As a ’90s kid dreaming of being an ’80s adult, this immediately caught my attention: now you can charge your phone with a cassette tape.
Shenzhen accessory maker Remax has apparently been in that for over a year, featuring “10,000 mAh” batteries that look like vintage cassettes. Depending on the color – yellow, redor the new green model 2023 — you can charge them with USB-C, micro-USB, or even an Apple Lightning cable, then output up to 22.5W over USB-A or USB-C to quickly charge a phone.
The $20-$40 batteries are not quite as ingenious as I originally imagined. While they amazingly come with their own clear cassette tape cases, they are definitely larger than a classic cassette and there are no rotating parts to fiddle with.
The original yellow and red models also don’t have a good place to put the charging cable, something that’s remedied in the new green version, which adds removable flexible 20W Type-C and Lightning cables while getting rid of a weak LED flashlight and the micro. -USB port.
The reason why I’m not instantly dropping my own $25 – I suspect I’ll be disappointed by your charge. While they can nominally hold 10,000mAh batteries, the fine print shows a “nominal capacity” of just 5,200mAh, and the red model, at least, only promises 300 charge cycles before that capacity dwindles.
Still, it’s a super cute stocking filler, and should probably be good for a full charge of a single phone at a time. I’ll leave you with a short YouTube practice I saw with the yellow variant from last year – Paul here was pretty impressed with the overall feel.
