Mobee Magic Charger

Apple includes a pair of alkaline AA batteries with its Magic Mouse, but I recommend eventually replacing them with rechargeable batteries. And if you do, you’ll want to get four: one set for the mouse, and a second set charged and ready for when the batteries in the mouse run out of power.

Mobee's $50 Magic Charger offers an attractive alternative to this setup. The Magic Charger is a combination of the Mobee Battery Pack, a rechargeable battery pack specifically made for the Magic Mouse, and an inductive charger. With the battery pack installed in the Magic Mouse, you simply place the mouse on the charging pad when you’re not using your computer, and you'll never have to worry about running out of battery power again. (If you've got more than one Magic Mouse, you can purchase additional battery packs for $30 each, although you'll be able to charge only one at a time, given the charger's size.)

The Battery Pack fits into the Magic Mouse’s battery compartment and also replaces the original battery-compartment cover. It’s a little tricky to insert the Battery Pack in the mouse; I had problems getting the bottom part of the Battery Pack, near the Magic Mouse’s cover latch, to seat properly, which prevented the mouse for powering on. Once the battery pack cover was fully flush with the edge of the mouse, however, everything worked fine.

(One side note: During the writing of this review, I took the battery pack out of the mouse to inspect it. I handled the battery pack in an atypical fashion—I tugged on the metal contact that sends power from the battery pack to the Magic Mouse and snapped it off. Mobee provided a replacement unit to allow me to finish this review, but this kind of break shouldn't happen during normal use.)

Since the Magic Charger itself gets power via a USB connection, it needs to be connected to a powered USB port, such as one a computer or an AC power adapter. Unfortunately, the Magic Charger doesn't include a power adapter, nor does Mobee offer one. I plugged the included USB cable into an Apple USB power adapter, which worked fine. (You don’t need to keep the charger plugged in all the time—you can just plug it in when you want to charge the battery pack.)

When it’s charging a battery pack, the Magic Charger's indicator light flashes green, turning solid green when the battery is fully charged. As with standard batteries, you can see the Magic Mouse's battery power lever in the Mouse pane of System Preferences.

Mobee’s Website says a fully charged battery should last six days. I was able to go over seven days on a full charge, though if you’re resting the Magic Mouse in the Magic Charger when not in use, you don’t have to worry about draining the battery.

Macworld’s buying advice

The Magic Charger will likely cost you a bit more than a four-pack of rechargeable AA batteries ($10 to $20, depending on the milliampere-hours [mAH] rating of the batteries) and a charger ($10 to $30, or even higher). But it offers a very easy way to recharge your Magic Mouse, and you never have to take the batteries out of the mouse.