PSP Charger

 

Some people consider the PSP, or PlayStation Portable, one of the greatest devices created by Sony. I see people of all ages -- kids, teenagers, and college students -- using the PSP in all sorts of situations, from riding on the bus to olbigatory social gatherings.

Sometimes, however, you are gettin' your game on, and all of a sudden you get the treacherous and ill-timed Low Battery Warning. Now you're thinking, "Uh-oh. Do I really have to sit through Uncle Karl's embarassingly awkward stories now?"

Well, I'm here to tell you no, IF you prepare beforehand. As long as you use one of the following preemptive measures, you can easily prevent situations like this from happening.

First of all, you should know that if you have the latest model, the PSP-3000, you have the option to upgrade the standard battery to the PSP Extended Life Battery Kit, which is just a fancy term for "bigger battery." You should get it.

If you have a Sony PSP Go, well, I'm sorry for you because you have an inferior product. Yes, it's smaller than the PSP-3000, but the regular PSP has pretty much all the same functions AND is about $30 cheaper at the moment. And as far as the battery goes, it is not removable.

Always Carry A Fully-Charged Spare Battery With You
Now assuming you have a PlayStation Portable with a removable battery, you can buy a spare battery. There are several different PSP units, so make sure you buy the right battery pack. You can't just stop there though; in addition to buying a spare battery and bringing it with you, you must also make sure that it's fully charged. That way, whenever the battery that you are currently using starts to lose its charge, you can immediately swap it out with your spare one. Batteries can be found for $20 to $45 depending on storage capacity and quality. Let me tell you right now though, get the official Sony battery. It may be a little bit pricier, but it's the best battery you can get by far.

Bring Your PSP Charger With You
Did you know that you can use the PSP without a battery? If you have it plugged-in to a charger, the PSP gets power directly from the source, which can be the wall outlet or your 12 volt car outlet. Just like a laptop, as long as you have an outlet available, you can not only charge your battery, but you can also run the PSP from the outlet power.

Take Out Your Battery
whenever you use your PlayStation Portable at home, it's best to leave the battery out in order to extend the battery's life. A battery can only have so many charge/recharge cycles until it dies, so if you're at home and not moving around a lot, there's no need to use battery power when you can just use a wall outlet. Plus, if you took my earlier suggestion and got a spare battery, you can now have two fully charged batteries at your disposal in case you go on an impromptu road trip.

Tweak Your PSP Settings
The PSP has a nice LCD screen that is relatively large compared to other handheld devices. This, however, comes at a cost in the amount of power it takes to run the device. The battery life of a PSP is about 5 hours conservatively, but if you just change a few settings, you can extend the battery life to last longer. The best thing you can do is set the screen brightness to the lowest level that you are comfortable playing at. The brighter your screen is, the more power the device uses.

Another big power sucker is the UMD drive. Leave your UMD discs out until you want to play the game because if you leave the disc in, that'll make the PSP activate the drive whenever you go to the Game menu, thus wasting power unnecessarily. Furthermore, you'll want to turn the UMD Auto-Start feature off by going to Settings > System Settings > UMD Auto-Start and press x. Say you're listening to music and not looking at the screen; just turn the screen off to save power. If you're using wireless internet on your PSP and the router is near you, turn the WLAN Power Save setting on by going to Settings > Power Save Settings > WLAN Power Save. And finally, turn off the WLAN switch when you aren’t using it.

Use A Compatible PSP Charger
Sometimes you'll be at a friends house and you didn't bring your charger with you. MAKE SURE YOUR FRIEND'S CHARGER IS COMPATIBLE WITH YOUR PSP. There are several different PSP models and even many PSP chargers made by different manufacturers. If your friend has the same PSP as you, his charger should work just fine, but just take that extra step to make sure so that you don't mess it up.

Your PSP should already have come with the right charger, unless you either A) bought it used, or B) bought some bootleg, ghetto-rigged version from a shady vendor. But sometimes, even the best among us lose stuff, and that stuf may very well be your PSP charger. Now if you buy a replacement charger, it goes without saying that you should get the right charger for your PSP model, otherwise you risk ruining not only the battery, but the PSP itself. The charger specs will say which models it is compatible with, so if you can read then you'll be just fine.

Get A Sony PSP USB Cable
If your PSP didn't come with a USB cable, I would highly suggest getting one. Not only does it allow you to charge your PSP via any computer, you can also connect the PSP to your computer to transfer files back and forth. The PSP will mount onto your computer just like any USB Drive or mp3 player.