When Apple first revealed MagSafe, one of the first things I thought of was, “that would be great for a battery.” I wasn’t alone. But Apple took so long to bring their own battery pack to market. While I ordered that (review pending!), I also ordered Hyper’s “HyperJuice Magnetic Wireless Battery Pack.” It’s not an official MagSafe battery pack, but it works with Apple’s MagSafe. It has a large 18Wh capacity, can charge the iPhone wirelessly at 5W, and can charge other devices via its bi-directional USB-C port. In truth, it offers features that Apple’s own battery pack doesn’t have, and at less than half the cost! Still, it’s not the perfect battery case for everyone.
You’ll figure out one of its biggest shortcomings pretty quickly…
In This Article:
Specs
- Height: 98.22mm (2mm taller than Apple’s)
- Width: 64.10mm
- Depth: 17.07mm (5mm thicker than Apple’s)
- Weight: 136g (24g heavier than Apple’s)
- Battery Storage: 18Wh (7Wh more than Apple’s)
Size
Upon seeing this photo, Apple inexplicably decided to make the iPhone 13 camera bump an inch thicker.
We can’t have a discussion about this battery pack without first discussing its size. A battery pack that you slap on the back of your iPhone should be able to give you a small boost. It doesn’t need to be enough to double your battery life, you can get a larger battery pack for that. You need to carry this around, so you want something smaller, manageable, something that doesn’t get in the way of everyday use.
Anyone suddenly get hungry for Oreos? Weird.
It’s so large that, on the iPhone mini where the bottom camera sensor is the main sensor, it can block your view in some shots. It actually shows up in photos. You’ll have to take this off to take photos. While I can say that I wish Apple would swap the sensors and replace the now bottom ultra-wide angle lens with a telephoto lens like the iPhone X and iPhone XS, thus solving all of these problems and many others, it doesn’t change the fact that this thing is so big that it ends up in photos taken with the main wide angle lens.
This is actually so large that, when going out, I have to choose a different bag than I might normally carry. A tin of Altoids, my slim card wallet, my keys, and some hand sanitizer. That’s fine for most of my handbags… until I add the battery pack. Then it’s too much for at least one, maybe most of my smaller handbags. I pretty much need to carry one of my larger bags or a hip sling, which I wear cross-body because I grew up in the 90’s and cannot bring myself to wear it on my hip. I’m sorry, I just can’t.
That isn’t a shadow on my wall, it’s the Hyper battery pack blocking the camera.
When you’re actually using this on your iPhone, you’re holding Hyper’s battery pack more than you’re holding your iPhone, especially on the iPhone 12 mini. The grip’s strong, but you may want to have a better hold on your device. It’s also sized strangely. It seems as though it’s higher up on your iPhone than it needs to be, and could be slightly closer to the bottom. That likely wouldn’t be enough to get it out of the way of the camera lens, but it would have at least ensured a perfect fit on the iPhone 12 mini.
So, yes, it’s far too big, but as we’ll discuss later, it isn’t without a benefit: battery life.
Appearance
The biggest part of this appearance is… it’s big. It’s pretty plain otherwise. However, the matte texture will shine quite a bit. From being in my bag, potentially rubbing up against things, including my keys, it has permanent marks on it. I whipped out the macro lens, proving what I suspected. The matte texture has been rubbed off. If you’d like to protect it, you can keep it in a bag by itself. I found one of my old microfiber glasses pouches holds it nicely. Or you can accept that this will get marked up easily.
As you can see from many of these photos, I chose the latter, and probably should have taken photos before that.
I do that a lot.
Additional Juice
I didn’t do rigorous, scientific testing here by restricting my use to certain (or no) activities. The truth is, if I did, you wouldn’t get hourly figures that actually make sense. It would be like saying, “Oh, yeah, I can walk a mile in 16 minutes.” Well, great, but does that tell you how fast I can run it in? No. So if I sit here and try to let my iPhone drain in some weird condition like only watching a test video or loading a mock webpage or in low power mode, you’ll never know what it can actually do.
So here’s what I did to test how long you could keep your iPhone 12 mini on with this battery pack:
- Use the iPhone 12 mini like normal
- Engage low power mode only under 20% or while charging (to reduce heat and battery efficiency damage).
- Try to only use the battery pack between 30% and 80%, so it’s not working too hard.
That’s it. These are things you’d likely do if you were trying to stretch out battery life. You might keep the low power mode on constantly, but I wanted to lean closer to “everyday usage.” In my “real world” style testing with the iPhone 12 mini and the HyperJuice battery pack, you can easily get it to last over 24 hours. In fact, consistently, my iPhone 12 mini lasted over 30 hours. That’s about double the battery life of the iPhone 12 mini. The iPhone 12 mini can last 8 hours of screen-on time with extremely heavy use, and around 12-15 with average to light usage.
