Travel Charger Review: Snap Wireless, Belkin and Twelve South

We are so tech reliant these days that when you’re packing to travel often the first thing you reach for are the plugs and cables to charge your devices on the go and when you’re away – perhaps before you grab your toiletries bag and passport. We’ve been travelling these last two months with three different travel charging options for you to consider.

The three options are the Belkin BoostCharge Travel Adaptor, the Snap Wireless PowerPack Universal and the Twelve South Butterfly which is aimed at iPhone and Apple Watch users.

Belkin and Snap’s products are aimed at a similar broad audience, offering wall plug adaptors for all the global markets, along with cable based charging and an internal battery.

I’ll look at those two first.

Snap Wireless PowerPack Universal

Hugely popular online thanks to a smart and strong social advertising campaign on TikTok and Instagram, this is a genuine all you need kinda offering. In fact of the three, it is the only one that on it’s own does the job and you can get away with taking nothing but this unit.

It does come with a nice little carry case which allows you to fit all the global adaptors, but I think that takes up far too much space, and would simply throw the other adaptors into my bags if I was visiting more than one plug style region. I think most people’s travels would cover a single plug type, and thus it’s one and done for packing.

This is several things. Firstly, it’s a wall adaptor for you, with built-in USB-C and Lightning cables to charge your devices directly. Off the wall, it’s also a portable power bank, with a 10,000mAh capacity, enough for a couple of full re-charges of your smartphone.

The included or attached cables are just a few centimetres long, so they are good for sitting next to your device, but when plugged into the wall it’s mostly awkward to use them. Of course there is a USB-C and USB-A socket to plug your own cable into, with a small display to show the battery capacity.

For wireless charging there’s even MagSafe compatibility so your iPhone charging is a breeze.

You are most certainly paying for convenience here, a power bank, wall plug, travel adaptor and cables would cost less – but having a single thing to grab is certainly a winner.

Web: Snap Wireless PowerPack Universal – $169.95

Belkin BoostCharge Travel Adaptor

This is a far smaller unit than the Snap, feels like half the size, and that’s probably thanks to the 5,000mAh battery capacity. No fancy display for capacity, just four simple LED lights, a USB-A and USB-C connector for your charging with no included cable.

Each different world plug clips on with the press of a button and it really does work well and is a very strong connection.

Given I charge my phone every night, I found that the 5,000mAh battery was more than enough for those days out and about given it was recharged every day.

It’s smaller and lighter and a touch easier to travel with and I didn’t have an issue bringing a cable with me where I travelled.

Web: Belkin BoostCharge Travel Adaptor – $119.95

Twelve South Butterfly

For those deep in the Apple Ecosystem, this is a winner. But bare in mind, it’s no good on it’s own.

The price might fool you but in fact this is just a MagSafe wireless charger for your phone and an Apple Watch charge all-in-one, but it needs a power brick and cable to make it work.

This means it’s paired well with either of our previous products if you need a battery on the go, but for just hotel use, you can get away with a simple small power brick and a cable with USB-C connection.

Plug that into the Butterfly and open it out to allow your phone to sit and charge, and your watch to charge on the magnetically attached Apple Watch charger.

Slick looking unit, very small and compact. Just hard to justify the price I think.

Web: Twelve South Butterfly Travel – $219.95