REVIEWED: SafeKeep Gizmo Leather Wallet
An anti-RFID card slot to stop dual charges is welcome, but a built-in battery is tech too far
Wallets are much like wristwatches and landlines; with phones and wallet-style phone cases like this, who needs ’em? But what if they tech’ed-up? The SafeKeep Gizmo has two slabs or modernity embedded inside. One is a battery to top-up your smartphone, and the other is am anti-RFID compartment to stop dual charges on contactless payment cards (such as an Oyster in London, Iff in Cardiff, and Suica and Pasmo in Japan, to name a few).
Minimum charge
That’s two genuinely useful concepts. However, there’s a problem with the battery. It slips into one of two compartments inside and out. The wallet itself weighs 50g, while the battery adds a further 33g. All good so far. Sadly the power it packs is virtually worthless; it pumped-up our iPhone 5S by a disappointing 29%. That’s what you get from a 1,000mAh battery, tops.
Cable woes
The Gizmo TurboCharger 1000 – which is perhaps over-egging what this flimsy, credit-card-sized battery really is – is also a bit of a pain to travel with. It slips into the wallet OK, but to use its micro USB output to charge anything requires, yup, a microUSB-USB adaptor cable. Obviously that doesn’t fit in the wallet, and though the one provided is pretty small it’s going to get lost. That much is too obvious. Happily, there’s a pull-put USB tab to charge-it up from any USB slot, but the game is probably already over.
Quick charge
As wallets go, the real leather SafeKeep Gizmo is super-slim and takes a minimum of eight cards, with plenty of room for banknotes, stamps, whatever. It’s handy, and perhaps the quick top-up will be useful, though only to get you home. Long-haul travellers need something much more meaty than the SafeKeep Gizmo, but the real annoyance is having to carry any kind of cable around; a pop-out micro USB and/or Apple Lightning cable would significantly increase the price, but without them the concept just doesn’t work. The SafeKeep Gizmo is all about the anti-RFID tech, and that’s enough tech.