Review External Battery Charger by 5 Star America

When a company is called 5 Star America, touts its product as "Designed for America" and even has the audacity to say on their website "We are an external battery manufacturer based in United States of America" including a large logo on the back of the case with a stars and stripes design suggesting a waving American Flag... what do you make of that?

Now consider the fact that this batterypack has "Made in China' on the back of it and the "user manual" included with the battery pack is written in a peculiar style of English and has no information whatsoever about the battery pack but only a plea to leave a review of the product and touting the warranty.

I realize many products are Made in China by American based companies, but I am not aware of many companies that try to tout their American heritage as loudly as this company. It's disingenuous.

I"ll try to ignore all that as I convey my thougts and rating of this battery pack.

The battery pack I received had a glossy yellow case (as was the USB cable) with a glossy black top (fingerprint magnet.) It reminded me of an iPod Touch in size and certainly seemed extraordinarily thin. It weighed just 2.99oz.

It has a single USB output rated at 5V/2.1A. The MicroUSB input port is rated at 1.5V . Also included and is a USB to MicroUSB flat cable about 40" in length.

When you are charging the battery, there are 3-LED's along the bottom right of the back side of the case that blink as it is charging. When you are charging a device, the LED"s also light up and roughly indicate the amount of charge left in the battery pack. There is no on/off switch or any way to check the battery level other than what I just described.

This battery is touted boldly as being the "FASTEST CHARGING EXTERNAL BATTERY PACK IN THE WORLD." Well that is quite simply not true by a long shot. In my experience charging an iPhone4, the best external batteries are able to charge the phone at a rate of 1% per minute. This 5 Star America external battery could only muster a charging rate of .5% per minute. That's right 1/2 of 1% per minute... that is the slowest charging rate I have ever seen on the many battery packs I have reviewd in the last several years.

I then attached this battery to my iPad3 using my Apple 30-pin connector cable. In this test it took 30 minutes to get a 1% increase in my iPad battery. That is very slow.

Now perhaps the rate of charging your device is not the utmost of importance to you... maybe you place a greater importance on size and weight. In that case you will be satisfied with this.

I will say that this is one of the thinnest external batteries I've seen in this capacity (3100mAh.)

For me, this is an OK product in spite of it's disingenuos "Designed for America" claim. It's not one of the best performing battery packs out and in fact is one of the worst. It certainly is small and light with enough capacity to give your iPhone at least 1 full charge and probably closer to 2 charges. I do not really care for the glossy black top and would have preferred the same color for top and bottom of the case.

It's one of the simplest to operate battery packs available... no buttons to push, just plug and play. If you aren't concerned about speed but want an economical and thin charger, this could be one to consider. At the time I am writing this review, it is priced very nicely at under $15...a real bargain at that price.

I was provided a sample for review.
Review from Mr Erb.Thanks for watching.