Eveready Ultima PB10 and PB13 review: Are these sub- ₹2,000 powerbanks worth your money?

Eveready has long been a big name in the field of batteries and lighting products, but the homegrown brand recently decided to step into the world of power banks. I have been using Eveready’s first two power bank products — Ultima PB10 and Ultima PB31 — for the last few weeks, and here are my two bits on whether they’re worth your money.

Design:

Both the Eveready Ultima PB10 and PB31 are 10,000mAh power banks. The Ultima PB10 is your standard power bank with a run-of-the-mill design and Eveready branding in the middle. The good thing is that the power bank comes with both Type-C and Lightning cables built into its body, removing the need to carry around a separate cable.

It also comes with a built-in display that shows the remaining battery capacity in the power bank.

As for the PB31, this is a MagSafe-compatible power bank that comes in a rectangular block shape, not too dissimilar from other products in its category. The power bank features an LED indicator at the back to show the battery percentage and a circular patch on the front to attach to any MagSafe-compatible smartphone.

The unique bit I found about this power bank is that it includes a sort of stand within its body, which means that when it attaches to your phone, it can stand on its own legs, so to speak. However, I found the stand difficult to set up, and even when deployed, it lacked the sturdiness needed to reliably hold the phone.

Features:

Both the PB10 and PB31 come with support for 22.5W wired fast charging. The PB31 features 15W of wireless charging support, and the company also mentions support for Qi charging — though it does not specify which version. Given the lack of mention of Qi 2 or higher, I would assume that this refers to an earlier version.

Both power banks take about 4–5 hours to fully charge, so I would recommend plugging them in before going to bed. I can’t give you an exact metric of how much battery each of them actually provides, but I was using a 7,300mAh device with the PB10, and it was able to charge it fully while still having about 5% left in the tank.

The PB31 offers similar battery life when charging with a wire, but when used wirelessly, the efficiency drops slightly.

Should you buy?

Both the PB10 and PB31 have a listed price of over ₹4,000, which would have been an exorbitant sum to pay. However, the PB10 is usually available for around ₹1,200, and the PB31 retails around ₹1,500 — at which price I believe they make a decent buy.

Though the lack of Qi 2 or higher support is a bit of a miss if you’re using a compatible Android device.