Travel Power

I’m not often drawn to write about gear, but I’ve finally gotten to the point where I’m happy with my travel power system and I wanted to share a few suggestions with you. As photographers, we travel to beautiful locations to capture our images and with that travel, we bring along an assortment of portable electronics.  From our cameras, flashes and lights, to computers, iPads, watches, phones, etc…we have a lot of electronics that need charging!  Over the years I’ve tried various travel power products, had bundle of cords and wall bricks and specialized charging adapters and it got so bad I had to have a whole case of cords, adapters, wall chargers and such.  It got to the point I was more worried about forgetting travel power items than I was about forgetting some piece of camera gear.  Well, I spent some time really looking at and refining my travel power needs to the point where it’s about as light, compact and as versatile as I think I can make it.  Nowadays, it’s a simple process for me to pack all my travel power products in one small pouch and stuff it in my briefcase or luggage.  Of course, when I’m running a workshop, I need to bring a projector, power strips and various other things, but I won’t go in to that here.  This is just about personal travel power needs and what is working for me extremely well nowadays.

I will admit that I am fully in the Apple ecosystem with my portable electronics.  I’ve found it’s just easier to have everything in one ecosystem, however it’s becoming easier to mix and match products and have everything sync well across platforms.  I’m not for or against any one system, Microsoft or Apple, they both have their plusses and minuses.  The good news is that everything that follows here is platform agnostic, it’s really about powering portable electronics in the most efficient manner.  The benefit for me about having most of my electronics in one ecosystem is that the plugs and ports are fairly homogenous, so one cable can work for many devices, cutting down on the number of individual cables I need to bring with me. There are a lot of travel power and accessory companies out there in the market and its often hard to know which ones to trust with our valuable electronics.  Over the years I’ve tried out dozens of different products and companies to find ones that I trust and do the job I need them to do.  Since I’ve done a lot of the hard work, I wanted to share what I’ve learned and what I recommend if you are in the market for travel power products.

When I get to my hotel room, one of the first things I do is set up my workstation on a desk or table.  I get my computer plugged in and charging along with any computer peripherals.  My portable hard drive gets plugged in and my mouse is unpacked.  As you probably know, many hotel rooms do not have enough receptacles to power all of the devices we photographers bring. I often run in to this problem and that is why I try to maximize my capability with each outlet.  To power my computer workstation, I have been using a product from a company called Satechi.  I have bought numerous products from them over the years and overall, their products have been amazing!  Built extremely well, throughly thought out from a users perspective, look good and are reasonably priced.  I have never had any problems with their products and have been around the world on my adventures and never once let me down.  So, back to powering my computer workstation.  I am using their 75W dual Type C Travel Charger to power my MacBook Pro and any other devices I have at my workstation. It comes with two USB-C and two USB-A charging ports, each having different outputs for different devices/needs.  At the time I bought this, it was the only one available.  They now offer two other models at 100W and 108W total output. I have found that I don’t need “fast charging” for my computer workstation.  My computer largely stays plugged in during my whole stay and any accessories I need to charge I connect them at night to be ready for the next day.  The charger has an aluminum case, solid internals and a cord that is typically long enough to stretch to the closest outlet to my workstation.  This has been a game changer for me!

The next travel power item I don’t leave home without is an extension cord with multiple outlets.  As I mentioned above, there are never enough outlets in hotel rooms, and, sometimes those outlets are not in convenient places.  So,  bring a multi-outlet extension cord.  This is typically used to power all of my camera charging needs and I position it in a place where I will see it and see what’s plugged in.  I don’t know about you, but I will admit that in the past I have plugged a battery charger in to a random outlet in a hotel room, say in the bathroom or down low by a desk, and then walked out of the room the next day completely forgetting about my newly charged battery. With this extension cord, I can plug in to a random outlet and then stretch the cord to a more visible place so I don’t forget anything when I get up well before the sun.  I essentially set up a “camera charging station” somewhere near the door to charge my camera batteries, GoPro batteries, drone batteries, etc.  Anything that is related to image creation gets plugged in here. Messing around with electricity and using shoddy products is not something I want to do, especially because I don’t want to lose any opportunities to capture images while I’m traveling, and, not cause undue stress on my batteries so they live as long as possible.  Variable voltage, spikes, dirty power, etc all contribute to unwanted stresses on batteries and will have an impact on the overall life of the battery.  I need to be confident my batteries will be charged and done so in the cleanest way possible.

