iPad battery case review: Kensington PowerBack

All device batteries last a finite amount of time until you have to recharge them, meaning that even the iPad and its comparatively impressive battery life aren’t going to be enough for all users in all scenarios. That conundrum has most commonly been addressed for iPhone users in the form of form-fitting battery cases. And while the concept would seem more of a challenge for the iPad, Kensington has attempted it with the PowerBack.
The iPad is a high Compaq nc6000 battery power device (as evidenced by how long it takes to recharge), and accordingly, the PowerBack packs a whopping 4400 mAh of juice under the hood. In comparison, most iPhone battery cases come with about 1200 to 2000 mAh built in. However, because the iPad eats through battery life more quickly, the results with the PowerBack for iPad ended up being the same as with most iPhone battery cases: it comes fairly close to doubling the battery life of a fully charged iPad. Or in the other extreme, if your iPad is dead to begin with, the PowerBack can come close to charging it up.


Interestingly, while the PowerBack is thicker and heavier than I would have initially hoped in theory, after seeing it in pictures, the real thing turned out to be thinner and lighter than I was thusly expecting. Unlike the best iPhone battery cases, which are often only fractionally larger than regular cases, the PowerBack is certainly larger than an iPad Compaq tc4200 battery case I’ve encountered. But that said, it hardly turns the iPad into a brick.
Beyond the battery angle, the PowerBack offers a couple of nice touches. A hole in the back allows the iPad’s Apple logo to show through, which means your iPad can still retain some of its identity. And in a more functional capacity, a kick-out leg allows the iPad to be stood up for display purposes or typed on, and despite being a single leg, turned out to be stable in my tests.
At the end of it all, my issue with the Powerback  was not its size, nor how it functioned as a battery. Rather, because the iPad slides into the product and it’s a single-piece design, two of the iPad’s corners are left exposed partially. That means the PowerBack isn’t much of a protective case. If you’re going to add this much bulk to your iPad, you’d think it could perform the same duties as a basic iPad case which costs one-fifth as much. It reminds me of the early days of iPhone batteries, where similarly unprotective cradle designs eventually gave way to fully protective battery cases by popular demand. I suspect the same will happen with the iPad.
That said, if you need extra battery power for your iPad, the PowerBack is a recommendable product. The $129 price tag may initially seem out of whack, but when you consider that iPhone battery cases which are one-third the size and contain one-third the sony vgp-bps8a battery power cost more than half a much, the PowerBack’s price tag begins to make sense. And after having used it, I found the PowerBack to be a more practical product than I had initially been skeptically expecting, particularly for a first try.
No star ratings on iPad battery cases until I’ve had a chance to test more of them, assuming more products of this type come to market. We’ll see.
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