UGREEN 300W 48000mAh Portable Power Bank weekend getaway review

Ugreen has released a 48,000mAh (153Wh) portable power bank with 300 Watt peak output, 3 USB-C ports (one bi-directional) and two USB-A which looked to be the perfect travel companion for a weekend family getaway, so that’s how I tested the unit during 10+ hours of driving and two nights away from a wall-outlet charger.

TL;DR – performed as advertised, have some notes

The UGREEN power bank also sports a little flash light on the side that might be useful in a camping or roadside breakdown with low, high, and flashing, but I didn’t find anything particularly useful about it on my trip, which I guess is a good thing.

I was expecting a higher phone usage than normal, mostly due to taking pictures and video and bored kiddos on the rather un-scenic highways and did a quick bit of math to see what we would need. My Pixel 8 Pro was sporting a 5050 mAh battery, my wife’s Samsung Galaxy 21 Ultra and my oldest’s came in at 5000 each as well, and my old Note 8 had (I believe) a 3300mah battery. From drained to full for the entire family should have been 18,050 mAh give or take. I expected roughly two and a half charges for all our devices based on the mAh rating.

You’re laughing at me at this point, I know. The Pixel 8 pro and Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G both list a 19.25 Watt Hour battery, and the Note 8 is showing 12.71Wh. 70.4 Watt hours total. I should have been expecting slightly over two charges for everyone but I had my eyes on vacation.

I had planned to exit the house with everyone’s phone charged and hit the road for three days and use nothing but this 48K mAh power bank. I woke up to a mostly dead phone on the day we were leaving, 3 actually… ok no problem – I plugged the input line into my car and plugged the two USB C ports into my kid’s phones and watched as the unit went from 100 down to 96 and then back up to 100 over the first day of driving. Mine slowly charged in the wireless cradle, and off we went.

Set up in the hotel I went to charge three phones for for the night and woke up the next morning and two were charged. My Pixel 8 had not charged much, it shut off for adaptive charging that night and did not kick the charging back on when it was supposed to. I unplugged it and plugged it back in and went to eat the delightfully terrible hotel breakfast and came back to a mostly charged phone.

The second day we managed to drain everything other than the battery. Someone had impacted my car in a parking lot, phone calls, videos, and a very long call in a very little service area and just a whole day of looking up places, driving to them and enjoying… and two kids playing Roblox during the boring moving parts meant 4 dead phones on night two.

I woke up to a fully charged phone family and the UGREEN Power Bank claiming it was down to 26%. This was more use than I expected. It had been in the 70’s the night before and now was 35% down. By this point we were at a good 6 phones charged, and that night with dead phones my phone and my wife’s took the last 26%.

The last day of our three day vacation we woke to a completely drained power bank. Plugged it in the car, headed back toward home, and by the time we got home 6ish hours of driving later (different route,) the UGREEN 48000 mAh power bank was full or close to it again.

Other than forgetting that you go by wattage and not mAh this went about as expected with us using and receiving about the expected charge.

The unit fast charges, super fast charges, and probably does some other nifty speed charging tricks, but it delivered the 153 expected Wh give or take, and was a device power station for four people who were taking photos, syncing to the cloud, using data in the middle of nowhere.

Re-reading this at this point I realize this sounds like a fairly device centric vacation. It wasn’t other than Google Maps, and my calls and documentation of the damage to my car.

UGREEN 48000mAh shortcomings?

The lack of plugs or any way to charge this built in feel like an oversight. Just a little wall port charger that can attach and you’d have a complete little travel buddy. As it stands if you walk out with this and forgot to charge it it’s a lump.

While all the fast charging speed options are cool, I do wonder if this had the ability to switch into slower charging mode if less power would be lost to heat. Not that there’s a lot of heat with these.

Wish there was a “display off” button for when you’ve got it on the nightstand for charging everyone’s phones. It’s possible the one button on the front does this, but as it annoyed me awake and tapping things blindly didn’t turn it off I don’t know. (This is on me, not on them)

Overall

Appeared to do exactly as advertised in terms of Watt to Watt transfer. Fast charged what could, and looked neat while doing it.

However, at nearly $1 per Watt Hour current pricing on Amazon, the unit feels a little overpriced. Then again, I’m pretty cheap.

It’s currently available on Amazon for $139, although I would expect that to drop as it becomes the previous new thing.

If it’s not clear, I did like this.