Versatile device that solves power and storage problems.
When I travel, I never trust my devices to charge through hotel-provided USB ports. They are unreliable in my opinion and you don’t always know what you get with them. Just a few weeks ago, I was staying in a hotel in Orlando. The lamp base had two standard USB ports built-in, but I have no idea what their output was or what they were designed to charge. You take a risk with charging ports like that. That’s why I usually pack a USB charger like the 60W USB-C Charger 6-Port Filehub with a 24W PD Port from RAVPower so that I never have to worry about what kind of charge my devices are getting.
DETAILS & FEATURES
The 60W USB-C Charger 6-Port Filehub with a 24W PD Port is a Red Dot Design Winner for 2019. It’s designed to provide users a secure charging option for multiple devices while also giving users the ability to back-up phones or tablets at the same time. The charging hub has a 24W max output and has a PD charger and QC 3.0 delivery. The charging station is TUV FCC certified and built-in multi charging protection. Connected devices are protected from over-voltage, over-heating, and short-circuiting.
SPECS
- USB2.0 Port ( external HDD ): 5V@1A, only data exchange
- USB2.0 Port ( smart phone or pad ): 5V@1.5A, data exchange and charging port
- USB2.0 Port x 2: 5V@2.4A
- PD Port & QC3.0: Support single port output 3A@5V,2A@9V,2A@12V, total power output 24W. Share output power 5V@3A<18W
- Compatibility: PD Quick Charge: iPhone XR, iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone X, iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone 8, Nintendo Switch, Pixel+/Pixel, iPad Pro USB A: Galaxy S9, Galaxy S9 Plus, Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8 Plus iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 6/6S and so on.
USER IMPRESSIONS
The charger comes in a fairly simple box. It’s designed similar to the way that other RAVPower product boxes are with a photo of the product on the front. Basic details are printed on the back and additional information is included with the user guide included in the box. The only other pieces included in the box are the charging station itself and its power cable.
To get started with the charging station you simply plug it into a wall outlet and then plug in the devices into their respective port. Devices will start charging. I charged my iPhone 11 Pro and my MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2016) with no problem. My MacBook gained approximately 15% battery life in less than an hour. I used the USB-C PD port to charge it. While I was charging my iPhone, I was also using the filehub feature to backup my photos.
For using the Filehub feature, you must do two things. First, you have to connect a flash drive or external USB drive to the “Storage” port and second, you must download the “U Hub” app from either the iTunes App Store or the Google Play App Store. What is strange to me about this is that RAVPower has other Filehub solutions and they have a different app. I would love to see one app solution to serve all of RAVPower’s filehub’s products. All that said, the U Hub app is very easy to navigate. After a storage device is connected to the hub, the app will detect it and the dashboard provides four different options for backups — Album, Contacts, Phone, and Restore. The dashboard also shows how much storage is available on the connected phone and the storage device.
I opted to backup my photo library since it is currently taking up 30.76GB of space on my iPhone. In order to try and back up my photo library, I had to copy all of my photos (2,999 files) into an album. Unfortunately, the app doesn’t provide an option to simply ‘backup photo library’ unless you are backing up the entire phone. It scans your library and allows you to backup individual albums. After I moved my photos into a single album, I selected the backup option and let the app do its job. It took a little more than 10 minutes to attempt backing up nearly 3,000 photos. Unfortunately, once the app was done backing up the album, there were more than 1,700 files that threw up errors. There was no reason given for the errors.
CONCLUSIONS
I really like this product by RAVPower, but I don’t know if I can consider it a reliable backup method. Given that I had many errors when backing up my iPhone’s photos, I just don’t know if I can trust that my files would be safe. The size of the hub is easy enough to stow away into a suitcase for when I travel and I do like the flexibility of being able to connect any USB external drive as backup storage. The RAVPower Charger and Filehub is an awesome little product that solves a big problem.
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