Eggtronic’s Power Bar Charges All Your Apple Devices

Originally published at: https://tidbits.com/2020/05/18/eggtronics-power-bar-charges-all-your-apple-devices/

Eggtronic’s Power Bar cuts down on clutter by charging all your Apple mobile devices in one tidy location. It’s a power bank with a USB-C port for MacBook and iPad charging, and it has wireless charging pads for an iPhone, AirPods, and Apple Watch.

I’d like to see a good product like this but sans the wireless charging. I’d want a decent integrated battery, USB-C and -A ports for charging as well as built-in duckbill for direct wall charging. I have an awesome little charger like that ($30), but it doesn’t have USB-C (sure there’s a $5 adapter for that, but there’s still charging speed) and its battery is not good enough to charge Macs (for more than an emergency).

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01K702S66/

I saw this interesting model a while back, but it’s no longer shipping and the battery is again a bit too stingy for a Mac.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07J59J3XS/

Any advice on something like that?

I assume there is a typo and the Qi pad charges at 7.5, not 75W.

Thanks for spotting that, it’s fixed.

I don’t really understand the appeal of a wireless charging mat. If wireless charging was built into every desk or table and you could just put your phone down anywhere, I think it would be useful, but if you need to place a device on a mat at a specific place you can just as easily plug in a cable. But each his own.

As for this device, apart from the Watch which cannot be charged by wire, using wireless will certainly result in loss of capacity? So it seems a bit of a gimmick to me. I would prefer more wired ports.

Just curious, did you compare charging a phone wirelessly and by wire and note the difference in energy efficiency between the two?

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Wireless charging also means you can’t (practically) use the device while it’s charging.

I frequently have a charge-cable attached to my phone or iPod Touch when I’m playing games in order to avoid running the batteries down over the course of an extended gaming session. This would be impractical (at best) if I had to use a wireless charging mat.

Now, for other kinds of devices, it might not be a problem. For instance, I used an inductive-charging battery pack on my Nintendo Wii controllers for years (to avoid needing to buy lots of AA batteries). In this case, there is really no way to play the games while charging the controller, whether wired or not, and it is convenient to be able to just drop the controller on the charging pad between sessions.

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