USB Voltage Booster

20th December 2008

I purchased this item to charge my N95 8Gb using an existing USB to 2mm plug cable with a rechargeable USB power pack (in my case, the APC UPB10). Although the charger I got with the phone claims to be 5v, the phone seems to need a bit more than this to charge reliably (the Nokia car charger is 5.7v for example, but the mains adaptor supplies more current so the voltage probably doesn't drop so much under load), and this little adaptor works a treat. It seams solid and well built, the LED illuminates red under load (green off load) and is labelled as providing 6v at 400mA - so don't worry too much about the 9v reference in the description, I reckon it's better regulated than that under load. Remember the spec for USB supply voltage is between 4.75v and 5.25v at 500mA - so if you have a USB port that is a little underpowered for your device that should charge off a USB port, this could be the little gadget you're after.