The Powermat works great. Sure, you could plug in a charging cable for every device you own, but this is very convenient. We now have the pad in our laundry room and simply plug in our phones or iPod, position it correctly on the Pad and that's it. I knocked it down a notch because it only comes with one Powercube i.e. unless you buy other cubes, you can only charge one device at a time. All told, it gets pretty expensive when you buy and additional two power cubes. It's a convenient but "nice-to-have" product rather than a necessity.