mophie Juice Pack Air for iPhone XS Max REVIEW | Mac Sources

4 min readAug 16, 2019

mophie juice pack air for iPhone XS Max

9.7

A tough, capable charging case

I’ve never been one to keep a case on my phone. I do understand why a person would want to, but I’ve always felt that the iPhone was designed to be durable without a case. Co-founder of MacSources Robyn had a much different experience with her first iPhone. It tumbled from her hands and was damaged beyond repair when it hit a hard tile floor. Ever since she has dutifully kept a case on her iPhone for fear that it might slip again. For me, a case has to be something really special. It has to be more than ‘just a case.’ The Juice Pack Air from mophie is more than just a case.

DETAILS

The Juice Pack Air is a battery case that features a built-in Lightning port as well as the option to charge your case wirelessly. The case, as well as the iPhone, is compatible with any Qi wireless charging system. It’s lightweight and has internal rubberized support pads to help protect your phone from drops and falls. The case includes the mophie Priority+ charging that allows pass-through charging to occur. The iPhone will charge first and then the case. The Juice Pack Air is available in 4 different colors — black, rose gold, red, and gray.

Specs

BATTERY CAPACITY: 1,840mAh
COMPATIBILITY: iPhone Xs Max
DIMENSIONS: 6.69 x 3.18 x 0.64 in (170.05 x 80.84 x 16.17 mm)
WEIGHT: 2.7oz (76.5g)
WARRANTY: 2 Year Warranty
IN THE BOX: juice pack air battery case / Quick Start Guide

USER IMPRESSIONS

Mophie does a really nice job with their packaging. It’s minimalist but covers the main details. Because it’s so simplistic, I had the case out of the box and on my phone in no time. The Juice Pack Air is very slim in design. Mophie claims that the “case fits so comfortably in your hand, you’ll forget it has a built-in battery.” That claim is actually true. Aside from making the phone a little longer, I really didn’t notice the bulk of it.

The case is actually two pieces. The top comes off in order to allow iPhones to be able to slide in and out freely. The iPhone snaps into place on top of a Lightning power adapter that is built into the case. Then the top section snaps into place securin the iPhone. There is a slight lip around all the sides of the case so that the screen is protected against any drops or falls.

I felt like the Juice Pack Air did a good job of keeping the phone charged, but in comparison to the Juice Pack Access, it seemed as though the battery got used up a lot quicker. The Juice Pack Access has a larger capacity battery (2,200mAh) than the Juice Pack Air (1,875mAh). I ran a couple of charging speed tests while I was using the Juice Pack Air and found that I had an average charging rate of 0.36% per minute. That’s a little slower than a standard charging rate for power banks in my experience.

Normally, I would suggest that one of the best practices for using a case like this is to start the day with a full battery on both your iPhone and charging case and run through the day using the battery on the case. However, since I found that the Juice Pack Air uses its battery power a bit quicker, I would probably suggest using this case as emergency power instead of continuous battery power. I would recommend that if you go this route that you start the charging when your phone’s battery is around 20%.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I am a fan of all things mophie and this case is no exception. Even though I felt that the battery might discharge quicker than other charging cases, it is still very functional. I had 0 problems getting the case to charge wirelessly, but I would like to see this case have a USB-C charging option in addition to the Lightning port so users can pick if they want to charge the case via USB-C or Lightning. I understand that mophie is attempting to make sure that iPhone users don’t have to carry more than one cable, but now that the iPad Pro and MacBook Pro charges via USB-C, I just think it would be nice for users to have a choice about which type of input charging the case received.

For more information, visit mophie.com, Facebook and Twitter.

Originally published at https://macsources.com on August 16, 2019.