Give yourself a power-up

Short and sweet

If you've ever needed to charge your phone as quickly as possible before running out the door, buy this charger for your home. While you're at it, grab this charger for your overnight bag.

If your phone has died while you're out and about or you have friends with smartphones and you like being a hero, get this portable battery pack.

Details

There are tons of cheap power adapters you can buy to charge your gadgets. Most of them are crap, and some are downright dangerous and could burn your house down.

Safety first

A lot of generic chargers can be found for a few bucks, and a very rare few of them are ok. Unfortunately, most of them are dangerous in that they could damage your device, or worse, malfunction and cause a fire. Many of them have an audible hum that will drive you crazy. Most of them die too soon. Skip the generics. Besides the big name brands that you already know, Anker and RAVPower have emerged as high quality brands at affordable prices. These are the chargers you're looking for.

Do it faster

Most of today's gadgets can be charged much faster if you plug them into a charger that can deliver power faster. If you're an iPhone user, these chargers will be more than twice as fast as the one that came with your phone. The key is to buy a charger that delivers 2.4 amps per port, like the ones I listed above.

Don't waste your newfound speed

Without giving a lesson on electricity, I'll just say that the longer the USB charging cable, the slower your device will charge. Stick with charging cables no longer than 6ft. This is where the Anker 40W charger I recommended for home use is your friend; it comes with a 5ft cord to bring the charger closer to you. The distance we want to minimize is that from the charger to the device.

Take the show on the road

For overnight trips and general travel, the home charger is too much to pack. That's why you also want this RAVPower charger. It's small, has two ports that can both provide fast charging simultaneously, and the prongs fold in so they won't be damaged in your bag.

When you're on the go, sometimes it's hard to find an outlet. That's where this Anker portable battery pack comes in handy. It's fairly compact and light weight, provides fast charging, and has enough capacity to charge your phone multiple times over. Or more likely, charge your phone, and your friend's phone, and that cute stranger's phone. Seriously...everyone's phone is dead all the time. Having this battery will make you more attractive.

The only catch with these portable battery packs is that it takes a long time to charge the battery itself. Just remember to top it off regularly and you'll always have plenty of power. The next generation of battery packs seem to feature faster charging for the packs themselves, but they're still expensive, and the current ones have so much capacity that you'll rarely find yourself running them on empty anyway, so don't worry about waiting for those. Buy now!