Review: New ROAV SmartCharge Spectrum

#1

Condensed Review: Advanced smart charger that looks good, adds a touch of ambient lighting to your ride and parking locator thrown in as well. It does everything that is advertised to a degree.

Pros:

  • Anker made = Quality
  • Quick charge 3.0 = 4x faster charging
  • Charges my iPhoneX at a fast rate
  • Parking Locator
  • Good size (not obnoxiously oversized)
  • Battery Monitor
  • Carbon Fiber accent
  • Ambient lighting with color selector

Cons:

  • Battery Monitor is not accurate
  • Ambient Lighting LED randomly defaults to original blue color
  • Ambient Lighting LED if you choose to turn it off does not stay off reverts to default blue color

This is a great overall charger. Charges my phone at a great rate. Ambient lighting is nice as I can choose a color to blend with the rest of the car’s ambient light. Good size and not too bulky. Parking monitor works, but you have to make sure the app is connected prior to turning off the vehicle. The minor issues I found with the LED and battery monitor I assume can all be fixed with an app/ firmware update.

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#2

@teachh What do you think of the car locator? How accurate is it? I have the Roav SmartCharge F2 and I think they still need a bit of work on the map side of things. I find that the car locator is a very “generalized” feature, meaning it shows you the “general” area of your car and not it’s exact location. I think this is due to the fact that it doesn’t have a true GPS chip in the unit, but instead, goes by the last pinged location from your phone via bluetooth. The Spectrum seems to be what the SmartCharge F2 is, without the bluetooth streaming feature. I do like the carbon fiber look and the LED lights. Also, can you turn off the LED lights or does it stay on all the time? Thanks and nice review. :slight_smile:

#3

The LED ring looks good, maybe the Blue light problem can be solved with a software update from Anker in the near future.
The parking locator can be interesting. Thanks for the review !

#4

Thanks for the review. I’ve been curious about this charger. I just don’t need another two port charger.

I think many of these charger/battery may not be that accurate. Some of the reviews on different charger/battery monitoring units tended to be slightly off and the cheaper poorly made units were off really off when tested with true testing tools

With your testing how off was the monitor?

#5

I do like that led ring and the fact you can change colours is a bonus, I changed my interior/exterior courtesy lights to red so this could match in perfectly.

Does the parking feature require the device to be left drawing power?

#6

@Nhi I find it to be pretty accurate as the app itself has a built in map which i’m assuming improves its accuracy. Also on the bottom it tells you the distance you are away from your car which is also helpful. You can turn off the LED but like in my review i don’t think that function is quite ironed out yet, as it randomly comes back on.

@Antoine_Turpin i’m hoping the blue light problem is resolved with an update. The tech support contacted me and said it should be.

@Element321 agreed, the battery monitoring is pretty terrible on this, maybe an update will fix that, but for me I personally don’t even use it.

@k_pug2003 No it doesn’t as it saves and marks the last location it was powered on into the app.

2 Likes
#7

There’s an update out now, not sure if you have seen it. But I have not had any issues with the light changing on me, I set it to green and it’s been that way since I got it. The battery charging feature initially was reading wrong but it has since showed the correct voltage…although it is still off by about a volt. It shows my battery at 13.2 when it’s actually 14.2

#8

A new pop up has been added that was not there before…or it didn’t show up for me until now. But this is good as it limits the battery drain on some devices

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#9

Or you could set the app on your phone not to be optimized by the system. Such feature is often activated by default to preserve battery life. It can block notifications for being triggerred and displayed. I noticed this situation on my OnePlus 5.

#10

@elmo41683 yeah just updated to the official app along with updating the devices firmware. It seems that all has been fixed for me.

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#11

Glad it’s working out for you now. I found that the only time the color changes is when I unplug it, but once it syncs back up to the app, which it does in it’s own, the color goes right back to what I set it at

#12

@elmo41683

Your explanation is exactly how mine is working now with the updated firmware and app.

1 Like