Battery packs are nothing special in most cases, but Laser’s use of Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries does make its Chargecore SafeCharge Max lineup stand out.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Longer theoretical life than Lithium Ion or Lithium Polymer battery packs | Not particularly fast charging, especially over USB-A ports |
| Should be safer than competing battery technologies | Smaller battery pack offers lower charging rates |
| Simple battery charge indicators | More USB-C and less USB-A would be better |
Score: 3/5
In this review
Laser ChargeCore SafeCharge Max Design
Laser ChargeCore SafeCharge Max Performance
Laser ChargeCore SafeCharge Max Conclusion
Ethical disclaimer: The Laser ChargeCore SafeCharge Max power banks used in this review were sent to me by Laser’s Australian PR for the purposes of review.
Not shockingly, that gets them… reviewed, and that’s all. Laser has had no input into this review or editorial oversight, and that’s exactly as it should be. I feel strongly that ethical disclosure gets skipped over all too easily these days, so I’m doing what I can to make this point with each review. For more on ART’s ethical stance, click here.
Design
Battery packs for mobile devices are extremely common with dozens of brands – some you’ve heard of, some likely with names that sound more like scrabble high score attempts that you’ve never heard of – competing for your buying dollar.
Laser’s latest battery packs carry the rather unwieldy title of being the ChargeCore SafeCharge Max lineup, available in 5,000mAh, 10,000mAh and 20,000mAh capacities. Laser sent me a pair of battery packs, specifically the entry level 5,000mAh and top tier 20,000mAh battery pack.
As you might expect with capacity changes, there’s a significant size difference between the two packs, because you simply don’t need a bigger casing if you’re packing in fewer batteries.
The 5,000mAh Laser ChargeCore SafeCharge Max measures in at 6.6×1.5x10cm with a weight of 126g, while the larger 20,000mAh variant measures 6.6×2.5x15cm and weighs 396g.
Laser sells the ChargeCore SafeCharge Max 5,000mAh and 10,000mAh variants in black, white, green or orange finishes, while the larger 20,000mAh unit sells in black or white finishes only. Strictly speaking those colours are “Black Titanium, White Titanium, Aquatic Awe and Sunset Coral” – but in the real world, they’re black, white, green or orange.
Colour and size differences aside, the two units share the same design otherwise, with a small LCD display showing the current state of the battery’s charge state at the top left, and a trio of ports on the effective “top” of the charger.
You get two USB-A ports and a single USB-C port on either device, with slightly different usage between the two. For the smaller 5,000mAh battery pack it’s used for charging the battery only, while the 20,000mAh unit uses it bidirectionally for its own charging as well as charging external gadgets.
Given that USB-C gadgets are becoming more prevalent over time, it might have been nice to see dual USB-C here as the USB-A connection becomes ever more deprecated.
Apart from the power pack itself, Laser also includes a USB-A triple headed charging cable with each unit, with two USB-C plugs and one probably-not-licenced-by-Apple Lightning plug. I suspect Apple cares a whole lot less about that kind of thing since it dropped Lightning on its devices anyway.
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Performance
As I mentioned in the intro, battery packs aren’t a new invention, but these particular batteries use a different battery chemistry to the standard Lithium Ion or sometimes Lithium Polymer batteries you’ll find in most standard battery packs. Instead, they’re using Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4) batteries. This (to be very clear) isn’t a Laser invention; there are competing brands in the portable battery space already using LiFePO4.
So why use LiFePO4? It’s mostly to do with safety, with the technology less prone to the kinds of catastrophic events that can happen if standard Lithium Ion batteries go wrong, whether through misadventure or bad design.
There’s a certain prominent phone maker’s brand that discovered this the hard way some time ago, but I’m seriously dating myself there. The point here is that while the Laser ChargeCore SafeCharge Max won’t take every form of abuse without problems occurring – so don’t, say, decide to use them as BBQ bricks on your outdoor patio – their innate chemistry means that under normal usage, they should be considerably safer. That also extends to battery lifespan over a period of time, with Laser rating them as being good for anywhere between 2,000 to 5,000 recharge cycles, considerably more than on a standard Lithium Ion battery pack.
There’s a challenge here for a reviewer of course, because I’m not about to start setting batteries on fire to see how they comparatively burn – I’m not an idiot, most of the time – but also because I lack the time to test some 5,000 recharge cycles, and I’d need multiple units and comparative units running at the same time to get some level of truly useful data in that regard.
The science on LiFePO4 is nicely settled, however, and as long as Laser is indeed packing that into its battery casings, it should be both safer and longer lasting.