If you look on Amazon at travel power products, extension cords or adapter,  you will see hundreds of different companies selling similar products.  Most of them are no-name companies that we don’t recognize here in the States (and I’m guessing abroad too!)   Often times the prices are attractive, maybe too attractive(?)  We all know the adage, “you get what you pay for” and sometimes the deals are just too good to be worth it, especially with hundreds of dollars of batteries possibly plugged in to things.  I have tried numerous products from different “no name” companies and most I have thrown away.  That is until I found one power product company that I can highly recommend, Anker. I have watched them grow over the years to become an accessory powerhouse for affordable and quality power products.  I have a couple dozen of their different products and each one has stood the test of time for me.  Built well and easy to use, I’ve not found any issue with any of the products.  They deliver great power at a reasonable price!   The latest acquisition I have from them is a newer power strip surge protector with 5ft cord. This thing has 6 power outlets, enough to power all of my imaging products.  If you look at the pic, you’ll see that there are two outlets per side…someone at the company is really thinking about this because as you know, our plugs and adapters don’t easily fit on a straight power strip, they are often too big and compete for space.  With this design, there is ample room for various charging bricks to all fit in to an outlet.  Smart thinking!!!!  And what I love, there are three USB-A outlets on the power strip as well.  For me this is handy because I will charge my GoPro camera with the battery inserted, running a cable from the power source to the camera.  Plus, any other small accessories I may need to charge related to my image creation.  Everything I need for my cameras is contained on this one strip, which I position near the door or in another visible location, making it super easy for me to remember and grab all my camera batteries and accessories.

Now the last piece of my travel power puzzle is related to my smaller electronics that need charging; phone, watch, iPad.  These are typically things I’ll have close to the bed so I needed to find something that is small and powerful that can keep my personal electronics charged.  Once again I turned to Anker to find a small wall brick that can charge a couple of my devices at a time.  They make a huge variety of products with different outlets and for me I’ve been using one with two USB-A ports on it.  This allows me to charge my phone and watch overnight on two different cords, then charge my iPad during the day when I’m out photographing. I will plug this in to an outlet near the bed, or if I’m in a pinch, the bedside lamps that come with electric plugs in the base.  As a brief aside, I will NEVER plug a phone or iPad directly in to one of these lamp plugs….I just don’t trust the irregular power delivery of those and don’t want to damage my electronics.  I will always have a buffer in between to smooth out the power and make sure no harmful spikes make it to my device.  I won’t recommend a specific model of these to you, I’ll let you pick the configuration that works best for your needs.  In the future, I may upgrade to one of their fast charging model, perhaps with a USB-C outlet, but for now, this one keeps on chugging for me, delivering great results in a compact package.

Now, this last item I wanted to highlight is not specifically a travel power device, but it does make my workflow more efficient while I’m traveling. It’s a bluetooth mouse.  I’m very comfortable using the built-in trackpad on the computer for navigation and for quick editing while on the road.  I travelled without a mouse for many years, just using the trackpad to get around. These days though, since I found this wonderful mouse from Satechi, I always have it with me.  It is the M1 Wireless Mouse, a rechargeable, wireless bluetooth mouse that works with Windows or Apple devices. It only costs $29.99!  It is simple, just left-click button, right-click button and scroll wheel…it does everything you need a basic mouse to do and it does it well. I am faster when using a mouse and it also allows me more fine-tuned control when I’m editing images. All of this saves me time when I need to get work done on the road, which allows me more time to recharge myself for the coming day.

It is easy to initially pair with your computer and connects immediately thereafter when you power on the computer.  It is extremely lightweight and charges via a USB-C cable.  The top surface is grey colored lightweight aluminum, so it feels good in the hand, with the area for your fingers made from a finely textured plastic.  The scroll wheel is knurled aluminum, again, giving a premium feel.  It’s a smidge smaller than a traditional desktop mouse, which makes it great for smaller hands, or just a smaller pack size for travel.  I’ve tried a lot of bluetooth mice over the years and have typically gotten so frustrated with them I end up leaving them at home.  This mouse though, I feel will be with me for a long, long time.

So there ya have it. A few ideas about how to streamline your travel power needs, making your life easier, hopefully allowing you to focus more of your mental energy on being creative and less on the logistics of traveling.  All of these devices fit in a very small travel pouch that doesn’t take up a lot of room in my luggage and which provides a huge amount of charging capability for all of the electronics I travel with.  I know this isn’t sexy or glamorous, but we live in a modern age with a lot of power consumption needs and my feeling is that I want to optimize my entire toolset, beyond my camera gear, so I can have a more enjoyable and productive trip, enjoying the experience as much as possible.