ASUS has been thriving with its affordable ZenFone smart phone series and now it intends to enter the mobile accessory business. What you’re looking at is the ASUS ZenPower 9600, which like its name suggests, offers 9,600mAh of battery capacity that’s good enough to charge a ZenFone 5 up to 3 times. In terms of design, it looks quite familiar with a popular cheap and good power bank that’s constantly being sold out in minutes.
The exterior gets a metal looking finish and it comes with a variety of colours. Instead of a full rounded edge, the ZenPower looks more squarish. Unlike the Mi 10,400mAh Power Bank which uses 4x 2,600mAh batteries, the ZenPower 9600 utilises 3x higher capacity 3,200mAh battery cells. As a result, it is more compact and it is lighter too at 215g (Mi 10,400mAh: 250g).
For better peace of mind, the ZenPower gets 11 layers of protection, which is 2 more than Xiaomi’s 9 layers. At the top, you get the usual full sized USB output and micro USB input ports, 4 LED battery indicators and a large power/status button. They didn’t mention the output rating, but we are guessing that it should be pushing 2 Amps at least. If you’re afraid of scratching your precious power bank, there are colourful rubber sleeves available as well. So far there’s no pricing details and it isn’t clear if they would be selling this outside of China/Taiwan.
