If you just want one to keep in the car in case of an emergency, get a portable jump starter. The question of which kind you need depends on how you'll be using it. Portable jump starters are small and easy to store in your trunk (or even glovebox), while portable power stations can be kept in the garage for repeated use. There are two basic types of car jump starters: portable jump starters and portable power stations. We also assessed extra features, such as a screen or battery-status lights.Show more Things to Consider When Shopping for a Jump Starter Look and feel: We picked the chargers up, stuffed them into a crammed backpack, and carried them around to see how they would fit into our lives.Ability to charge a 15-inch MacBook: To make sure all of the chargers could power a large, high-powered laptop, we connected them to a 15-inch MacBook Pro that normally uses an 87 W power adapter and checked the Mac System Report to make sure it wasn’t struggling to get enough power.If the laptop reached 100% before the portable charger died, we fully drained the laptop again and repeated the test with the partially charged portable charger to find the combined total number of recharges. We let it run until the portable charger died or the laptop reached a full charge. Once the charger had juiced the laptop enough for it to power on, we maxed out the screen brightness and played a loop of high-resolution railway footage on YouTube. How many times each charger could recharge a laptop: We started with a fully depleted 2015 13-inch MacBook Air and a fully charged portable laptop charger.Then we recorded the maximum wattage reading on the power meter. We screwed in 20 W halogen bulbs one by one until the charger overloaded and shut down. Maximum power output: To test the maximum power output of each model, we connected each one to a Kill A Watt power meter and an array of light-bulb sockets.A cost of no more than $300: Based on the range of prices we saw, this is what we think someone would reasonably want to spend on a work-related purchase.Reliable support: If you’re spending hundreds of dollars on something and depending on it in tight situations, you want to know that the manufacturer is reputable and reachable in case something goes wrong.At least one USB-A port: Even though USB-C is becoming more common, most people still have standard USB-A charging cables, so we insisted that our picks have at least one USB-A port.This means, with the right cable, they can charge a laptop or other compatible device about as fast as an AC outlet would. At least one fast-charging port: USB-C Power Delivery (PD) ports are starting to replace older USB-C and USB-A ports, in part because they can transmit up to 100 W (compared with just 15 W over standard USB-C and 12 W over USB-A).Light and compact design: We gave preference to smaller, lighter models since they’re easier to bring to a coffee shop or on a plane.We set our minimum at 60 Wh because that’s equivalent to running a 60 W device (such as a 13-inch MacBook Pro) for one hour. Since some people like to work or watch movies on their laptop on long flights, we capped our capacity limit at 300 Wh to account for this restriction. 60 to 300 watt-hour capacity: TSA regulations generally only permit you to carry spare batteries up to 100 Wh on a plane-or, with airline permission, either one battery up to 300 Wh or two batteries up to 160 Wh each.65-watt or greater output: Most laptops (larger business and gaming laptops aside) need about 60 W to charge at full speed, so we set our minimum limit at 65 W just to be safe.Rated capacity: 20,400 mAh (73.4 Wh) Max output: 98 W Weight: 1.4 pounds Dimensions: 5.0 by 4.8 by 1.1 inches Like the ChargeTech, this model is backed by a one-year warranty. And although it comes with USB-A and USB-C cables, the package has neither a case nor a wall charger. If you want those extra features and maximum portability, this is your best option, but this charger also has the lowest output (98 watts) and capacity of any of our picks, and it’s the most expensive at this writing. The Omnicharge is the lightest (1.4 pounds) and most compact of our picks, and it looks sleeker than most models, with rounded corners that make it comfortable to handle. It’s also one of the few models we’ve seen with dual input options (you can recharge it over DC or USB-C), as well as a screen showing input/output wattage, charge level, and operating temperature. If you have a phone or other device that can charge wirelessly, the Omnicharge Omni 20+ is the only one of our picks with wireless charging capabilities.
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