With Mobile devices becoming more indispensable every day there's a growing market for additional battery capacity. Companies like EE have for many years been supplying USB power packs that can be used to charge your mobile devices when away from the office, and we internally use a 12Ah unit to change multiple devices when off site.
The Nomad is slightly different to the usual footprint because you can only change it in the car
During out test, we struggled to find a cigarette lighter socket in our vehicles that would take the size of the unit but when we did (in the boot) it fitted very well with no movement and remains firmly connected. The charge indicator is on the top and clearly visible in the vehicles we used. When you compare this to the usual setup where your power pack floats around the vehicle on its charging wire as you drive this is hugely more practical.
The device connections are USB-A (the standard usb socket we're all used to) and the new USB-C socket which is a new standard. The reason for this is unclear, and I suspect many of us would have preferred 2 x USB-A until the USB-C standard becomes more widely used but it is what it is. The power output is apparently 1.5A per port (so that's 1.5A useable unless your lucky enough to have a USB-C cable to use).
When charged which takes a couple of hours, and we're assuming having all the LED's illuminated indicates this, then pressing the button supplies power to the accessories. Its a real shame that you have to actually do something to make it start supplying connected devices as in our test we found that we were pre-programmed to just plug it in and go forgetting to push the button and of course not powering anything. I have no idea why they did that either, surely when you connect it to the car it should power the output automatically? I can't think of a situation where you would plug it in to the car, connect your devices and NOT want it to start supplying them, but its too late to change it now.
In our test we used an iPhone 6S+ and it charged it from just below 50% to full in about an hour which you may not think is particularly fast but it is comparable with other devices.
So in summary its a good idea but with a relatively small capacity (3000mAh), relatively high price $50 and problems finding a socket in your vehicle that will take the size of the unit its probably not something that will go mainstream anytime soon. As a side note, for anyone in the UK we did find that it interfered with DAB radio especially when placed in the boot near the DAB antenna so that's something to watch out for.
Please see the Nomad Website Here.