★★★★☆
The HyperPack Pro has room for a 16-inch MacBook plus plenty of other gear in three big pockets, three more smaller ones plus more inner pockets. But what sets the backpack apart is a built-in tracker using Apple’s Find My technology so it can easily be found if misplaced or accidentally left behind.
I field tested the bag from Hyper by taking it on holiday. Here’s everything I love about it … and a few small issues.
MacBooks can take a lot of juice, and the HyperJuice 140W PD 3.1 USB-C Charger can dish it out. The three-port wall charger offers up to 140 watts of power, as its name indicates.
Hyper’s offering is much smaller than Apple’s own 140W charger, while including more ports.
★★★★★
Thunderbolt hubs add super-fast ports to your Mac, speeding up your workflow. But these hubs also require a really bulky power adapter … usually. The just-announced Sanho HyperDrive Thunderbolt 4 Power Hub is the exception. It’s small enough to travel with.
I tested the Thunderbolt hub in my home office for a couple of weeks to see how it stands up to real-world use.
HyperDrive Duo Pro is a 7-in-2 USB-C Hub that plugs into the side of a MacBook to add a variety of ports, including Gigabit Ethernet, USB-A and microSD.
It’s designed to not interfere with the new MagSafe 3 power port on the 2021 MacBooks, but the hub is also compatible with any Apple laptop going back to 2016.
The HyperDrive 4K Multi-Display Docking Station for 13”-16” MacBook has room for 15 ports, including a trio of HDMI ports that support 4K 60Hz. There’s also Gigabit Ethernet, a trio of USB-A ports, a trio of USB-C ports, memory card readers and more.
Rather than sitting beside or behind the laptop, Hyper’s latest dock props it up.
The HyperJuice 4-in-1 Wireless Charging Stand includes a MagSafe-compatible charger and an Apple Watch charger. In its base are two more charging pads for AirPods and/or another phone.
Plus, Sanho’s stand offers a couple of tricks. It can fold flat to go into a backpack or suitcase. And it can get power from either USB-C or a DC charger.
The Sanho HyperDrive USB-C 6-in-1 Hub clips to an iPad and adds a collection of ports, allowing the tablet to make use of a variety of popular accessories, from mice and headphones to external displays. The multiport adapter offers outstanding functionality in minimal space.
The original version is one of the best iPad accessories ever. I tested the followup and it’s even better.
The Sanho HyperJuice Magnetic Wireless Battery Pack magnetically clings to the back of an iPhone 12 series model, recharging it without wires, clips… anything else. It packs 5000mAh of power and a USB-C port too.
I put the MagSafe-like battery pack through real-world testing. Here’s what’s I found.
Sanho’s HyperJuice wall charger that debuted Monday isn’t much bigger than a credit card but still has room for a pair of USB-C ports that can put out 100W, dual USB-A ports that max out at 18W, and swappable power prongs.
It uses Gallium Nitride (GaN), a new semiconductor material that’s more efficient than traditional silicon used in current chargers. It lets Sanho create this ultra-portable wall charger.
The redesigned Sanho HyperDrive Duo 7 hub, which launched Monday, attaches more securely to the side of the MacBook Pro or MacBook Air. The second-generation clip-on adds 60Hz, 4K video support through its HDMI port.
Sanho’s new HyperDrive GEN2 multiport hub doubles the data transfer speed, doubles the amount of power delivered, and doubles the video refresh rate compared to its predecessor.
And this USB-C hub truly takes the term “multi-port” to heart — there are versions with 6 ports, 12 ports and 18 ports.
Sanho calls its newly-unveiled HyperJuice “the smallest 100W charger on the market.” Despite the svelte design, it has a pair of USB-C ports that can put out 100W, dual USB-A ports that max out at 18W, and swappable power prongs.
It’s on Kickstarter now, available for well below the eventual regular price.
USB-C hubs with a profusion of ports are hot now, but Sanho’s HyperDrive Power is far sleeker than any of its rivals. And it doesn’t sacrifice connectivity options for its svelte profile, offering a trio of USB-A ports, dual memory card readers, HDMI, a headphone jack and even Ethernet.
Our review involved testing all nine ports, which took a while. Read on to see if the HyperDrive Power deserves a place in your gear bag.