The fastest way to charge and get the most juice is to use the USB-C port on the bottom with a Lightning cable.
If you try to charge from 0-100, you’ll be disappointed. Around 80%, it just locks up, even with “Optimized Battery Charging” turned off. You won’t get past 80%, even with low power mode on. Perhaps it’s the heat that’s generated, or perhaps the power required to push the iPhone past 80%, but you’ll want to stop trying to charge then. My iPhone 12 mini still had some juice left in the battery pack, but only enough for a small boost. This means you can likely charge up to at least 50% on even the iPhone 12 Pro Max, likely more.
With my iPhone 12 mini and this battery pack, I don’t need to touch a charger for 30 hours. This does include almost 6 hours of sleep (I know, I should sleep more), but you’re still left with at least 24 hours of run time. That’s enough for an entire day of regular to heavy usage. This convenient battery pack can turn your iPhone 12 mini into a marathon device.
Heat and Charging Speed
One thing I noticed is that this charges very quickly when the battery is low. It’ll get quite warm and the iPhone’s battery will reach 10% in just a few minutes. It does start to slow down after 20%. This isn’t something I noticed with Apple’s battery pack in my limited testing. I believe this is because it’s getting the full voltage possible from the Hyper battery pack, but less for Apple’s. The heat could damage your battery over time, meaning it’ll hold less of a charge due to the heat. That could bite you in the ass in two years. However, for a fast boost, it’s a great option. You can also control this a little by using it more in the 20-70% range, and letting the battery drain naturally outside of that region.
I noticed one unexpected problem when charging with this battery pack though. The screen dims. Presumably to use less power and therefore reduce heat. After charging for a while, the iPhone will limit screen brightness to 50%. This stops after you stop charging and let your device cool a little.
Vs. Apple’s MagSafe Battery Pack?
I will save more of this comparison for when I finish reviewing Apple’s battery pack, but we can at least consider first impressions. Apple’s MagSafe Battery pack has tighter iOS integration, like temperature control and charging speed, battery percentage reported in the battery widget, and a UI indicator for when it’s attached or removed. It’s also far slimmer, but only holds about 60% of the charge of Hyper’s charger, 11.13Wh on the Apple charger vs 18Wh on the Hyper charger.
Hyper’s magnetic charger also has USB-C. You can use this to charge your iPhone and other devices with a much faster 12W of power. This means you also won’t lose as much power to the wireless charging process. I’ve used my Hyper battery pack to give my iPad Air 4 a boost, about 25%. For an iPad, that could be a few more hours of work. Still, even just wirelessly, the Hyper magnetic charger charges your iPhone faster and to a higher level than Apple’s MagSafe battery pack.
Note that while the Hyper battery pack charged more and faster, it only got to 10% more than Apple’s battery pack.
Hyper’s battery won’t have bi-directional wireless charging. The USB-C port is bi-directional. This just means you can’t charge it up as you charge your iPhone with just one plug. They’ll have to be separate. However, you can charge your iPhone from the wireless charging coil while you charge your Hyper battery pack. You’ll just have to make sure to use an 18W charger or greater to ensure there’s enough power to charge both.
The Hyper HyperJuice battery pack is huge. It gets in the way of photos! It also gets far hotter, dims your screen, the magnet isn’t as strong, and it could lead to your battery suffering a little bit more damage over time. Still, it’s cheaper, can charge more devices, charges faster, and holds more juice. Choosing the Hyper battery pack over Apple’s MagSafe battery pack is actually a valid decision.
Overall
Hyper could have gotten away with a few design changes to make me like their “HyperJuice Magnetic Wireless Battery Pack” a little bit more. Make it thinner. Seriously. 5,000mAh is great, but it really could be less. It could sit a little lower, but if it was thinner, this wouldn’t be a huge problem. Other than that? This is a great battery pack. Sure, it’s a bit too much. It’s hard to take with me places when I only want to carry a small bag. But for longer trips or times when I may want to charge my iPad or Apple Watch along with my iPhone from a single battery pack? It’s great. This likely won’t be the battery pack I take with me on a night out or a date that could go on long. That’ll be the slimmer, smaller Apple MagSafe battery pack. But for longer trips or times when I absolutely need the extra battery life? I can carry a larger bag to fit this in it.
It’s a good battery pack for those who need a lot of extra battery life or refuse to spend $99 for Apple’s. For most situations though, you may be better off just buying a smaller battery pack and a small Lightning cable. But that’s not as cool as attaching a battery to the back of your iPhone, is it?