With the summer season just around the corner, I thought it would be a great time to talk about a tech travel accessory that saved me on many occasions, especially when visiting a country I’ve never been to before.

It’s an accessory that many of us have but forget to charge or take with us and it will ensure our devices are charged throughout the day, those of you who are subscribed to my YouTube channel will know what I’m talking about.

That accessory is a power bank. I don’t know about you but I seriously find that they are underrated devices that can honestly help you out in some difficult situations, especially since we live in a society reliant on our phones.

I wanted to start this blog post by talking about an adventure I had in Budapest, Hungary last year and why having a power bank proved to be helpful.

My Adventure in Budapest

My adventure started in the United Kingdom, we decided to take a coach to London Heathrow Airport, which took us approximately 3 hours or just over 100 miles. 

You may be wondering why this is relevant, well you see our coach tickets were loaded onto an app on my phone and so were our boarding passes for the plane, therefore I needed to be careful not to use too much battery up on my phone.

That’s why I decided to charge a power bank to take with me for the entire journey, from our house to our Airbnb in Budapest. 

Now, the phone I had with me at the time was the Google Pixel 6 Pro, which could have lasted me throughout the entire journey if I didn’t use the phone. But that would have been a boring journey. 

I wanted to listen to music on my phone, play games, watch some YouTube videos and so on. But that would have used up a lot of battery.

Whilst the coach that arrived was modern, it didn’t have functioning charging points, so my power bank already started becoming useful.

How The Power Bank Helped Me During the Vacation 

Moving on to the actual vacation, it was a mixed city break which involved site-seeing as well as relaxing in the famous spas and water parks. Places where there naturally won’t be places to charge my phone.

As we didn’t rent a car, we heavily relied on the public transportation system, which by the way, I thought was excellent. We travelled on a combination of trams, busses and underground trains.

The best part of the whole transportation system was the Budapest Go app, which allowed us to buy a pass to travel on the trams, underground trains and busses without the need of finding places to buy tickets.

But once again, this meant that we had to rely on our phones which we were also using to take photos, get directions to places and our public transport passes.

So overall, the power bank proved to be extremely useful throughout the entire trip. I honestly don’t think the trip would have gone so smoothly without it.

How Can a Power Bank Help in Everyday Life?

It doesn’t stop there!

My power bank remains a staple to my everyday tech carry. Whether I’m going on business trips, commuting to work or whether I’m going on longer day trips you never know when a power bank may become useful.

For example, a power bank proved to be extremely useful when I was stuck for a few hours in the night waiting for a train from Worcester Parkway station, which is a station in the middle of nowhere. 

It also proves to be helpful when I go on long cycling trips where I don’t have any access to power other than the power bank.

Which Power Bank Should I Choose?

Power banks come in all shapes and sizes, due to the fact that it is effectively a battery, I would buy one from a reputable brand, or one that at least has good reviews.

I would also say to get one that has a minimum of 10,000 mAh, but the one I recently purchased has 20,000 mAh, which should be enough to fully charge a standard smartphone a few times.

It’s also worth looking at power banks that are capable of fast charging. I find it to be an essential feature for a power bank to have especially when you are travelling as giving your phone power top-ups can be extremely useful.

I went with the Energizer UE20011PQ which can is capable of fast charging my Google Pixel 7 Pro, and can charge up to 3 devices at the same time using the two built-in USB-A Ports and one USB-C port.

Final Thoughts

Overall, a power bank is a great investment, especially for vacations and commuting using public transport.

I mean I don’t tend to recommend using public USB charging points for two reasons, the first one being the fact that you don’t know the condition of the port, I have seen devices get fried after being plugged into a USB point on a public bus.

There is also a security threat called Juice Jacking which is basically a man-in-the-middle attack where a USB connection is used to load malware into the charging station or a cable. This article by Laura Fitzgibbons at Tech Target, explains this threat in more detail.

Have you ever had an experience where a power bank seriously helped you out or where you wish you had one? Let us know in the comments!