Jackery Giant Review

Jackery is located near my old stomping grounds in the heart of Silicon Valley. And they specialize in a range of external and add-battery products for the power strapped iPhone crowd. The company’s products range from a case with built-in battery for the iPhone 5 through to their Giant – a 12,000 milliamp hour best capable of delivering enough juice to run your devices for an additional 220 hours (according to the Jackery website). We put the Jackery Giant to the test recently and were impressed.

Specs
Weight: 10.4 oz
Dimensions: 3.1 x 4.3 inches
Capacity: 12000 mAh
Connectors: 2 USB

The Jackery Giant comes in around the size of a deck of cards, so more diminutive than the “giant” moniker would have you imagine. When comparing to an average Android phone like a Motorola Droid Maxx, it’s about an inch shorter and about double the thickness. In that rather compact package, you get two USB outlets for charging. One outputs at 1 Amp and the other at 2.1 Amp. Both outlets can be used to charge Android and Apple devices with the appropriate cables (not included). Although not a problem for us, those that don’t have an overabundance of USB chargers will be disappointed and possibly scrambling for one on Amazon.

Our Jackery Giant arrived without much of a charge so we connected it immediately to power. Within a few hours, it came up to a full charge as indicated by three bright blue LED bars on the upper side of the device. I dig the color of the Jackery Giant, by the way. Jackery decked it out in a bright orange aluminum case with a nice satin texture. If you don’t like orange, the Jackery Giant also comes in silver. And the Jackery Giant Plus, a sister product, comes in black.

Jackery claims that the Giant will boost mobile battery life by 500 percent. They’re referring in particular to smart phones here. Of course, we expected our mileage to vary. And we instead picked the iPad as our test bed product vs. a mobile phone. We were able to reliably take that device from single digit charges to well over 80 percent charge using the Jackery Giant. It easily connected to the iPad through a Lightning connector and was immediately recognized. That alone represents a major achievement given that many other aftermarket battery products aren’t recognized by finicky Apple devices. Just make sure you turn the Jackery Giant on first using the side-mounted push button.

In addition to its charging capability. the Jackery Giant includes a nice little LED flashlight. That same push button on/off switch also controls that feature. Press, hold and release and the two LEDs illuminate. Pretty cool and functional.

One last note. As we prepared this review, we noticed an amazing price for the Jackery Giant on Amazon. The MSRP on these devices is $129. They’re on sale for $39.95. Here’s the link to Amazon.

Thanks for reading another outdoor gear review from GearGuide. And thanks to Jackery for providing product for this review.