there’s even a little OLED screen up top to give you a guide on the power usage at the time.
Recharging the power bank is a simple as plugging it in via one of the two 100W charge ports, giving your laptop charging pack something to do.
It certainly does the job, even if its weight leaves an impression on your luggage.
What does it need?
As good as the Hyperjuice 245W power bank is, we feel we’ve seen better.
Take the ports: while you get four USB-C ports, you miss out on USB-A, so you can tell the Hyperjuice is only made for newer devices.
That’s a lesson Anker worked out in its 250W Prime Bank, which offers both the modern ovular USB-C and the older rectangular USB-A. Both are handy, especially if you have older devices.
There’s the same amount of battery here, all 27000mAh of it, but only ports for modern devices… and no case.
Again, it’s one of those “nice to have” features that would have been handy in the box to complete the device. Not a total missed opportunity, just a nice to have, for sure.
Is it worth your money?
The other issue is possibly the price, which in Australia comes in at $399.95, a good $100 more than its obvious competitor from Anker, and roughly $200 more than other models from brands such as Cygnett that don’t quite offer as fast or powerful a charge, but still deliver the same battery size for less.
It’s difficult to argue the roughly $400 cost for the Targus HyperJuice pack, largely because there are better options for less. This is a decent battery pack, sure, but there’s better value to be had elsewhere.
Yay or nay?
If you can find it for less money (or Targus drops the price), the HyperJuice 245W battery pack is a handy way to keep your laptop charged. Flat and packed with power, it could be an ideal gadget to keep with you for those long trips.
