Pretty great commercial, huh? It got me interested enough in the product that I put in a request to review it. They were kind enough to send me both versions of the Powermat (Home & Travel) as well as a few accessories skins.
All in all I think this is an amazing product. The Powermat uses little white adapters called Powercubes (shown below) or custom skins (available for some of the more popular electronics out there) to charge your electronic devices. A magnet in the mat attracts the adapter or device to the juice and a bunch of magical things happen. I call them magical because I’m not intelligent enough to understand the technology behind it. For those more tech savvy, you can get all of that technical jargon here .
If I had to choose between the two Powermats, I would have to go with the travel version. It is the same price as the Home & Office mat, but folds up and comes with a carrying case. It doesn’t look as sexy as the Home & Office mat, but it makes the justification process to buy one a lot easier.
Both versions come with one Powercube (shown below) and about a dozen adapters to make it work with your tech gear. It also comes with a nifty carrying case for those adapters that attaches to the Powercube. The mats have a 4th charging spot via USB on the back of the device.
PROS
• Charge up to 4 Devices using 1 wall outlet.
• All the devices I tried seemed to take right around an hour to charge.
• Lots of convenient skins for popular devices so you don’t need to plug into the Powercube (iPhone, iPod, Blackberry Phones, Nintendo DS)
• The mat features a mute and lights off buttons.
• No need to keep track of a billion chargers.
• Very well designed product and packaging. Right up there with Apple.
CONS
• Out of the box you can only charge 2 electronic devices.
• To completely utilize this you’ll be spending close to $200.
• While the charging is wireless, most of your devices will still need to be plugged into a Powercube.
• The travel case for the portable unit doesn’t have designated spots for the Powercubes.
Sure, it’s a little pricey, but you’ll be the coolest geek in your office. It charges your devices quickly, and honestly is a lot less hassle. All in all, this thing is fucking awesome.