Alxum 10-Port USB Smart Charging Station review
Do you find you have charging adapters stashed all around your house to handle your phone, a tablet, perhaps a fitness watch, the SO’s phone, maybe a bluetooth speaker or kid’s tablet? I did.
I had an area upstairs for my Nook and my Nexus, another area for my HTC 10, my wife had a charger near where she takes her contacts out, there’s a multi charger in my dining area that powers a photo frame and was charging my daughter’s iPad and Kindle Fire Kids Edition, and also my fitness tracker along with a couple of things I’m going to be reviewing soon. We also had another charger near the couch for topping off while watching tv.
Then there’re a couple of chargers floating around for general use. It’s kind of absurd.
A rep from Alxum contacted me with this 108W 10-port USB charger that organizes all (or in my case most,) of your devices and can charge 8 2.4amp devices at full blast at the same time. It’s not 10 at the same time, but dang, that’s a lot.
It’s got a 3 foot long cable to a big ol’ brick power convertor, and then another 3 foot or so cable to the Alxum 10-Port USB charging base. I put in it a a nearly dead iPad 2, a completely dead Fire Kid’s Edition tablet, a completely dead B&N Nook Color, a half dead Nexus 9, a completely dead HTC EVO 4G LTE, a completely dead HTC EVO 3d, a completely dead HTC EVO 4G, a completely dead fitbit clone, and powered the AfterMaster Pro.
It doesn’t look particularly elegant when you’ve got that wide of a mish-mash of tech gear powering up, and the lights may have dimmed attempting to charge all of these (editors note, the lights do not dim when you pull 108 watts, which is the wattage of a non-LED light bulb,) but it worked fine. Everything charging full standard USB speed.
It doesn’t have Qualcomm Quick Charge capabilities, which does make me sad, but it works great.
The thing comes with several tall and short dividers you can place wherever you want, which you can’t really see in my pictures where I crammed everything in, but everything has its own divider.
The unit charges as advertised, or if I did the math right I was pulling about 70% of what was advertised so at least to that point and I don’t doubt it will hit what it claims. I have three issues with it, which is few for me.
My first issue with it involves the charging cable coming in from the side. All the USB ports are hidden away on the back (or front, depending on how you want to angle it). I’d much rather have this be a little wider and all cables be on the same side. For me, I hide the cables behind the units, I guess you can position it like they have in their photos, eh, probably a purely personal annoyance.
Second issue is that it does not include any short charging cables. All my cables are either 3 feet or greater. I’d love it if they’d include a 5 pack or so of the cables they show.
The third is the price. It’s too much at this point. It’s in introduction to the market pricing. $64 is where the 108 watt black ones are priced, the white ones are a little less expensive but a little less wattage too. It’s nice to have a stand for your devices while they charge, but it feels like it’s about $20 too much at this point for the tech that’s in it.
That said, it does give you a single charging station and clear up a lot of those nasty little outposts of chargers you have collected all about the house, and frees up a lot of wall plug space.
The Alxum 10-Port USB Smart Charging Station can be had in 108 watt black for $64.99, or 96 watt white for $59.99
