Jelly Comb USB Power Muli-meter Review

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this product for free so that I could provide product feedback to the company and post a product review. I was not required to write a positive review and I do not rate products higher than they should have been. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's requirements.

I recently received a Jelly Comb USB power multi-meter for a product review. I was looking forward to testing this product to see if it would be a good addition to my geek toolkit.  For testing things like USB battery packs, I have a USB tester which would let me see the voltage and current but I didn't have a method to test the capacity easily.

Jelly Comb tester

The Jelly Comb tester is able to measure voltage, current and capacity.  It can store 10 sets of data, and even saves the data if the power is turned off.  I considered this a very important feature primarily for testing USB battery packs because you wouldn't want to lose your test data when the pack itself finally dies if you are doing a capacity test.

Easy to read display

For my first test, I used a 5 port 8A USB charger as a power source and tested 3 different USB meters to see the voltage:

Jelly Comb : 5.15V
DROK unit 1:  5.11V
DROK unit 2: 5.17V

As you can see there is variance between the 3 but I would consider it minimal for my use.  I also tested all 3 devices with a 1A load and they all measured about the same current.

For my next test, I wanted to test the ability to measure capacity.  I used a fully charged USB battery pack, the Jelly Comb tester and a 1A load.  Once the battery pack died, I connected the Jelly Comb (without load) to another USB source and looked at the measured capacity.  Here are the numbers I came up with on that test:

- Rated capacity per product info: 6000 mAh
- Measured capacity: 3870 mAh

So the measured capacity was about 65% of the rated capacity.  I plan to test a few other battery packs to get an idea of what sort of loss I see on average.

Testing the capacity of one of my battery packs

For the average user, I would see this as a great tool to make sure your devices are charging at the voltage and current expected.  You could also use it to help measure the actual capacity of your battery packs, and compare it over time.

Here are the main points I noticed about this product:

Ease of Use: You just plug the device up between whatever you want to measure.  The fact it only has 1 button isn't too complicated as long as you read the directions.

Features: I have other similar devices that only measure voltage and current, this one also measure mAh capacity.

Size: The device itself is small, about the size of a stick of gum.

Bottom line: If you are looking to do some at home USB testing, this is a great option to consider.  I definitely plan to use this for future tests

Amazon Product Page: http://amzn.com/B00NHHP06C