ZUS Smart Car Charger review – one of the most versatile in-car devices

Wouldn’t it be great if there were products that could charge your mobile device quickly, tell you where you parked your car, remind you when the meter runs out, check your car’s battery health and log all your trips in the car.

To do all of this you don’t need a number of products, you only need one – the ZUS Smart Car Charger.

It’s a handy in-car device that does so much that you shouldn’t start your car without it.

The device is about 8cm long and fits into your car’s 12V charging port – what we used to call the cigarette lighter.

The only gripe we had with the device was its size which meant we couldn’t close our front console where our plug was located. But that was a very minor complaint.

The first time it’s plugged in to your car you can pair the device with your phone using the ZUS app.

The most obvious use for the ZUS Smart Car Charger is, of course, as a charger.

There are two reversible USB ports on top of the unit which means it removes the 50 per cent chance that you’re going to plug USB cable in the wrong way.

The USB ports are illuminated so there’s no fiddling around in the dark to connect your charging cable.

And on top of that you get fast charging which can charge your phones and tablets in more than half the time as other in-car charger.

We have a built-in USB port on our car and it charges so slowly we’d be lucky if it advanced more than 10 per cent in an hour.

Now that feature’s good enough right there but that’s only scratching the surface of what the ZUS Smart Car Charger can do.

It also has vehicle intelligence and GPS onboard so you can locate your car and it can track your trips.

The ZUS Smart Car Charger – being connected to your car’s electrical system – can give you a snapshot of your car battery’s health and its performance over time so you can avoid being stranded with a flat battery.

What ZUS also does is save the location of your street parking spot – a handy feature if you’ve parked in an area you’re not familiar with.

The app can direct you back to your car using a map or an arrow to point you in the right direction.

It won’t work as well if you’re in an underground or multi-level shopping centre car park.

If you’re in a timed or metered parking space users can set the timer to remind them when time is up so they can avoid an expensive fine.

It’s also possible to share your car’s location with others via Family Share.

But that location data works to log all your trips as well.

If you’ve ever kept a log book you know how tedious it is. Well it’s a hell of a lot easier than with the ZUS Smart Car Charger.

Each trip’s distance and duration is logged with a time stamp.

The journey is plotted on a map and the average cost of the trip is also calculated.

Drivers can also add parking fees and tolls to the log and classify the journey as being a business or personal trip.

The ZUS Smart Car Charger will also work with accessories which are due for release later this year.

These include Smart Tyre Safety Monitors which screw on to your tyre’s valves and to monitor each tyre’s pressure so you can save fuel and prevent blowouts from over-inflated tyres.

Nonda, the company behind the ZUS Smart Car Charger, also makes the iHere 3.0 – a keyring attachment that can locate your phone, your keys and double as a selfie shutter trigger.

The ZUS Smart Car Charger is priced at just $69.95 and is available from Officeworks, Harvey Norman and David Jones.

VERDICT

The ZUS Smart Car Charger certainly lives up to its Smart name but it should also be called versatile because it’s oen of the handiest in-car devices you can ever own.