Mophie juice pack plus for iPhone 4 Review

Introduction:

Mophie Juice Pack Plus is an iPhone 4 power pack that has impressed us with its capacity, but as it adds to the battery life, has it managed to keep thickness at the level of Mophie's previous product, the Juice Pack Air, and is it worth the $100 price tag? You'll know the answer to the first question from the get-go – the Juice Pack Plus is virtually as big as the already pretty thick Air at 0.71 inches of girth. It makes your iPhone 4 look like it worked out religiously only to put an amazing muscle mass of 2.5 ounces. It's not obese – it's bigger, stronger, with 2000mAh dwarfing the 1420mAh battery on the iPhone 4 and the 1500mAh capacity of the Mophie Juice Pack Air. In a nutshell, the Mophie Juice Pack Plus totally ruins the slim profile of your iPhone, but in return it turns into a well-armored soldier. One hardly fitting in your pocket, though.



Design:

But let's start from the beginning and that's how you fit your handset in the case. To do that you simply take off the top part and push the iPhone in for a snug fit indicated by a silent click. Mophie has cut out holes for the camera, mute switch and the 3.5mm jack, while the volume rocker and lock key are accessed via silver plastic buttons on the case. The only minor issue we noticed is that folks with bigger hands might have a hard time reaching for the mute button. Overall, the Juice Pack is a well protected case with a soft touch rubber coating on the back and matte plastic on the inside. We tested a black juice pack, but you could order it also in yellow, pink and blue.



On the front, sound is redirected through two holes and you can notice a slight improvement as the case itself acts as a speaker box for better acoustics and fuller overall sound. On the bottom, you have an LED status indicator activated by the nearby button and showing you how much juice you have left. Mophie's battery pack comes with a microUSB-to-USB cable for charging the device and it's plugged in the pass-through port on the bottom right. Finally, the left side holds a tiny switch for turning the juice pack on and off.



There are two omissions that we would have wanted to see in this product: some kind of screen protection and kickstand..

Performance:

With that out of the way, we'll focus on the performance and that's where we can say that the battery pack does deliver the “Plus” it promises. You can count on virtually double the battery life (and even more) with the 2000mAh capacity of Mophie's juice pack. We tested it on a completely drained iPhone 4 and found that charging goes at nearly 40% an hour, so you can have your handset fully charged after nearly two hours and a half. Even after the iPhone was fully charged, the Juice Pack Plus held a full bar of charge, which means that you can easily get through a very, very busy day, and actually rely on two days with moderate to heavy use.

We loved the logical charging behavior of the Mophie Juice Pack Plus – when plugged in with the iPhone it leaves the handset to charge first before starting to recharge itself. The battery pack also fulfills its every promise – 8 hours of talk time on a 3G network and 11 hours of video playback.

Conclusion:

We value the fact that Mophie fulfills its promise of doubling the battery life on the iPhone 4, but we have a hard time recommending this device. As impressive as all is, so is the price. $100 is a lot of money even for a premium juice pack, but even more so for one you'll probably have to throw away in months when the new iPhone 5 is expected to come out. In comparison, the Motorola P793 Universal USB Portable Power Pack has 1420mAh capacity, but costs a mere $35 and is future-proof as it will work with pretty much every handset out there. But if you can overlook the hefty price and added bulk, you'll certainly appreciate the unmatched charging capacity of the Juice Pack Plus.

Mophie juice pack plus for iPhone 4 Video Review: