Welcome to the first post of my Newsletter! I thought I'd start off by something that is probably relevant and useful for each of you. I'd bet that you have a number of devices in your home that charge via USB. I'd also bet that if you have children, you've been on vacations where you don't have enough of these things. And if you think buying them from Apple is a good idea, well it's not. Apple likes to charge a lot of money for things like this.

What is it?

The Limefuel USB charger [$16.99 via Amazon] is a Dual Port 4.8A/24W High Output charger. You may not know this but USB chargers come in many versions.

The kind that comes with your iPhone is a 5W charger at 5V is pumping out 1 amp. The kind that comes with the iPad pumps out 2.1A. The Kindle Fire 1.8A. The USB port on your PC is going to do .5A which probably explains why it takes so "long" to charge your phone from your laptop. Some devices are very finiky about this and won't charge at all unless you use the 2.0A charger that it came with (looking at you Dell).

Another way to say it is this:

Likewise, amperage is just as important. Amps are the current that's supplied to your device. Think of it like a river, and the amperage is how fast that river is. Amps are usually listed on your power supply as something like, 2.7A or 1A. This regulates how much power flows through from the power supply to your device. The amperage listed on your power supply needs to match or exceed the amperage required by your device.

[lifehacker]

The Limefuel charger is essentially going to charge the most power hungry devices you own at full speed, and do that for 2 devices. It also is smart enough to step down to meet the needs of any other device you have. And it does 2.4A of juice on each port for a total of 4.8A.

Why did you get it?

On our last vacation I realized that we didn't have enough of these chargers and we didn't have enough of the high amperage ones. Not to mention we each have 1-2 devices in this family that require USB power.

I did a lot of research on Amazon and my goal was to find a charger that did not make you make silly decisions like "plug the Apple device into port 1" and "plug the Android phone into port 2". You'd be surprised at how many devices have nonsense like this.

I also wanted a charger that was not ugly, was not huge, and was compact for travel. The charger comes in white and black. Don't be fooled by the white in the picture (which looks Ivory). The device is in fact white.

The limefuel fit the bill and has great amazon reviews.

How has it made your life better?

I got 4 of these. One per person in the family, and now each person has 2 USB ports to charge phones, iPods, Kindles, Tablets and so on. This way our devices stay charged and we can also perform quick "re-charges" during the day.

Right now we also have one in our kitchen so that we can keep 2 devices charged during the day or night.

Are you going to keep it?

This one is a keeper. I see no reason to give this a short half life in our household.I may get these as stocking stuffers for everyone next year.

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