Never run out of Ipod juice (battery power) again

OK, perhaps that title overstates it, but if you have an Ipod, you know the pain of seeing that red icon (on the video ipod at least) indicating that you're about to run out of power. How would you like to be able to make it last up to 16 hours (on top of the built-in battery)?

With the Nyko iBoost, your desires are answered. It's a very slim, very light add-on battery built into a case that easily encloses your ipod, with adapters to fit different models.

As a test, I set my ipod to "repeat all" and have let it run (after letting the built-in ipod battery drain first) and it's been running (playing podcasts) for 24 hours. I kid you not. The stated power is 7 hours for video and 16 hours for music. (I wonder if the lower bitrate for podcasts somehow uses less power.)

A cool feature is that when you run it, it drains the iBoost battery first, then the Ipod (so if you pull it away, you still have as much charge as possible in the ipod as a standalone device).  Similarly, when you charge it (with the ipod in it), it charges the ipod first, then the iboost. Of course, it uses the same connector to charge it as the ipod itself (via usb or any standard apple usb power plug/car charger), so no extra cables are needed.

The list price is $34.99 (I think, couldn't find it on the Nyko site), but you can find it on Google Products Search (formerly Froogle) for about $15. I got it on woot at only 2 for $20! :-) I thought I might need a couple for some long trips I had planned, but now I think I can resell the 2nd one. :-)

tags: ipod  tools  

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