Last week, I reviewed a portable battery that was provided by Ventev. This week, we’ll go over their wall charger. It has a pair of standard USB ports for devices to plug into, and is to be plugged into an electrical outlet. Like many other offerings from Ventev, the charger is sporting the company’s colors; to wit, this unit is primarily showing two different tones of gray with a little bit of orange trim, though the vast majority of the orange isn’t facing outwards when the unit is plugged into a wall socket.
As for its performance, it seemed to perform as one expected. Each of its ports charge at 2.4 amps, regardless of whether one or both ports are in use. My phone picked up a little over twenty percent when charged alone or with my tablet (stock NVidia Shield, LTE variant, with a 5,200 mAh battery), which also picked up around twenty percent when charging alone or with the phone. Now having reviewed the iClever charger with two ports a few weeks back (https://droidhorizon.com/review-iclevers-boost-cube-two-port-usb-charger/), I had a bit of a baseline to with which to compare to the two, and again, they function nearly identically. Both have their blades fold in, both have a pair of USB ports that charge at the same amperage. But they differed in other, more aesthetic areas. Ventev’s charger is nicer looking, and it’s not even close. Whereas the other charger is a glossy white, Ventev’s charger is more a flat gray. Now preferring one color or look over the other is personal preference, but the darker and flatter tones simply appeal to me. Were I to peruse chargers in a fashion where I were at least partially factoring appearances in, Ventev would do well here. I also like the feel of the material on the outside, for whatever that’s worth.
On the other hand, there’s a sizeable difference in size. While the appearance of the charger is nicer, it’s a few inches taller than the Boost Cube I reviewed, and there was no obvious reason why. Now if I’m going to just leave this plugged in a wall socket for home use, that wouldn’t matter so much. Were I travelling though, that could impact my decision. It feels less pocketable, given that it only has two ports for use, vs the three from another iClever review that I did. In short, it performs the same as the other devices, but at nearly three times the cost of iClever’s comperable offering, while looking nicer. If you want something that looks better and feels noticeably sturdier, this would be the better bet, of the two. For me, it’s hard to justify tripling the cost for what amounts to the same thing, functionally speaking.
The charger definitely has what feels to be a higher build quality than the Boost Cube, but costs significantly more. I’m not sure yet if “you get what you pay for” comes in to play here, as that could take months to shake out, with regular use. I’d have to give this a five, in my effort to balance the asking price with what seems to be a nicer unit. Were the asking price lower, it would easily score something higher.
