LinkMe 4 Review
Review Tech

iWALK LinkMe 4 Review

The portable charger market is absolutely flooded with hundreds, if not thousands of products. You could argue that most of them are cheap and not designed to last any length of time. So when I was offered the chance to review the LinkMe 4 by the brand iWALK, I was slightly skeptical; I accepted none the less.

Let’s get into the review and find out if this is any good or it’s just another cheap, rubbish entry into an overcrowded power bank market.

iWALK LinkMe 4 Review

This portable charger was delivered quickly and I immediatley got to work on this review. I opened up the packaging to be greeted with a clean, white product box with some high res imagery on the front.

This style of box design has similarities to boxes designed by Apple, which is a compliment. It looks great and left me feeling like this product is going to be good quality right from the get go.

I opened the product box and found the charger nestled in a plastic tray and underneath the tray is where I found the charging cable and product information.

In terms of first impressions then, I’m quite pleased with what I’ve seen so far. I particularly like the size and packaging design, but they could get rid of the plastic try and replace it with a more eco friendly cardboard one.

Let’s take a look at the build quality, functionality and features next.

Build Quality & Design

The LinkMe 4 is a small form factor 4500mAh docking battery designed for the iPhone. It’s that small form factor that initially excited me. Sometimes you don’t want to carry around a larger battery pack which is where this one comes in.

Plastic is used for the construction of the main body of the charger. The two tone plastic design is subtle, but looks great. I don’t personally like the feel of the textured plastic when handling the charger. I can imagine it’d be easy to slip out of your hand if it got even the slightest amount of moisture on it. Perhaps a rougher texture would be better.

The lightning connector is quite short, so you can only really use it with thin cases, if you have a thick, rugged case for outdoor use you’ll have to remove it from the case first.

Speaking of the lightning connector, it does move ever so slightly which I don’t particualrly like, it feels like it could have been better constructed or held in place with a rubber ‘o ring’ or some sort of plastic bonding agent.

And, alarmingly when I touched the end of the lightning connector it registered my finger as being plugged into an iPhone – the led indicator light starts flashing, which is worrying.

The LinkMe 4 had been pretty much discharged all the way, so I’m not sure if I’d have gotten an electric shock or not, but I’m not sure it should start charging when being touched by human skin! I wanted to clarify so I had a look on a popular question and answer site, Quora. Here’s an answer I found:

“It’s because the lightning cable doesn’t send current through to the pins until it negotiates with an iDevice to tell it to do so! There is a microchip in the tip of the lightning connector to prevent situations of shocking you while in your hand. Problems may arise if the protection circuits in the tip gets damaged. Most likely cause for the circuit protection to be damaged and allow current to flow, is a cheap wall charger!”

Moving on then, let’s take a look at the charging performance.

Charging Performance

Despite it’s obvious flaws, it does what it says on the tin. It charged my iPhone 14 from 0 to around 70 percent, so whilst it won’t give you a full charge, it’s a great backup option to have in terms of size versus performance.

Summary & Verdict

I can’t recommend this product just yet. I want to hear back from the manufacturer on whether or not this is just a faulty unit or they all register human touch and begin discharging, which in my limited knowledge on electrics, shouldn’t happen?

For now, I’ll not score this portable charger, I’ll revisit this review in the future and update it.

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Disclosure:

If you use any of the Amazon links in this article they are affiliate links. This means that if you go onto buy something from Amazon I may get a small commission. It won’t cost you anything extra but it helps me to pay for the running costs of the blog and allows me to bring you great content! Thank you so much for your support.

CodeWithMike is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to www.amazon.co.uk.

CodeWithMike is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to www.amazon.com.

The iWALK LinkMe 4 was sent to us in an exchange for writing our review.

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