When I first received the PowerStick+ and its larger, solar-enabled cousin the PowerTrip, they were at the time impressive. Large capacity batteries able to charge anemic mobiles like the iPhone 5s, with 8GB of storage, and the ability to be topped off by the sun courtesy the PowerTrip’s embedded solar panel.
Two years later, in 2015, I reviewed the PowerStick+ and PowerTrip, whose standby time of 1 year (ability to hold a charge), was still resilient. Fast charging wasn’t as prominent then but 8 hours was becoming a long time to wait for a full battery. Recently I went back to do a Road Tested! review of the PowerTrip 5 years after I first opened the box. It’s held up well, along with the PowerStick, though its price and form-factor seem stuck in the past, when compared to rivals like the under $35 Anker Powercore 13000.
You can watch the full Road Tested! review of the PowerStick chargers in the video above but in short, unless you spend a lot of time in the desert or by the beach, without making use of the solar panels, time might have passed these batteries by for most travelers.
