In the Field: ELECJET Charging Tools
Preamble: a little while back a mutual friend who works for ELECJET got in touch to see if I’d be interested in road-testing some of their latest products. In exchange for said products I agreed to write them a review. This isn’t a sponsored post, I’m not being paid, and this review is completely impartial. I even told them that I’d be unafraid to write my unbridled honest opinion, be it good or bad, to which they replied: “Go for it, we’re confident in the products”.
TLDR – Here’s an honest review of some of ELECJET’s latest products.
If I’m totally honest, charging and chargers aren’t something I’ve given a lot of attention to in day-to-day life. My previous experience of power bricks is generally a torrid affair: I’ve spent more time charging them than using them, and even when I have used them, they seldom have enough clout to charge my device while I use it. Y’know, they’ve been the kinda thing that I’d throw into a backpack if I was going on a long trip and wanted a little peace of mind in case, for whatever reason, I ended up stranded with a dead phone and a broken leg.
I certainly would never have considered using one to charge anything other than a phone either. As far as charging anything other than a phone was concerned, you plug it into the wall using the charger that came in the original box. End of.
As it turns out, charging and battery power tech has come on a long way. When my friend at ELECJET got in touch, he made some pretty bold claims about what their products could do, and how they could improve how we create content and have a better production experience at Storm & Shelter. Not going to lie, I was pretty sceptical. Nevertheless, he was adamant, and I’m not one to say no to free stuff.
“Okay mate, send me what you’ve got and I’ll give it a test and give you an honest review”.
Buckle up.
Who are ELECJET and what are “charging tools”?
Before we start, here’s a link to their website. According to their “About Us”:
In 2011, ELECJET was founded on the desire to create a myriad of charging tools — including power banks, car chargers, wall chargers, wireless chargers and replacement batteries.
From speaking to them over a Google Meet, you can tell that they really care about making great products that exceed expectations. They focus on making premium products using quality materials – they might not be the cheapest on the market, but they strive for excellent design and performance.
They’re well established in the US and Asian markets, and have received attention from several big-ticket influencers, such as Unbox Therapy:
Recently their focus has widened, and now they’re looking to move into the UK and EU markets, providing the same products, adapted and optimised for these regions.
As well as capturing recognised markets, from speaking to the guys it seems like they’re also keen to recognise new opportunities and see if there’s the potential to increase or improve on their product lines to appeal to more customers.
With the film and video production sector continuing to pick up pace year on year, my mutual contact reached out to see if I’d be keen to use some of their newer products, feedback on my experience, and recommend some potential improvements or upgrades. Y’know, tell’em how I really felt about their stuff.
ELECJET X21 Pro | 65W 2 in 1 Desktop & Wall Charger
First Impressions
Really rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? I guess you’d just called it the X21 Pro for the most part, which does sound pretty futuristic. Anyway, in a nutshell, this thing is a small, fast USB wall charger on steroids. Capable of smashing out a total of 65W of juice through its USB-C ports and 60W through its USB-A port, this little pocket rocket can fast-charge all sorts of devices, from laptops to drones.
Look and feel-wise, the X21 Pro ticks a lot of my boxes. More for what it isn’t than for what it is, though. Working in this industry, you gravitate naturally towards dark, monochromatic shades. My shooting wardrobe is a sea of black t-shirts. The X21 Pro fits right in here; it has a kinda matte-black finish, which nicely bevelled edges which make it easy to handle. The finish on the coating gives it a relatively premium feel, as well as a good amount of grip. I loathe this recent trend of RGB in tech, and in reality, I don’t know anyone with a white charger that hasn’t gone slightly brown, so black is just the best option in my opinion. I think they do have a white model if you do want this item to fit into your existing all-white ecosystem.
It comes with a few different country adapters, including a US and EU adapter, which is always really handy as I often find myself frantically hunting for one the night before a flight. You do get the immediate feeling that this model was built with travel in mind.
For a start, the charger is significantly smaller than a MacBook wall charger, not only that but all of the included cables can be detached from the main unit itself, so there’s no need to have a degree in fishing knots to pack it up neatly. The X21 Pro comes with a removable extension cable, so you have the option should you need to power a laptop from a traditional near-floor socket.
As if the customisation and small footprint wasn’t enough, the X21 Pro has another party trick up its sleeve — multiple simultaneous charging. Yep, the charger has three ports — 2x USB-C and 1x USB-A. Imagine that, only having to pack one charger to have your phone, camera and laptop covered off.
The way this little beast delivers such high output in such a small package is thanks to something called GaN technology (Gallium Nitride for you nerds). You can read more about this stuff here, but the TLDR is that because GaN tech is a more modern alternative to silicon, it enables more power, with less size and fewer components. What’s not to like?
Road Test
I’ve had this unit for a few weeks now, but to be honest I’m still exploring new ways to use it. So far, I’ve found it to be compatible with everything I’ve plugged it into, including a MacBook Pro, an iPad Pro and my Google Pixel 4. I was particularly impressed with the iPad, as not only could it charge it quickly (more so than the standard plug from my experience) but it could also continue to power and charge the iPad while I was using it. I often use the iPad as an additional scopes monitor for colour grading, so to keep it running all day without draining the battery is great.
On the box, it claims to be able to charge a Samsung S20 Note from 0 to 70% in 30 minutes. I’ve not got a Samsung S20 Note but based on how fast it charged my Pixel 4, I believe it. What’s more, is that if you have any other ELECJET products, such as the PowerPie P20, you can use this charger to fast-charge that without any compatibility issues, which is great. Thanks to GaN tech losing less energy to heat, the charger also stays comfortably cool even under taxing loads. Sounds like a small thing, but from my experiences with Apple laptops chargers, I know what it’s like to almost burn yourself whilst packing up after a long work session.
Honestly, so far this unit has just performed. I’m interested to see how it behaves over a longer time period. In terms of criticisms or suggested improvements, I’ve only a few so far:
- The outer packaging does a good job practically and is recyclable, but it does feel like they really did spend the majority of the budget on making the product great, and worried less about making the box feel special. Not really a problem, but just something I noticed.
- Although the additional extension and USB cables are removable, there isn’t anywhere to put them once you’ve removed them. Having some kind of three-pocket pouch capable of holding the charger, cables and adaptors safely in one place would be a really nice touch, especially for travelling users.
I feel like this is the part of the review where I should include a score out of an arbitrary number or something, but that’s not really my bag. I’d say if you work in filmmaking, and you travel about or use multiple devices at once, this thing is a bit of a no-brainer. It’s got 82% five-star reviews on Amazon too, so even though I’m not giving it a score, people do like it!
To find out more and purchase the ELECJET X21 Pro | 65W 2 in 1 Desktop & Wall Charger:
https://elecjet.co.uk/products/2-in-1-desktop-wall-65w-usb-c-charger
ELECJET Powerpie P20
First Impressions
For anyone less than up to date with charging tech, you could be forgiven for thinking this power bank is nothing extraordinary. It conforms to the usual power bank stereotypes — a weighty, bevelled cuboid with an LED indicator and a couple of USB ports. Don’t be fooled though, this unit has some party-tricks up its sleeve. It has a whopping 20,000mAh capacity, and given that capacity, it’s the smallest and lightest power bank in its class. Thanks to the addition of PPS (Programmable Power Supply) to the PD (Power Delivery) 3.0 standard, this puppy can thump 45W of go-juice into your favourite electronics. The headline here? It charges in just 2.5 hours and can extend the life of a MacBook laptop by 14 hours. 14! :O
The look and feel of this product is very much a similar story to the X21: it’s matte black, minimalist and has curved edges. The surface texture feels almost identical to the X21, which to be honest is good — products in the same range should feel this way, in my opinion. Strangely, due to the weight of the P20, it does feel a bit more premium than the wall charger. It has information printed on both of the longer side edges of the bank, at least one of which I feel is legally obligated, and the other contains some useful figures such as the capacity, operating voltage and battery composition (lithium polymer in case you were interested). It’s not super noticeable because it’s printed in grey, although I’m not a huge fan of how it looks on the product, from a design POV.
Like the X21, the Powerpie P20 has multiple inputs/outputs. It has a USB-A which outputs an 18W quick charge, as well as the main event — a USB-C PD which outputs a 45W super fast charge. Unlike the X21, this product comes with a soft pouch, which makes transporting the bank and associated cables much easier when travelling. The P20 can power multiple devices simultaneously, with the additional trick of doing a power pass-through — you can charge the power bank whilst also using it to charge a device. Handy, I guess, if you’re on the move and only have one wall-plug but multiple USB cables.
