Tilta Portable Charging Station review: charge four batteries at once!

Home / Reviews / Reviews / Tilta Portable Charging Station review: charge four batteries at once!

Amateur Photographer verdict

The Tilta Portable Charging Station can charge four camera batteries at once, and do so rapidly, too. What’s more, it’s well made and doubles up nicely as a storage case for your batteries.

Pros

Charges four batteries at once
Affordable price
Rugged design

Cons

No percentage battery level meter

The question of independent batteries verses the manufacturers’ models is one as old as digital cameras themselves. But now that we generally get no charger in the box when buying a camera, new opportunities arise for third parties. I have been a fan of Hahnel’s ProCube series for its ability to charge two batteries at a time, but this new Tilta Portable Battery Charger can pump the juice back into four batteries at the same time, and claims to do it much faster than we could manage using a single charger.

Tilta Portable Charging Station at a glance:

£29.58 charger unit on its own
£121.38 with four batteries
£25.50 battery only
Simultaneous charging of up to four batteries
45W PD Fast Charging
Four batteries charged in three hours
Measures 124x57x77mm
Weighs 175g
Lumix, Canon, Fuji and Nikon variants
tilta.uk

The Tilta Portable Battery Charger comes in a rather fetching NATO green to match the firm’s new range of camera batteries. I hadn’t realised that it could matter to me what a battery charger looked like until I saw this rugged unit that has the appearance, of being fresh from the tank battalion quartermaster’s stores. It looks tough and has a clamped lid that gives the impression that it is sealed against desert sand and tropical rain – although it isn’t, and probably doesn’t need to be.

It’s very well made though, and presents us with an ideal place to store our spares with minimal drain as much as it does to re-power them.

Four batteries can be charged at the same time and four lights on the side of the unit, that look like air vents, indicate the progress of the process – red for 0-30%, yellow for 30-90% and green for 90-100%. The lights will also flash red at you when the cable or power source you have connected is insufficient for the task.

Tilta Portable Charging Station with four batteries installed. Image credit: Damien Demolder

Tilta Portable Charging Station key features:

Compatibility: Versions are available for Canon LP-E6, Fujifilm NP-W235, Panasonic BLK-22 and Sony FZ100 batteries
USB-C power input: Power is supplied though a USB-C port, with a charger cable supplied in the box
Size: The charger unit measures 124 x 57 x 77mm and weighs 175g
Charge level indicators: Four lights indicate battery charge level – red for 0-30%, yellow for 30-90%, and green for 90-100%

Tilta BLK22-type battery with USB-C charge port — Tilta’s own batteries have a handy built-in USB-C charge port. Image credit: Damien Demolder

While each of Tilta’s batteries is equipped with its own USB-C port for individual charging with no charger unit, the batteries themselves will only draw 10W of power when charging. The charger unit though draws a maximum of 45W and so can charge all four batteries at the same time. Tilta claims four batteries can be fully charged in just three hours, which saves 68% of the time it would take to charge them individually.

I haven’t done this exact comparison between methods, but can tell you that I found the unit very quick when dealing with more than battery. Obviously the benefit comes when charging multiple batteries simultaneously, as charging one on its own takes much the same time as charging four.

Tilta Portable Charging Station USB-C port — Power is delivered through a USB-C port. Image credit: Damien Demolder

The unit I had for review is designed for the Panasonic DMW-BLK22 batteries of the newer S and G series cameras, and I found the on-board chip in the Tilta battery communicated perfectly with the cameras I used it in. Equally Panasonic’s own batteries charged very nicely alongside the Tilta model in the charging case. At 2400mAh, the Tilta batteries nominally have 200mAh more capacity than Panasonic’s own units.

Tilta Portable Charging Station: Our Verdict

Battery chargers don’t have to be boring. They don’t have to be exciting either, but this Tilta Portable Battery Charger has a bit of style and it works really very well. It’s extremely useful to be able to have four batteries on charge at the same time, and to get them all done in three hours means less down time and more reassurance that we won’t run out.

Tilta Portable Charging Station in operation. Image credit: Damien Demolder

Just as appealing as the function of the unit is its price, with the whole unit and four Tilta batteries coming in at less than the price of two of Panasonic’s own batteries with no charger. The Tilta batteries are also great value on their own, but are made even better value when bought in the kit.