Journey Glyde review: a flashy 4-in-1 travel charger that undermines itself with an impractical design
Journey Glyde Glyde 4-in-1 Travel Charger Review
Glyde’s journey is love at first sight. When I encountered it, I was preparing to embark on a four-week overseas holiday involving road trips in different places. So I’m excited that this MagSafe travel charger can be used not only as my iPhone, Airpods and Airpods and Apple Watchbut also a portable charger with a capacity of 10,000mAh.
While I’m not a fan of the matte white top panel that has charging pads for phones and Airpods, it picks up scratches easily – I like the sliding panel below, which pops up the charging pads for Apple Watch. The spotted gray surface is fun, and I prefer something similar to the top panel. However, its weight and batch size are worrying.
While the journey listed the 395g Glyde, my hands felt heavier and weighed it myself, it poured the scales at 411g. The extra 16G doesn’t seem to be much, but when you pack your bag for a trip overseas, the gram will rise quickly. Its sliding design also makes travel chargers bulky.
Personally, I think it’s better to carry a smaller 20,000mAh portable charger, a capacity that almost every international airline can carry on your luggage. Most of them are smaller and lighter, so they won’t be eaten in the luggage allowance. I think if the journey raises the backup capacity of Glyde to 20,000mAh, it will make the whole device heavier.
10,000mAh doesn’t sound like a lot during a long journey, but, in a pinch, it’s better than nothing. Enough to fill me Apple Watch SE 2 And mine iPhone 13 Pro Use only once throughout the day. In my specific use case, this will drain Glyde’s journey, which is not ideal as it takes time to flesh out on the power supply. Otherwise, it’s just a bulky and heavy-duty wireless charger. If I didn’t have multiple small trips during my overseas holidays, I probably don’t need to be more portable than 10,000mAh, but this exacerbates the fact that as an electric bank it is inefficient- Colleagues proved this through testing.
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Glyde does not support new efficient fast charging protocols such as PPS, but can still output 20W, so it can still load fairly fast. While most power banks usually provide 15% less advertising capacity due to conversion losses, Glyde is Glyde. A 34% loss was given during the test period. Even at easy speeds, the loss is 27% – higher than expected.
This means that at a capacity of 10,000 mAh, only about 7,000 mAh is available in normal use – enough to charge a phone and smartwatch, but this is not a good result given the price. It is much better to use wired charging on the go, as wireless charging is also reduced in efficiency, and you can expect 50% of your rated capacity. On the plus side, it works fine as a charging stand and can be plugged in with a 15W QI charge rate.
Journey Glyde: Price and Specifications
|
price |
$169.99 / £139.99 / au $299.99 |
|
Wireless output |
15W QI2 |
|
Wired charging |
20W |
|
Device charging |
Up to 4 |
|
USB-C |
Yes (Power in and out) |
|
Battery capacity |
10,000mah |
|
Wireless charging |
Yes – Magsafe |
|
weight |
Listed 395g/411g without cable review |
|
aspect |
226 x 81 x 33mm open / 153 x 81 x 33mm closed |
Should I buy a trip to Glyde?
If…buy it
if…
Consider it too
There aren’t many other things that compare Glyde directly to Glyde’s journey, but there are a lot of travel chargers. Here are a few alternatives, although neither of them will provide you with a backup battery.
