iHome iB969 Charging Station review

The iHome iB969G Charging Station professes to be your one-stop shop for charging your iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, BlackBerry, and even ebook readers like the Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, and Nook.

It can charge up to four devices at once, while syncing one of the four with iTunes. The expandable rest area comfortably holds a BlackBerry (charging it over USB) or ebook reader, and the integrated cable management keep things looking tidy. The iPad gets its own stand on the device, which will hold it horizontally or vertically, whatever your preference.

So this product sounds great in theory, right? So how does it work in practice? Very well. We've been using the iHome iB969 Charging Station on our desk for the past couple of weeks, and it's been superb. Even better though, you really can charge just about any USB device in that rest area. Sure, they call out the BlackBerry, but we had no trouble charging an HTC Surround or HTC HD7 either. The two USB ports each have a switch that allow you to set them to 100 volts or 240 volts of charging power, which means you can use them to charge the iPad quickly.

As for the amount of space it will take up on a desk, it's got an 8.98-inch by 6.75-inch footprint, and it's just about two inches in height. It's nice and compact, especially again when you consider that you can charge four devices at one time. It includes a 3-foot sync cable to allow you to sync iOS devices with iTunes, a mini USB cable, a mini USB to microUSB adapter, 

You can pick up the iHome iB969 Charging Station now for $59.99, or as low as $41.21 from Amazon. If you have multiple devices in your home or office, this thing is very nice - especially if they're Apple iOS devices!