We love Sanho’s line of HyperMac products, which allow you to juice your MacBook or iOS device with an external battery pack… but when Cupertino C&D’ed Sanho over Hypermac for using Apple’s patented MagSafe connectors, the future of the product line seemed in doubt.
We needn’t have worried. A couple of weeks ago, Sanho announced their new line of HyperMac batteries, which use Apple’s own airline adapter to connect to your MacBook via MagSafe, a solution that deftly sidestepped the legal problems.
The only problem with the new HyperMac batteries? While they’ll keep your laptop going, they won’t actually charge them… kind of a bummer.
Luckily, Sanho’s just announced a new HyperMac battery conversion gift that lets you modify your existing MacBook power adapter to not just hook up to your laptop as usual, but also to connect to your external battery. Sanho claims there’s no soldering or complex rewiring required, and that the instructions are easy to follow.
We’ve got a review copy on the way, so we’ll let you know if those boasts pan out, but we’re tentatively excited. The new batteries and the modification kit should be available at the end of the month, with prices starting at just $100.
Want to pick yourself up one of Sanho’s amazing HyperMac batteries, which will allow you to recharge your MacBook, iPhone or iPad for dozens or even hundreds of hours on a single charge?
Well, better get moving: Sanho has just sent out a notice saying that they will soon stop selling their line of HyperMac products due to their current legal woes with Apple.
Last time we heard about the iControlPad, the long-delayed physical gamepad for the iPhone and iPod Touch had finally completed its two-and-a-half year journey from the brainpan of its makers to their hands as the very first model dropped off the production lines… now boasting a modular design that would allow the iControlPad to be easily updated to support future iOS handhelds. Since the official site was about to start taking preorders for the first 3,000 units, we imagined that the iControlPad was pretty much done.
Apparently not, though. As fallout to Cupertino’s recent decision to sue Sanho for using repurposed MagSafe adapters and iPod Dock Connectors in their line of HyperMac batteries, the iControlPad team has apparently gotten nervous about connecting the gamepad through the iPhone’s dock connector. Instead, they are looking to switch over to Bluetooth support.
Much to the chagrin of consumers who want a cheaper alternative, Apple is notoriously protective of its MagSafe patent… so much so that they have a rich history of suing the third-party builders of MagSafe knock-offs.
Now it appears that Cupertino is going after another one, having filed a patent infringement lawsuit against the Sanho Corporation in the California Northern District Court. Details are still sketchy, with the actual complaint part of the lawsuit as yet unrevealed, but Patently Apple speculates
that this is all about the MagSafe connector baked into Sanho’s third-party HyperMac batteries.
Sanho seemed to think they’d dodged Apple’s MagSafe patents with the HyperMac line, since their products are actually made of recycled official MagSafe products… but Apple may well see things another way… a shame, given the amazing charging capacity and stellar quality of the HyperMac line, which can juice up a MacBook Pro for up to 34 hours.
If you’re looking to buy a HyperMac, then, best get one now. If previous MagSafe lawsuits are anything to go by, they’ll be C&Ded into extinction soon enough.
Employing the iPad Camera Connection Kit, it’s technically possible to hook an iPad up to a portable USB hard drive… but only if that hard drive falls within the maximum range of the SD card’s storage capacity. That’s only 32GB, which makes the Camera Connection Kit’s ability to read storage off of an external hard drive more a matter of trivia than practicality.
That gruesome device above, though? That’s the Sanho spacious 750GB HyperDrive, designed to circumnavigate the iPad’s restrictions by turning individual file folders into virtual 32GB drives on the fly. It comes with a CompactFlash and SD card slot for slurping up your camera’s photos, as well as a 3.2-inch QVGA color display and the ability to interface directly with your Mac. All yours for just… $600.
*Sputter* That’s a lot of money to drop on a hard drive that, because of iOS limitations, can’t even read music or launch apps. Of course, this isn’t for consumers who need to upgrade their iPad space: it’s clearly aimed at photographers who want to be able to juggle huge archives of RAW files on their iPad’s on the fly. A very niche market indeed, given the relative lack of powerful RAW editors on the App Store, but perhaps that will change in time.