What I can test is recharging capability, and here the Laser ChargeCore SafeCharge Max battery packs gave me mixed results, especially depending on which unit I was testing with.
The 5,000mAh Laser ChargeCore SafeCharge Max is the cheapest of the range at $29.95, and that’s not a bad price to pay for a unit with a proper power display to show you how much of the battery is left. It offers 5V/2A charging over either its USB-A or USB-C ports, which isn’t particularly fast if you were after a rapid battery charger. It’s also not really suitable for much more than simple smartphone charging, and you do have to bear in mind that its 5,000mAh capacity won’t likely fully recharge a standard Android smartphone.
As I’ve noted in so very many smartphone reviews, most Android phones that don’t fold feature 5,000mAh batteries, so you could be forgiven for thinking that you’d have a 100% match here. You do have to bear in mind that battery charging is necessarily a lossy matter. Even Laser’s own promotion for this battery pack makes that clear, if you dig into the figures a little.
It states that you can use it to charge your smartphone “up to 1.3” times. Let’s leave the “up to” messaging aside there for a second, because that 1.3 figure relates, as per Laser’s small print, to an iPhone 15 Pro, a phone with a 3274mAh battery. Simple mathematics tells us that 3274mAh times 1.3 equals 4,256, suggesting something in the region of a 15% battery inefficiency rating. I’m not blaming Laser here for that; if you want to get angry, go shout out the window at physics, because that’s the way it is, at least in this universe with its pesky laws of science.
Most phones will quickly start picking up a charge from it, but only at their regular slow charging rates. The 5,000mAh Laser ChargeCore SafeCharge Max works well enough, albeit slowly and with a very small quantity of heat being generated. There’s that pesky physics stealing my energy again!
I’m more enticed by the 20,000mAh unit, and not just because you can obviously charge more with a bigger battery. For the mathematically inclined, Laser’s claim here is that it’s good for “up to” 5.2 iPhone 15 Pro charges, hitting around the same 15% loss of power rate as the smaller pack if you were charging that phone.
Where the 20,000mAh Laser ChargeCore SafeCharge Max gets better is both in that its USB-C port can be used for external device charging, but also because it’s rated for USB-PD at 20W for external devices.
That makes it suitable – in theory – for charging larger units such as laptops, though quite how well that will work may depend on your device, and particularly on the connection that you’re using. The USB-A ports on the 20,000mAh Laser ChargeCore SafeCharge Max are rated at 5V/3A, 9V/2A, 12V/1.5A or 10V/2.25A, while the USB-C port runs at 5V/3A, 9V/2.22A, or 12V/1.67A. The differences there might seem slight, but they’re not if you’re after a powerpack to provide a little top-up to your laptop.
To test this out, I plugged the 20,000mAh Laser ChargeCore SafeCharge Max into a MacBook Air M2 with a partially depleted battery, sitting at 60%. Through the USB-A ports, once the MacBook Air decided on its acceptable charge rate – they’re fussy beasts, Apple laptops – it stated that full charging would take 14 hours and 25 minutes to complete. Comparatively, plugging in via USB-C, the MacBook Air M2 reckoned it would be done in just 2 hours and 47 minutes. That’s quite the difference, no?
To be clear, it’s not going to make it all the way off this battery pack to fully charged, but the point here is that if you wanted a faster small topup then USB-C would be the way to go for this particular power pack if you really had to.
The focus, to be fair to Laser, is more on charging up smaller portable gadgets, but I always like to see where the edges of a product’s capabilities go.
Laser ChargeCore SafeCharge Max: Alex’s Verdict
The capacities and even the charging indicators aren’t the reasons why you might opt for any of Laser’s ChargeCore SafeCharge Max battery packs, because those are hardly unique features, even at these price points.
The use of LiFePO4 batteries, however, is more enticing, because battery safety isn’t something you should take for granted. While I did mention brands with incomprehensible names in the intro, I’d strongly advise against buying any of those, because they’re unlikely to meet Australian power safety standards – and that means that you’re taking a big risk any time you use them.
While Laser doesn’t sell itself as a true “premium” brand – it’s much happier being seen as a value-centric brand – it is an established player in the Australian marketplace and considerably more trustworthy as a result. As long as you’re happy with just regular charging speeds, the Laser ChargeCore SafeCharge Max battery packs are decent value.
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Laser ChargeCore SafeCharge Max: Pricing and availability
Laser sells the Laser ChargeCore SafeCharge Max batteries in 5,000mAh ($29.95), 10,000mAh ($49.95) and 20,000mAh ($69.95) capacities through its own web site and at Harvey Norman stores in Australia.
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