Review: Can the Krafted Connex solve Edinburgh’s Festival power drain?

Anyone navigating the Royal Mile or Nicolson Street in peak August knows the specific misery of mobile signal collapse. In 2026, the sheer volume of bodies crammed into the city centre crippled local mobile masts entirely. When a handset spends sixteen consecutive hours furiously hunting for a workable transmission band, battery percentages plummet at terrifying speed. Working the circuit, squeezing draft notices into a Kindle Scribe between afternoon previews, proofreading on a phone in noisy basement bars, and desperately filing copy before a midnight comedy slot, demands constant, predatory power management.

The £29.99 Krafted Connex promises an escape from untangling a dozen stray leads across crowded table corners. By packaging four legacy and modern output types into one thick, folding block, it acts as an emergency electrical station. It is an unvarnished, heavy-set tool with distinct charging bottlenecks, netting a pragmatic 3/5 score.

Architecture and durability

Pulling the Connex from a bag reveals a design language that owes far more to trade workbenches than consumer tech boutiques. Rather than polished aluminium, you get a dense sandwich of impact-resistant ABS plastic, nickel-plated structural steel brackets, and stiff silicone arms.

Krafted equips the casing with a keyring ring, which is an absurd inclusion. At nearly 90 grams, hanging it alongside door keys would shred trouser pockets. Instead, it sits loose inside a rucksack pocket.

The silicone connector arms do not pop out on springs. They stick together with rubbery friction, requiring a deliberate, two-handed thumbnail wedge to lever the correct head free. That stiff deployment is actually a benefit in chaotic venues: the prongs stay completely shielded inside the chassis rather than bending against keys and pens in transit.

Power routing and local data migration

The core utility is bridging different hardware generations from a single USB-C power source. The Connex provides conversions for USB-C, Apple Lightning, legacy micro-USB, and standard USB-A.

Current distribution is handled via internal load sensing:

• 3A / 5V Baseline Source: Two devices pull 1.5A each; add a third device and power drops to 1.0A apiece.
• 4A / 5V Maximum Supply: Two devices draw 2.0A; three devices receive 1.3A; four devices drop down to 1.0A each.

In practice, multi-charging is trickle maintenance. While a single device can tap up to 25W via USB-C Power Delivery, standard loads generally cruise along at 15–16W. Hooking up a phone alongside a portable keyboard and a companion’s flat vape will not top anything up in a hurry; it just slows battery drain.

Crucially, the primary PD line functions as a direct data conduit. When festival mobile networks lock up completely, and cloud syncing fails, running a hardwired cable bridge between a handset on 2% battery and a functional tablet lets you rescue finished drafts in seconds.

The floor socket reality check

Temporary Fringe pop-ups, subterranean cavern venues, and historic tenement pubs share an infuriating design quirk: mains sockets sit inches above floorboards on dusty skirting boards.

Because the Connex has short, rigid folding arms, plugging directly into a wall socket forces your £900 handset to rest flat on beer-soaked flagstones. Nobody with any sense hands their unlocked phone across a crowded bar counter to charge behind the taps, but leaving kit on the floor amidst milling ticket-holders invites a cracked screen.

Bridging the physical gap requires carrying a coiled USB extension lead, like the one I grabbed from Amazon. Connecting the Connex to a flexible secondary line lets the hub sit safely on a table beside your pint while pulling power from the floor.

The Verdict

The Krafted Connex is not an elegant gadget. Purists obsessed with slimline daily carry will hate the chunkiness, and fast-charge fiends will find the multi-port trickle frustrating.

Yet when you are running on empty between four shows in the drizzle, sitting in a packed Southside cafe where every plug is occupied, its versatility is undeniable. It eliminates connector panics and rescues locked-up drafts under terrible network conditions. It is a dense, imperfect safety net that earns its keep through raw utility.

Disclaimer: Krafted Connex provided my USB adapter for free review.