myCharge AMP 6000XT review
The myCharge AMP 6000XT is a rugged portable phone charger that is capable of charging three devices at the same time and features a rechargeable 6000mA battery capable of delivering about three complete charges to most portable phones.
We’ve reviewed a couple of similar myCharge units before – the Peak 6000 and the Hub 6000. The internal battery is the same as far as I can tell. The charging method is similarly a wall plug. The main difference in the AMP 6000XT is that it has no cables included, and is a spot more rugged than its counterparts.
This means you have to carry around a charging cable for your phone, but you can also throw the AMP 6000XT at someone, knock them out, take their cables and the AMP will probably still be fine.
Generally I’ve really liked the myCharge line and used them a lot more than you would expect as my friends with battery hungry cell phones seem to grab them up when they come over.
While all of the larger myCharge series are pretty future proof with a USB interface, the AMP 6000XT has three. That comes at the loss of having built-in cables, but that might not be such a bad thing as my Power Bank 6000 from a year and a half ago finally had the micro-USB cable die due to excessive use (it was being used for two or three charges a day, dragged everywhere, ridden hard).
The AMP 6000XT has the ability to charge directly from a wall, which is nice in situations where you don’t want to be encumbered by charging a 6 amp battery for 6-12 hours off of a laptop USB connection. If I’m not mistaken the charge time from drained to full is about two and a half hours, but don’t quote me on that.
My initial plan for this review was to charge it up and send it down to DragonCon with a friend of mine to use exclusively for charging for two or three days off of the initial charge. We didn’t factor in that you can burn through 1200mA per hour when at DragonCon in the hotels, so that plan became, “charge it up, use it up, rinse and repeat.” This worked out OK to keep her phone running and taking video and pictures for days.
One of the beauties of these are that you can slap the charger to charge by itself, and charge your phone by itself, and step onto the street with theoretically 8000mAh in your pocket with about the same charging time investment as one phone charge.
The device itself has probably a thousand competitors, if not more. There are chargers with higher capacities (we’ve reviewed some), there are chargers that are significantly less expensive, there probably are more rugged chargers (although in a short search I didn’t see any), but the myCharge chargers I’ve used are all still running and seem to be charging as good as the day they showed up, and with how much I use these that’s impressive.
These things make a great gift for your power-hungry friends.
The AMP 6000XT is available from myCharge for $69.99.
