Dedicated phone/laptop charger vs. inverter

trubliphone
Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:26:06 +0000
General Discussion

Hello. I will be going on a roadtrip soon. My wife and I will both have to do a bit of work while we’re away. So that means we’ll be bringing 2 cell phones and 2 laptops. We need a way of charging them on the road.

We have a VW Eurovan and will mostly be camping. But it isn’t a full camper, so we don’t have power hookups we can use (and will most likely be boondocking or camping in tent sites rather than camping in fancy RV sites). There is, however, a leisure battery powering a fridge/cooler.

I’m wondering what makes more sense:

1) A dedicated charger for the phones and laptops. The make “igo” seems to have cornered the market here; I would buy one charger for laptops, one for phones, and four tips to fit each device. This is a lot of cables and a lot of money.

2) An inverter plugged into either the cigarette lighter or the leisure battery, this gives me a standard outlet that I can plug our existing wall chargers into. Also, if I go with this option, I can either get a simple plug-into-a-12v-adapter inverter or a proper wire-it-up-to-a-battery inverter.

Many thanks for your advice.

6 posts - 6 participants