Full Review

21 February 2008 - Everything needs charging these days, but trying to find an available power socket for your battery charger can be tough, so UniROSS has come up with a better idea: use one of your USB sockets. But can its charger fulfil your charging needs? We get charging to find out.

The UniROSS USB Charger charges either 2 AAA or 2 AA batteries by plugging directly into a USB socket.

In the pack you get four AAA UniROSS batteries alongside the charger. The charger can swap between AA and AAA by flipping a bracket and there are two lights, one for each battery to let you know when they are fully charged.

Simple, and effect and when it came to charging batteries the USB charger does exactly as promised, the trouble is, the housing is just too large. So large in fact that users of a computer with two USB socket close to each other won't be able to use the other socket while the charger is in action.

This can be easily solved by an extension cable included in the box, however there isn't one.

Additionally this isn't the fastest way of getting AAA or AA juice. If you opt to charge the four AAA 1000mAh Ni-MH batteries included in the box you'll be there for a long time - 26 hours in fact. Being able to only charge two batteries at a time at a charge length of 13 hours it's not really a quick solution.

You can decrease this time, by buying Ni-Cd battries, but for AAA 250mAh Ni-Cd it's still 3 hours 15 minutes.

VERDICT
As a concept the idea of using spare USB sockets to charge your batteries is a great idea, however in practice the charging device is large and cumbersome and will only hinder not help most computer users looking to make the most of their redundant USB sockets.

As for the charging times, it might save you money, but life is too short to wait 13 hours for two AAA batteries.