If you follow me on Instagram, you might have noticed that I was in DC for a girls weekend with my sister and niece. We only had 4 days to see and do as much as we could and were on-the-go quite a bit! There wasn’t time to sit around waiting for our phones to charge up and we couldn’t leave them in our hotel room since we needed them to take photos and summon an Uber driver when we wanted a ride.

Thanks to some great timing, the good folks over at #TeamPuku had just sent me one of their fabulous new products so that I could try it out and share my thoughts with our readers. It’s the Puku S8 Portable Battery, and it lets you charge your devices on-the-go with no outlet needed. You just charge it up before you go, and then take it with you. It comes with a standard USB to Micro USB cable, but if you travel with multiple devices, make sure to bring an extra charging cable since you can charge TWO devices at once. You’ll simply connect your iPhone, iPad, Android or other Micro USB device to your Puku and Power Up!

I was travelling with my new Google HP11 Chromebook so I could keep up with work,  and my Samsung Galaxy S3 Android phone for navigation, Uber and photos. My sister and niece each had their iPhones, along with one iPad mini. HOW did we ever manage before without all this technology???

Luckily we didn’t have to go without Google maps, Urban Spoon, Uber and text messaging or miss out on a single photo opp during our whole long weekend. I let the Puku recharge at night in the hotel room and then we took it with us while we went out exploring, dining, shopping and happy hour-ing each day. You can use it in your bag while walking around and I loved being able to just sit wherever and visit over food and drinks without worrying about finding a nearby outlet. SO much more fabulous to just BYOP (bring your own power). And the Puku is SUPER fabulous-looking, too. I received the purple one, which is gorgeous. Puku comes in 6 beautiful colors so you can choose your favorite.

I didn’t keep track of exactly how many hours of charging we got out of the Puku but never ran out using the system of charging it up at night and using it throughout the day. The evening I flew home, I had an unexpected flight delay and used my Puku with my Chromebook at the airport so I could get caught up on some work while waiting the extra couple of hours for the plane. It was great since all the available outlets were already in use by other travelers. In the photo, you can see the red light has come on. This means that it has 0-35% power left to use. Not bad after using it several times earlier in the day!

The product info says a single charge gives you at least 900 hours of standby time, 36 hours of talk time and 153 hours of media play time. You can use Puku to charge Apple and Android devices, digital cameras and gaming devices.

I don’t travel super frequently, but I know that the Puku will come in handy quite often since we live in South Florida. You wouldn’t believe how often we lose power during tropical storms and heatwaves. After Hurricane Wilma, we didn’t have our power restored for 2 full weeks! The people at Walgreen’s were super nice and let everyone charge up their cell phones at the store but it sure will be handy to have our Puku whenever we need it in the future.

To learn more about Puku and get your own, you can visit their website and check them out on Facebook.