Keeping your gadgets charged on the go is essential if you travel a lot and expect to get any work done on the road. Thanks to the millions of battery packs that are out there, charging your phone is easy enough. But what if you need to keep your laptop charged while off the grid for a day’s shoot or while on a long flight without an outlet? Omni 20 is one of the only, and most recent, solutions that will charge anything you throw at it, including that ultra-powerful new MacBook Pro.
What started as an Indiegogo project has turned into quite a successful, high-quality power pack for the true road-warrior. Omnicharge’s battery packs come in two variants: Omni 13 and Omni 20 with 13,600 mAh and 20,400 mAh, respectively. While the Omni 20 is likely the one you’ll want to spring for, we’ll start out with the features of the smaller Omni 13 and build up from there.
Omni 13 shaves about an inch off of the size of its big brother and weighs in at just 0.83 pounds. Its weight just about directly correlates to the 2/3 battery capacity compared to the Omni 20. The Omni 13 has two USB charging ports that support 5V and 4.8 amps total. But the special part is the combination AC port that supports up to 65-watt charging of any device through its original charger and barrel port that supports charging from virtually any adapter you may have laying around with the right dongle from Omnicharge. Pass-through charging enables charging both the battery pack and your device at the same time, and several buttons and an OLED screen give you full control over what’s charging, how much time you have left at the current output levels, and various settings the pack has.
Omni 20 improves upon the 13 in almost every way. Along with a capacity increase comes support for charging 100-watt devices such as the newest MacBook Pro with Touch Bar and some of the other larger laptops out there. It’s also the most powerful battery unit an airline will let you take on the plane with you. One USB port supports 5V/3A while the other simultaneously supports Qualcomm’s QuickCharge 3.0. Another major feature unique to the Omni 20 is its ability to also charge devices via its barrel port. This saves a huge portion of capacity by increasing efficiency that would normally be lost by pushing power through both the Omni and then through your laptop’s AC charger. Instead, a barrel port adapter for MagSafe (or any available adapter for your laptop that you can get through Omnicharge) lets you maximize the battery capacity that actually makes it to your laptop. The only caveat to this is that there is currently no USB-C adapter, leaving owners of USB-C-charging laptops stuck with using the less efficient AC-out along with their laptop charging adapters; but it still works. Finally, WPC-certified Qi wireless charging is also included in the Omni 20 for your compatible devices.