Lepow Moonstone 6000mAh Power Bank - Closer Look and Testing

Closer Look:

As we take a closer look at the Lepow Moonstone 6000 one of the first things I noticed was the design. I've seen some products that were all about pure function and never really took interesting design into the equation. The Moonstone has a nice sleek design and while you can clearly see the seams of the plastic along the edge of the sides, the build quality feels pretty good as well. The Moonstone is pleasantly heavy, but it's not too bulky or awkward. The "stone" shape adds a bit more bulk to it as it's actually 28mm thick in the middle. As I handled this product for the weeks that I had it at BCCHardware, I was impressed by the overall feel and quality of the build. All the seams stayed tight and even though it made quite a few trips in my laptop bag, it never seemed to be the worse for wear.

While the size is a little bit larger than some may like, it still is pretty pocketable and it easily fits into your laptop or camera bag. When I'm on trips, I use my Nexus 5 to capture GPS data to merge with my photos, so it uses a fair bit of battery. Having this unit on-board means that whether I'm hiking in the mountains or covering technology at CES, I would be able to stay mobile and stay charged.

Testing:

When it comes to testing a battery there really isn't much else to do but to charge it up and see how many times you can charge your devices before the battery itself needs to be charged up again. For this I used my Nexus 5, iPod Classic 160GB, Samsung Galaxy S3 and Nexus 7 (1st Generation). For this test I charged up the Lepow Moonstone and then charged as many devices as I could before the Moonstone needed to be charged again. The mobile phones were ~15% battery remaining when I started to charge them.

• Nexus 5 (charged 2x)
• Samsung Galaxy S3 (charged 1x)

At this point, I did have to charge the battery again, but it still managed to charge up two devices twice each. Next up I charged up my other devices.

• Nexus 7 (charged 1x)
• Nexus 5 (charged 1x)
• iPod Classic 160GB (didn't fully charge)

The Lepow Moostone still have some life left to give when it was done charging these devices from their ~15% charge state, but with only one bar left remaining, I'm unsure as to how much longer it would stay charging my devices and how much life it had left to give.

Conclusion:

Overall, I'm somewhat pleased with the Lepow Moonstone 6000mAh. It does what it says it will do and unlike companies that we dealt with a few years ago, they don't lie on their performance numbers. In the early days of portable batteries, companies would rate their mAh rating based on a 1.2v load but when you up the output voltage to 5v, you'd get only about 25% of what they claimed. Thankfully Lepow is honest and the math shows that you get what you are paying for. I was able to charge my devices several times and even charged two of them at once. Where Lepow does do some interesting measuring is when it comes to dimensions of their device. They claim it's 0.4-inches thick and the 9000mAh version is a mere 0.8-inches. In reality this version is 1.1-inches thick so it's not nearly as sleek and slim as they claim. The end is that thin, but it gains some girth toward the middle and they "forget" to tell you that.

That being said, the Moonstone is very simple to use. It does come with a micro-USB cable to charge it with from any available USB port and this is a nice high-quality flat cable that has accents colored the same as the Moonstone itself. This is a nice touch and shows that they care about appearances as well as what is inside.

Turning it on to charge your devices is as simple as a short press on the only button on the unit. This will also show you how much battery is remaining. Once it starts to charge, you're good to go. It's pretty simple and very straightforward.

• Decent size - albeit a little thick
• Works exactly as advertised
• Good build quality
• Can charge two devices at once

• Could include a 2.0Amp wall-charger to speed up charging
• Slow to charge from a laptop (less than 2.0Amp output)
• Device is much thicker (almost 3x) than specifications claim.

I'd like to thank Lepow for sending this product our way for a review. If you have any questions, comments or other feedback, please post it at the link below.