You only want to charge a phone: If you don't need to charge a laptop occasionally, or you only carry a phone with no accessories, the Anker 733 is more than you need. Two Ways to Recharge: Enjoy the convenience of wireless recharge on the charging base at 100W or fast recharge using the USB-C cable at 140W. The next question is how you want to charge your device. You can find a power bank that charges your phone (or even your Apple Watch) wirelessly. These will usually charge slower, but they can be very convenient if you want to leave wires at home. In terms of charging, this massive power bank can charge an iPhone 15 more than five times. It can charge a big Galaxy S23 Ultra's 5,000mAh battery three-and-a-half times. Best of all, it charges at the fastest speed available on most of your favorite phones (excluding Oppo/OnePlus's unusual SUPERVOOC battery). As for charging, you can use up to six 200W panels, and the one supplied with our review bundle averaged between 177W and 198W on a sunny March day. That’s enough to fully charge the Explorer 1500 Pro within seven to eight hours with a single panel. Each panel has four pull-out legs to hold it up at an angle, and folds down to a 540 x 615mm, 8kg bundle.

What You Get: Anker Prime 27,650mAh Power Bank (250W), Anker 100W Charging Base for Anker Prime Power Bank, 2 ft / 0.6 m USB-C to USB-C charging cable, power cord for charging base, travel pouch, welcome guide, our worry-free 24-month warranty, and friendly customer service. The most important question to consider when buying a power bank is what will you be charging? If you are charging a small smartphone and that's all, a simple power bank will suffice. If you plan on charging a laptop occasionally as well, or many devices at once, you'll want something with more power and more features. The EB55 has a maximum total output of 700W, bar the odd 1,400W surge, so we couldn’t test it with the heater we normally use to test big batteries like this. However, it ran a 42in LED TV, drawing 72W to 75W, for 5hrs 27mins, making it through the first two Hobbit movies in the process. If you want to run kettles or coffee machines then you’ll need something with a higher output ceiling. If not, this is a brilliant compact solar generator at a thoroughly reasonable price. You need a lot of power: Thankfully, the battery on the Tylt Bottle 2 isn't so big it adds too much weight, but that also means it isn't powerful enough for multiple charges.

The best power banks you can buy in 2023

Speaking of that wall plug, it's the most useful feature ever on a power bank. Some power banks come with a built in USB-C cord, but this Anker comes with a two-prong power outlet plug. That makes it a wall charger as well as a power bank, and the utility can't be understated. Solar chargers – These take the same basic idea of a solar generator but shrink the solar panel array to make it more portable. They charge your devices directly or through a separate USB power bank.

Our favorite power bank has a 10,000mAh battery, and the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra has a 5,000mAh battery, so the math should be simple, right? It charges twice. Except that's not how it works. Power banks are not 100% efficient, and even though you start with plenty of power, a lot of it is lost in the charging process. With a power bank, though, you can always get a recharge – even when you’re far from home. In fact, with bigger power banks, you can get away for a weekend or go camping and still keep your phone juiced up. And it’s not only smartphones that can benefit. Tablets, digital cameras and Bluetooth speakers can often do with a top-up, and a decent power bank is a must-have accessory if you love playing on a Nintendo Switch.Of course, to charge it up you’ll need at least one of Anker’s 531 solar panels. Anker sells the PowerHouse 767 in bundles with one or two, and you can use up to four simultaneously if you buy them separately. On a particularly sunny March day, we were able to get around 170W to 197W per panel, at least when the clouds were out of the way. This is enough to charge up the generator in around 13 hours with one panel or seven hours with two. We wish there wasn't such an easy answer to this question, because competition is better for everybody, but Anker is making the best power banks right now by far. It offers the best power-to-weight ratio, the fastest charging, and the most useful features. The big solar generators are the most effective, but they’re expensive and only really portable if you have a car in which to transport them. The generator unit alone can weigh anywhere between 6kg and 20kg, while the solar panels may be around 50 x 50cm when folded and weigh upwards of another 6kg. You probably won’t want that while you’re hiking. There are plenty of other power bank makers around, and most of them have not caught up to the faster charging speeds available on the iPhone 15 family, let along even faster Android phones. Except for unique form factors or serious bargains, we stayed away from recommending power banks from reputable makers if they couldn't charge at 2023 speeds. That means I could twist my phone sideways into landscape mode and use the Baseus power bank as a portable stand for Apple's new StandBy mode, which is one of my favorite features on iOS 17, and certainly the one I use the most often.

The use of USB-C for the single input/output port is a little weird given the target market, and you’ll need a fast USB-C charger and a USB-C to Lightning cable to make the most of the device. What’s more, the wired charging isn’t super-speedy; our Android test smartphone only recovered by 11% from a 15-minute charge. But if you’re an iPhone user looking for a light and convenient portable charger, the Anker 622 is almost perfect for the role. Most power banks now use a USB-C port to recharge, although some models will have a micro-USB port as well to ensure compatibility with older chargers. Don’t worry if you don’t have the required cable, as one will usually be provided in the box. If you care more about convenience than speed, wireless charging is very much the way to go – and a growing number of power banks support it. Just place your smartphone on the integrated wireless pad, and you can recharge without connecting any cables. There will be a hit on charging speeds, so you’ll be limited to 7.5W or 10W, but that’s not a big issue if you don’t need to recharge in a flash. As a bonus, we’re now seeing Magsafe-friendly chargers that will clamp onto an iPhone or a ring inside an iPhone case, meaning you can recharge your iPhone even while you’re using it. How we test power banks Tylt also wisely left enough of a gap between the battery and the bottle that you can coil a small USB-C cord (included) into that space. That way, even if you're not charging wirelessly, you're not adding a lot of extra bulk to your bag. It's a smart setup.One advantage of this shift to USB-C is that power banks now support USB PD for faster charging. This means your power bank will often recharge faster when connected to a suitable fast charger, at anywhere from 20W to 60W. At those speeds, even a high-capacity charger can recharge fully in three to four hours.