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As a ‘90s kid who dreamed of being an ‘80s adult, this immediately commanded my attention: you can now charge your phone with a cassette tape.
Shenzhen accessories manufacturer Remax has apparently been on it for over a year, debuting “10,000mAh” batteries that look like classic cassettes. Depending on the color — yellow, red, or the new green 2023 model — you can charge them up with USB-C, micro-USB, or even an Apple Lightning cable, then output up to 22.5W over USB-A or USB-C to fast-charge a phone.
The $20-$40 batteries aren’t quite as nifty as I originally imagined. While they do awesomely come with their own transparent cassette tape cases, they’re definitely larger than a classic cassette, and there’s no spinning parts to fiddle with.
The original yellow and red models also don’t have a good place to put your charging cable — something remedied on the new green version, which adds pull-out flexible 20W Type-C and Lightning cables while ditching a weaksauce LED flashlight and the micro-USB input.
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The reason I’m not instantly plopping down my own $25: I suspect I’ll be disappointed by their charge. While they may nominally contain 10,000mAh batteries, the fine print shows a “rated capacity” of just 5200mAh, and the red model, at least, only promises 300 charge cycles before that capacity wanes.
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Still, super cute stocking stuffer, and should probably be good for one full charge of a single phone at a time. I’ll leave you with a brief YouTube hands-on I spotted with last year’s yellow variant — Paul here was pretty impressed with the overall feel.
