ASUS ZenPower Ultra Hands-on, First Impressions

ASUS’ bigger and better power bank is coming to the Philippines soon and while we await its official local release, here’s our brief hands-on with it.

The ASUS ZenPower Ultra has double of everything its predecessor has. It’s got twice the size, capacity, and ports. There’s also an additional LED flashlight to top everything off.

It’s still made out of quality aluminum which feels premium on hand. This is one of the great trait of the previous ZenPower that other power banks in its range don’t have, aside from Xiaomi of course. A 4 tiny LED indicator still shows how many bars you have left.

Aside from material, its tallness is also one of the first things you’d notice upon holding. Since it’s got twice the capacity — from 10050mAh to 20100mAh. If we would translate that to the needs of the Zenfone 2 Laser, it would be of service 5.5 times.

Now that we have two full-size USB ports, you can simultaneously fuel up two devices. Both ports support Quick Charge 2.0, so it’s got fast-charging capabilities and for those who are wondering the rated output are 5.1V/2.4A, 9.1V/2A or 12.1V/1.5A. A trusty micro-USB port is still where you plug in to induce power to the bank and this port also supports Quick Charge 2.0 meaning you can do fast-charging of the power bank as well. ASUS claims a full charge for about 7.5 hours.

Not all power banks are created the same and having the ASUS brand labeled on the device, you’re getting a number of technologies built to it for protection:

• Temperature protection
• Short circuit protection
• Reset protection
• Input over voltage protection
• Output over voltage protection
• Input reverse direction protection
• Over charge/over discharge protection
• Output over current protection
• Cell PTC protection
• Adapter protection
• JEITA protection

It comes in three colors — black, silver, pink — so you can still put a bit of personality to this industrial accessory. Pricing is still a mystery but we can say it would be above the Php2k mark.