Mophie Space Pack review

The iPhone 5 and 5S are excellent to the point of near perfection, but there are a few nagging things about them that could use improvement. Luckily, the Mophie Space Pack hits on all those pain points.

The Mophie Space Pack can be thought of as a 3-in-1 iPhone accessory: a case, an extra battery pack and an additional storage pack. While it envelops and protects the phone from most scratches and drops, it also gives the phone more juice and additional memory.

When I was first introduced to the Mophie Space Pack back at CES 2014, I thought to myself, "Why hasn't anyone thought of this before? It seems so obvious." And while it does seem like an obvious thing to make a battery pack that also offers more storage, pulling it off easily is the tricky part, and Mophie nails it, more or less.

If you're already familiar with Mophie's iPhone cases, you'll feel right at home with the Space Pack. In fact, it's nothing more than a new Juice Pack Air with additional storage. You slide your iPhone 5/5S into the Space Pack, and the rear on/off switch does the rest.

There is also a silver indicator button on the rear, which was black in previous Juice Pack models, that shows you how much battery life the case itself has remaining.

Mophie Space Pack: Sweet iPhone juice and storage

With a capacity of 1,700 mAh on the Space Pack, you're doubling your iPhone 5/5S' battery life. Moreover, you'll get an additional 16GB or 32GB of storage depending on which model you buy. They are priced at $150 and $180, respectively.

The only learning curve you'll have here is the few moments it takes to familiarize yourself with Mophie's Space app. It's available for free in the iTunes App Store, and it's what allows you to take advantage of the additional storage that the Mophie Space Pack offers.

You'll see that the app's design is very much in line with elements in iOS 7. It's also intuitive to use, so you can figure out what's going on just by playing around in the app.

Adding videos, music, documents and other times of media to the Space Pack is easy with the app. All of your media and documents are neatly organized, too.

What's also great about the Space Pack is that you don't have to do all your organizing and interfacing with it on your iPhone 5/5S. You'll be able to plug the Space Pack into your computer to add, remove, sync and organize data, as well as giving it a light charge while you do so. If you want to add more songs, for example, you just do so via the computer. When you slide your iPhone 5/5S back into the Space Pack, you'll be able to access those files.

Verdict

If you're looking for more juice for your iPhone 5/5S, and you don't mind having in the form of a case, you'd better go with the Mophie Space Pack for that sweet, sweet storage. Unlike other smartphones that have microSD card slots, the iPhone doesn't have expandable storage, so the Mophie Space Pack is the next best thing.

All day battery life, sometimes two days, plus more than enough storage than you could need is a dream for the iPhone 5/5S. Mophie really delivered with this case/battery/storage combo, and we certainly don't mind the relatively high price tags for the two variants.

The 16GB Space Pack will set you back $150, and the 32GB model is $180. If you're going for additional storage, you might as well go all the way with 32GB. That's what I'd recommend. The cases also come in either black or white.