Incipio’s newest edition to its offGRID series of battery cases is offGRID Express ($80) for iPhone 6. The case is built similarly to other previous offGRID cases. It features a matte black plastic back with an integrated Lightning connector for charging — once the iPhone 6 is inserted, a bumper is snapped on to cover the other sides of the phone, including button coverage. As one might expect, offGRID Express’s battery recharges using a micro-USB cable, and a headphone extension cable is also included.
Five LED lights on the front bottom section of the case display how much battery life remains in the 3000 mAh battery, and the battery power is turned off and on by a small button on the side of the case. As Incipio showed us during this year’s CES, different offGRID options are on the way for iPhone 6 — all more expensive than offGRID Express.
The offGRID Express case itself is fine. It provides button coverage and offers a tiny lip for screen protection. We don’t love the power button’s design — it’s located in a weird spot, and it feels a bit cheap.
But that’s a minor quibble, considering the battery performance was even better than expected, matching Tylt’s Energi case with a 120 percent charge — and it does so with a slightly smaller capacity. We found that offGRID Express fully charged an iPhone 6 in 2:16, and gave us another partial 20 percent charge in just 24 minutes before running out of power. It took about four hours to recharge the offGRID Express battery, however, which is a bit longer than we expected.
Incipio has priced offGRID Express aggressively, and we were thoroughly impressed with its charging performance at that price. We’ll see different design implementations and larger capacities in other iPhone 6 battery cases as time goes on, but most users won’t need anything more than this.
