DECEMBER 2021 MACWORLD 21battery. That’s about
50 percent more than
an M1 MacBook Pro’s
battery. (ZMI lists 3.63
volts and 90Wh; the
MacBook Pro has a
spec of 58.2Wh, and
we can back out from
the battery’s known
mAh to get 11.3V as its
discharge rate.)
You’ll pay a price for it: $149, the
current discounted price direct from ZMI,
isn’t spare change. But given the wallop
the power pack packs, it’s hard to
complain the company charges too much.
The power pack has two USB-C ports
and one Type-A port. Both USB-C ports
double as inbound and outbound charging
connections. The one at left when facing
the ports—and labeled in incredibly tiny
gray-on-black type as IN1/OUT1—can
charge at up to a blazingly fast 100W with
a USB-C cable and adapter rated for that.
The second USB-C port (IN2/OUT3) maxes
out at 45W.
The three ports have a similarly absurd
amount of output power, and automatically
adjust across a wide range of voltages
based on the cable attached:
USB-C (IN1/OUT1): From 5V to 20V,
up to 100W maximum
USB-C (IN2/OUT3): From 5V to 20V,
up to 45W maximum
> USB Type-A (OUT2): From 5V to 20V,
up to 100W maximum with a special and
included Type-A to USB-C cable and 20W
with other kinds of cables
The combined output can’t exceed
210W simultaneously across all three ports,
but you could conceivably charge three M1
MacBook Pros to 50 percent at the same
time (two of them at maximum speed)
before the battery was exhausted.
ZMI notes that you need a “genuine
USB-A to USB-C cable” to achieve the top
charging rate on the Type-A port, which is
hard to parse, but the company makes it
easy by including the kind of cable in
question, and you can tell it from any other
cables you have based on the orange
plastic on the inside parts of its Type-A and
USB-C connectors.
The company also includes a short
USB-C to USB-C cable rated for up to
100W, which is a great substitute or
backup if you have a laptop charging
cable that’s in use.The three ports have so many options that the product requires
several lines silkscreened on its side to understand all they can do.