Road Test
The transportable nature of this product for me gives it a clear advantage versus the X21, at least for the work that I do. We use quite a few battery-powered pieces of kit at Storm & Shelter, so I was interested to see if this power bank could do the business and improve the functionality of them. Heck, could it even replace the trusty but crusty AAs?
TL;DR: Yeah, it heavily out-performed the AAs.
When I first got the power bank, I threw it on to charge to see if the charge time was accurate, as well as seeing how long it would then hold its charge while being used. Sure enough, it filled its boots in around two hours. The real jaw-dropper was how long it held onto it. I used it for a whole day plugged into my 2020 iPad Pro 12.9" whilst working on some lighting designs and it barely used a third of the battery. I use my iPad a lot, both in the office and out on shoots, I’ve recently started taking on recces to take reference pictures which I annotate as I go, and so I’m pretty familiar with the anxiety of running low on battery towards the end of the day. This power bank eliminates that issue. I’m able to use the iPad on-location to take pictures, and then plug it into the P20 while I drive to the next location, knowing that it will have re-charged my iPad before I get to the next stop.
Once I was confident, I started to think about other pieces of equipment to unleash the P20 on. The number one culprit for battery anxiety in the office is the Sound Devices Mix-Pre6. It’s a brilliant audio recorder, but my God does it guzzle AAs. Quite often as a camera operator, you find yourself needing to simultaneously monitor audio at the same time as keeping an eye on what you’re shooting. Unfortunately, while camera batteries are usually pretty large and reliable, the same cannot be said for audio recorders. It doesn’t happen all that often, but there is nothing more agonising than when you’re mid-way through an interview and the audio suddenly drops out.
Luckily the MixPre-6 has a USB-C port capable of accepting power. I wanted to see if the P20 could replace the AAs and be a more reliable power source for future shoots. My good friend and camera operator Sam Irving was looking to hire our MixPre to use on some live sessions, so I saw this as the perfect opportunity to test the P20 out. “You can borrow the MixPre”, I said, “as long as you have a go at powering it with the P20”. He kindly obliged and spent a couple of days shooting live sessions.
When he came to return the kit, he couldn’t have been more complimentary of the P20. He’d done an entire day of shooting and never even had to look twice at the battery level on the MixPre. It just kept ongoing. He told me that he was even running phantom power through the recorder to several condenser microphones, without any trouble at all. The P20 had passed with flying colours.
So far I’ve not so much got criticisms for the P20 as much as ideas for improvements. As with any electronics product, the real-life review can take a few months — the bugs rarely come out of the woodwork immediately. Hopefully, I’ll be able to do an updated review on these items once they’ve had a good run-in. But yeah, if I was to try and suggest improvements for the P20, I’d recommend the following:
- Keep the matte black finish, but either make a rubberised, shock resistant case for the bank (like you see on Lacie Rugged HDDs) or actually rubberised the outer housing of the bank itself. It’d be great if the rubber jacket came with plugs for the USB ports to prevent water or dust from getting in.
- The P20 is already well set up for travelling, given its size, weight and included pouch, but to make it even more useful to the content-creator and professional crowd, I would recommend adding a 1/4inch thread(s) to the case. Being able to attach it to a magic arm would really improve the functionality.
Again, I’m not going to give this product a rating, but to be honest I’d find it really hard to even rank this product in the context of the X21. Having used both of them, you can see how ELECJET are harnessing several power-charging technologies to make a compelling product range. I can’t really imagine having one without seeing the need for the other. Like most pieces of kit, I more and more find myself thinking about them as tools with which to do a job, and these are both tools that I think will make our video production process more efficient going forwards. Again, this one has a similar 84% five-star rating on Amazon. Great job, y’all.
To find out more and purchase the ELECJET Powerpie P20:
Thanks again to ELECJET for hooking me up with these products, who knew charging tech would come this far?! If you’re sold on what you’ve read here, and you want to check out the whole product line, head over to https://elecjet.co.uk/ or their Amazon page here.
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Until next time,
LJ
