I got this product for review from Amazon and I have been testing it for past few days, The Product itself is useful in emergency situations wherein you do not have A/C power source to charge your Smartphone or Tablet. It does charge an average smartphone from fully discharged state to full battery charge may be 1 and half times maximum before dying out. It can also charge bigger iPad 3/4 tablet or 10 inch Samsung tablets too from zero to about 40% charge capacity before dying out which is not too bad in emergency situations.
The Tylt Powerplant came fully charged (When you press the button all the 4 LED lights up) But as soon as you start using the powerplant, the LED lights starts acting up. It drops from 4 LEDs (Full power) to about 2 LEDs in less than 5 mins. After that it shows 1 LED when you press the button. It does keep charging despite this LED display weirdness till the Powerplant's battery is really dead.
Now comes the problem. Tylt powerplant does not come with its own charger, So you will have to use your own, for example using it to charge from a USB port on your PC. Well that's where I ran into issues. I used the included charging cable and attempted it to charge on a regular PC port and nothing happened. No lights, nothing. I started to investigate the issue and found that the device was attempting to draw too much current exceeding 500mA so my PC's USB port would shutdown. So I attempted it on a 1A car cigarette lighter port based USB charger and that too had issues wherein it would detect overload and shutdown.
I started to believe that Tylt Powerplant was dead, But I still could not convince myself how a perfectly working electronics can go from fully working to completely 'dead short' by merely discharging completely to an attach device which it was designed for and go dead? - Hmmm... fishy & Quirky indeed. Thanks to many other 2.1A or higher USB chargers and DC-to-DC converters that are lying around in my house I started to attempt to kick start this Tylt Powerplant one by one after about 2-3 attempts it came back to life finally using Kindle Fire USB charger (Which is 2.1A) wherein the Green LED started to blink indicating that it is charging the internal battery. It took almost 6-7 hours before the Green LEDs powered off indicating a full charge.
This lead me to conclude that if you ever fully discharge the Tylt Powerplant as intended the charging circuit draws too much initial current to recharge the internal battery thereby overloading a regular USB port & some low powered USB chargers. You need to connect to a 2.1A or higher USB powered charger to rejuvenate the device back to normal. This also explains why some people has commented that it stops working after few months of use.
Moral of the story - Do not fully discharge your Tylt Powerplant. The other reason for my 2 star rating is the price. IMHO, There are better alternatives out there.
Thanks for reading my review.
The Tylt Powerplant came fully charged (When you press the button all the 4 LED lights up) But as soon as you start using the powerplant, the LED lights starts acting up. It drops from 4 LEDs (Full power) to about 2 LEDs in less than 5 mins. After that it shows 1 LED when you press the button. It does keep charging despite this LED display weirdness till the Powerplant's battery is really dead.
Now comes the problem. Tylt powerplant does not come with its own charger, So you will have to use your own, for example using it to charge from a USB port on your PC. Well that's where I ran into issues. I used the included charging cable and attempted it to charge on a regular PC port and nothing happened. No lights, nothing. I started to investigate the issue and found that the device was attempting to draw too much current exceeding 500mA so my PC's USB port would shutdown. So I attempted it on a 1A car cigarette lighter port based USB charger and that too had issues wherein it would detect overload and shutdown.
I started to believe that Tylt Powerplant was dead, But I still could not convince myself how a perfectly working electronics can go from fully working to completely 'dead short' by merely discharging completely to an attach device which it was designed for and go dead? - Hmmm... fishy & Quirky indeed. Thanks to many other 2.1A or higher USB chargers and DC-to-DC converters that are lying around in my house I started to attempt to kick start this Tylt Powerplant one by one after about 2-3 attempts it came back to life finally using Kindle Fire USB charger (Which is 2.1A) wherein the Green LED started to blink indicating that it is charging the internal battery. It took almost 6-7 hours before the Green LEDs powered off indicating a full charge.
This lead me to conclude that if you ever fully discharge the Tylt Powerplant as intended the charging circuit draws too much initial current to recharge the internal battery thereby overloading a regular USB port & some low powered USB chargers. You need to connect to a 2.1A or higher USB powered charger to rejuvenate the device back to normal. This also explains why some people has commented that it stops working after few months of use.
Moral of the story - Do not fully discharge your Tylt Powerplant. The other reason for my 2 star rating is the price. IMHO, There are better alternatives out there.
Thanks for reading my review.
You can buy one of these from Amazon by using the link below