Mophie Juice Pack Helium review

There’s nothing more annoying than running out of smartphone juice when you’re nowhere near a power socket. While there are plenty of portable batteries you can plug USB cables into when you’re out and about, they make it hard to carry on using your phone.

Mophie has a different method with its Juice Pack Helium charging case, designed for the iPhone 5. The idea with the case is that you plug your iPhone into it and when you need to charge it, you just flick the switch on the back.

It’s easy to connect the case, as it splits into two. You slide your phone up into the larger top section and then slide in the bottom part, which has Lightning connector that plugs into your phone. The two halves of the case then clip securely into place.

With our iPhone completely out of battery, the Mophie Juice Pack Helium managed to get it to 78 per cent charge, which is pretty impressive. As the phone is installed in the case, it means you can use it as you would normally while it charges; with the battery ‘bricks’, having a USB cable plugged into your phone limits how you can use it.

The case makes your iPhone a little bulkier and a bit longer, in order to fit in the Lightning connector and battery. However, while we wouldn’t necessarily want to leave the Mophie Juice Pack Helium on our phone all of the time, it’s fine for those occasions where you know you’ll need more battery life, and it’s still small enough that you can slip the pack and your phone into a pocket.

There are a few minor issues, though. First, the depth of the case means you’ll need to use the provided headphone extension lead if you want to plug in headphones that have an L-shaped connector.

Secondly, the Mophie Juice Pack Helium has a Micro USB port for charging it. While it works as a pass-through, charging your iPhone 5 at the same time as the internal battery, we’re not sure why it doesn’t have a Lightning connector on it. After all, the case has a Lightning connector in it that plugs into your iPhone. As it stands, the system means you can’t just use your iPhone 5’s Lightning cable and will have to remember the Micro USB cable.

These small issues aside, there’s no doubting the Mophie Juice Pack Helium. If you need to keep your phone topped up and the iPhone 5’s battery won’t do it alone, this case is a convenient way of doing so.