Material Girl: Coffee Cup Power Inverter v. MINI Cooper
I’m always looking for a good multipurpose travel charger; specifically a converter from a cigarette plug in your car to a traditional A/C adapter. I got one for Christmas several years ago from Belkin (couldn’t find a link to it, sorry!) but the problem with it was that it is only for a two pronged A/C adapter and I almost exclusively use my three prong plug on my MacBookPro. The Belkin charger’s connections aren’t particularly tight, which makes me always worried that I’ll electrocute myself, or (more likely) will not notice that the plug has wriggled it’s way out of the charger and then my battery will die in the middle of some particularly important piece of work.
Thus, I began my particularly lazy search for a new adapter. I was quite pleased to find that my junk mail did all my searching for me. Before I knew it, a little piece of mail from ThinkGeek showed up with the Coffee Cup Power Inverter advertised.
As you can see, the Coffee Cup Power Inverter appears to have everything necessary for a productive and powered trip. There are two outlets, both sporting full three prong plugs, and there’s even a USB port! I went straight out and ordered two, one for each car. I was quite pleased since my recent acquisition of an iPhone charger had bit the dust on a trip to Pennsylvania. I was, however, disappointed that they were back-ordered for some time. They must be one o the more popular GeekGadgets.
They arrived and I popped one in the Navigator. It has a permanent home in the pull out cup holder and doubles as a “Flyball Placement Ribbon” holder. The Navigator is quite accomodating in the way that it has five different It’s fantastic. This morning, I decided it was time to introduce the Coffee Cup Power Inverter to the MINI Cooper.
As you know, MINI Coopers are small, microscopic some might say. I love everything about my Cooper except three things.
- The sun visors are virtually worthless. In Cooper’s defense, they fixed this the year after I bought mine.
- The spray for the windshield washer fluid is geyser-like and ineffective. Cooper says that because of the angle of the windshield the extra force helps remove bug goo better. They are, in a single word, WRONG.
- The cup-holders in the front seat are worthless for anything but change.
Keeping in mind Item #3 on the above list, I can now proceed to the purpose of the Coffee Cup Power Inverter review. I have to admit, when the Coffee Cup Power Inverters arrived at my house I was a bit surprised by their size. I was immediately worried that their hulking frame might not fit in the tiny overhead space provided by the location of the cup-holders in the Cooper. I’ve even been putting off testing out the location because I was afraid I would be sorely disappointed. I do very much need something like this in the Cooper because I have found that the fantastic iPod adaptor that I had installed is just about as worthless as the windshield-wiper fluid spewers or the sun-visors. Apparently, the manufacturers of these iPod adaptors can’t keep up with Apple’s ever changing firmware and the newer versions of iPods and iPhones will not charge with the old iPod adaptors. Therefore, I was completely enamored of the USB port that I would be able to use with the Coffee Cup Power Inverter.
This morning, I took the plunge. And this is what I got:
How cramped does this look?
As you can see, it’s totally cramped. The Coffee Cup Power Inverter barely fits into the space provided. For scale, the black thing shoved into the other cup-holder is a sunglasses case. Needless to say, I’m a bit disappointed. I don’t believe there’s any way to “mod” the cup to make it fit. I have considered looking into a mod to hang the cup off of one of the existing cup-holders. I’ve also considered just saying “Forget it!” to the whole thing and giving the darned Power Inverter to my father who’s been lusting after them ever since he saw them sitting on my kitchen counter hours after they arrived via UPS.
Moral of the story? MINI Coopers are finicky little creatures and they require particularly specialized equipment to accessorize.
I would be reluctant to plug a laptop or iPod into a DC converter. The power probably ebbs and flows in ranges not healthy for the electronics of these devices.
I used my old Belkin charger with my old MacBook and never seemed to have an issue. Of course, I never used it for any length of time. Usually just give me a little extra battery life to make a save and then power down. But good to know. I’ll have to check into that and see if they’re really safe or not.
Have you tried charging your MacBook in the Navigator via the Powercup? A lot of times the car chargers don’t have enough juice to charge a laptop… If it does charge the laptop, then I may well need to get one for our tournaments in York given the outrageous electric outlet fees. Sorry it didn’t work so well in the Mini.
I tried out the charging quickly yesterday. I believe that it’s good for “charging” but not good for powering during use. When I opened the MBP and was testing out using it while it was plugged in, the charge kept cutting off and on. When I wasn’t using it, however, there were no surges in power and the charge indicator stayed on. If you want to try out mine from the Cooper to see if you like it, let me know. No reason for you to go buy one with out test driving it when I have so many!!
Thanks! If your not in a rush, can I try it out at the next tournament and see if it charges the battery in my MBP? Or I suppose I could try it out at practice, too!
Whenever you would like to try it! The one from the Navigator will be available for use during practice (since we always have the Navigator with us), otherwise I can just make sure I bring the Cooper one with us to the next tournament.