The Power Jacket is a combined battery and case for the iPhone 5c. It comes in yellow, green, black and white, although the shades of yellow and green don’t match the Apple equivalents. The case has cutouts for the ports and buttons, and these are the only places where you’ll see the colour from your iPhone showing through the case. At the bottom are holes for the speaker and microphone, as well as for the headphone socket. This is quite small, and we found that not all headphones will fit. There’s also a lightning connector, but this is somewhat deceptive as it’s only for charging the battery inside the Power Jacket and not for syncing your iPhone with a PC or Mac. To insert your iPhone into the case you remove the top section and slide it into place. The fit is excellent, but overall build quality is not. The plastic is almost translucent in places, so you can see a dark area at the bottom where the circuit board lives. Plus, the battery itself wasn’t stuck in place so rattled when we shook the case.
We tested the case a few times, and found that despite having a higher claimed capacity than the iPhone 5c’s own battery, it was able to charge our phone up to only 95 percent from empty. That’s not bad going for a case that costs this much, especially when it doesn’t add too much bulk (it’s 16mm thick) or weight (73g). Four blue LEDs show how much power is left in the battery, and these flash when charging to indicate progress. There’s also a tiny kickstand on the back to hold the case in landscape mode but it we needed to use a screwdriver to prise it open, and didn’t keep the phone particularly stable anyway. Overall, it’s cheaper than some competing battery cases, but by no means the cheapest. We’d much rather carry a higher-capacity USB battery – that will charge any USB device – for reserve power than shell out for this model-specific case.
Jim has been testing and reviewing products for over 20 years. His main beats include VPN services and antivirus. He also covers smart home tech, mesh Wi-Fi and electric bikes.
