5 loadouts
Loadouts built for a situation
Nobody is a “commuter” or a “traveler”. People are in situations, and a situation has constraints you can actually name: no outlet for ten hours, one socket for two phones, a bag that goes through a scanner. Every kit here starts from a constraint and ends with a list of what to leave at home.
5 items · 3 to leave out
The commuter daily carry
You are out of the house for ten or twelve hours, on public transport for some of it, and nowhere near a reliable outlet in between. Nothing here is about emergencies. It is about not spending the afternoon watching a battery percentage.
Open the list5 items · 3 to leave out
The long-haul flight kit
Twelve hours in a seat, an outlet that may or may not exist and may or may not work, and a bag that goes through a security scanner at both ends. This kit is chosen around two constraints: what the arithmetic allows and what fits in a seat pocket.
Open the list5 items · 3 to leave out
Two phones, one car, six hours
A driver, a passenger, a navigation app running the whole way, and one 12V socket. This is the situation where the difference between a total wattage and a per-port wattage stops being a technicality.
Open the list5 items · 3 to leave out
The dorm room and lecture hall kit
One room, two outlets in the wrong places, a phone, a laptop, earbuds, and a lecture hall where the nearest socket is four seats away. This is the one kit where a shared wattage budget is the right answer rather than a compromise.
Open the list5 items · 3 to leave out
Filming without holding anything
You are recording yourself doing something with both hands: cooking, repairing, demonstrating. The phone has to stay put, stay powered, and stay recoverable when it does not stay put.
Open the listEvery kit has a “leave out” section, and it is the useful half
It is easy to write a list of five things to buy. The harder and more useful list is the one naming what people carry for no reason: the 25000 mAh bank on a two-mile commute, the multi-port charger in a bag that is never near a wall, the second pair of earbuds. Each kit names three.
Gear, by what it has to doCharger MatchPower Bank Flight Check