Charge PitWhat do you do when your place is filled with gadgets, chargers and cables – like the DigitalReviews office?

You look for a charging station that can help eliminate some of the clutter.

Luckily MobileFun came to the party with the Charge Pit 6-Port Universal Charging Station.

First Impressions

The review unit came in Artic White which is a nice glossy finish that would go inoffensively into most decor. The Charge Pit surprised me with its size for what is designed for 6 devices.

The 6-port USB charger comes separate from the chassis. The base plate has a fixed position for the charger to rest in and the housing has 12 positions to feed cables through in the troughs where your devices can rest in either portrait or landscape position.

With the exception of the mains power cable, the Charge Pit does not come with any cables – that is purely a BYO affair.

 

Under the HoodIn Action

Getting the Charge Pit up and running is a no brainer. Lift the top off the unit, hook up to mains power, plug in the USB cables, feed them through the slots and reassemble the unit. There is no significant mechanism to secure the cables to stop them dropping down, but with a little care where to rest the plugs they have stayed in place so far.

Charge Pit claims Smart Port that features fast charge technology, auto adapting to charge iPad, iPhone, Samsung Tab and all iOS and Android devices simultaneously with its 10A total output.

With my Nexus 6p, the Charge Pit delivers 1500 mA, while the official charger delivers 1800 mA. Not bad but not enough for the Android Marshmallow to register “fast charging”. The Xiaomi HM1s draws 500 mA, and there were no issues charging an iPad2 along side with the Xiaomi, the Nexus 6p and two Lume Cubes.

The troughs of the Charge Pit keeps all the devices stacked neatly out of the way. The Lume Cubes being a cube gets to sit on top. Everything is easily kept off the table.

 

USB ChargerGripes

The Charge Pit takes the chargers and cables off the desk, but with the numerous openings it is easy to see the cables underneath. I wish there is some kind of cable management offered to keep things tidy. It would certainly make life easier when you need to swap cables in and out quickly if they aren’t jumble up underneath. Even Velcro tape would be handy.

The power plug juts out a bit from the back of the unit so it cannot sit close to the wall. Not a deal breaker but it would be nice not to lose more desk space.

 

Conclusions

The Charge Pit does a decent job of keeping cables and devices from lying about and the 10A output is enough to cater for my current mixed needs. Even with half a dozen Nexus 6p plugged in there is still 1A spare. It is a good solution for charging multiple devices at home or at the office.

The Charge Pit 6-Port Universal Charging Station is available in arctic white or piano black from MobileFun for £59.99.

 

Technical Specifications

USB Charger

6 x USB Port

Input: AC 100V – 240V, 50Hz – 60Hz, 1.5A

Output: DC 5V, 10A (max. output for 6 USB ports)

Dimensions: 29cm x 17cm x 8cm

Weight: 0.8kg