Picture the scene. A sandy beach, a sunny sky and a two-week holiday. The only possible downer is a flat battery in your iPod. How often have you found yourself in just this scenario, with neither a plug nor a PowerBook to charge it up?
Fortunately there is a solution in the form of the Gear4 PocketPower. About the size of a small bar of soap or a Fry's Turkish Delight, it is home to four rechargeable batteries (or, if you prefer, four disposables, so long as you don't try and charge them up). In one end is a USB port, through which you'll charge it from a Mac or PC. In our tests, the charging cycle took around half a workday to complete, after which it would drive a nano for around 12 hours.
Once it's juiced up, you disconnect, flip the switch from the charge to output position and plug in your iPod, which now uses the power in the batteries to charge its own internal cell. It's a seamless operation, and entirely idiot-proof. Our reviews team was split fairly evenly between those who thought it was an elegant implementation, and those who found the presence of a metre-long cable an irritation, though, so it looks like this will always be a matter of personal opinion.
Problems? There are a few. For starters, it wouldn't work with our test third-generation iPod. Everything seemed to be going just fine; we could scroll through our playlists and navigate the menus, but as soon as we hit play, the iPod locked up, despite running the latest firmware and Gear4 advertising it as 3G compliant. Switching it to a fourth generation player or nano, though, it worked just fine.
As it's seen as an external power source, rather than an extension of your internal battery, the battery indicator on the iPod screen doesn't show how much charge remains; instead it shows the charging icon of a green battery with a lightning fork slashed through its midrift. This isn't a problem per se, and it's a limitation of the iPod, not the battery pack, but it did feel like we were driving blindfolded, never quite sure when it would next run dry.
If you don't have an iPod, there's not much point buying a PocketPower, but it does also feature a torch and can charge a USB-friendly mobile phone, so if you're planning on any long journeys away from civilisation, it's a versatile piece of kit.
Author: Nik Rawlinson
MacUser Online