If you’re trying to understand watthours, voltage and power management, then shopping for portable chargers can become a little bit daunting.
But you only need to worry about the basics to make sure you’re getting the right one for your needs. Most importantly, is it the right size and weight for your needs? Does it have enough ports? And is there enough juice to charge up all your devices?
Capacity
One of the most crucial considerations is capacity. You want to know how long your power bank lasts and how many charges it’ll give you.
It’s best to look at the main battery you’ll need to fuel up – we’re guessing it’s your smartphone – and work out how large of a power bank you need (of course, all phones have different battery sizes). The capacity is measured in milliamp hours (mAh) and the more you have, the more recharges you should get.
Here’s a rough guide:
- Small power banks with 4,000mAh to 7,500mAh can provide decent backup power but, at most, enough for just one full recharge or so. If it’s smaller than 4,000mAh, it’s only good enough for a small topup charge.
- Midrange power banks will pack in around 10,000mAh to 15,000mAh and charge up most phones two or three times. Need more than that?
- A big power bank with 20,000mAh or more will deliver almost five charges for an iPhone 13 – and we’d recommend this size if you want to charge bigger batteries like those in an iPad or laptop. These are also about as big as you can bring on a flight (more on that below).
Size and weight
Of course, bigger and smaller power banks also come with their benefits and drawbacks – one of the most important to note is that highcapacity ones will be bigger and weigh more.
Think about how you’ll be carrying it around and what you need it for – a power bank for your bag can be quite different than one for travelling or camping.
We tend to keep a midrange one for everyday use and a larger one ready for our trips, while we also have a petite, lowcapacity variant as a backup battery that we might grab before heading out the front door.
Ports
Don’t know your USBA from your USBC or Micro USB? It doesn’t have to be too confusing. The older USBA is the connector you’ll have seen often over the past 10 years or so (think little portable USB drives) while the newer USBC connector is the one that has come with the newest Androids and iPhones older than the iPhone 15 (on one end at least, these still charge via Apple’s Lightning port). Since, the iPhone 15 models, Apple has now adopted the USBC port for charging and USBC accessories too.
It’s worth getting a power bank with both ports as USBC becomes more commonplace, and it’s the port that is faster and gaining popularity among headphones, tablets, Bluetooth speakers and more. When it comes to the power bank output, you’ll want to look for ones that can output at least 20W via USBC, as this is the fastest speed to recharge an iPhone.
Wireless charging
Also known as “inductive charging”, this power transfer method works by placing your phone on a charging pad – once both devices come into contact, they’ll create a magnetic field which your gadgets can use to collect energy and restore their battery power.
We like wireless charging as a fussfree way to refuel smartphones and earbuds, although it’s worth noting that it’s slower than the traditional wired approach.
There are now a good number of wireless power banks on the market, and the big benefit here is that you’ll not need to worry about bringing your cables quite as much.
Magnetic charging
Apple has added its clever “MagSafe” tech to every iPhone (other than the SE) since the iPhone 12. It uses magnets to ensure perfect alignment for a range of accessories including wallets, wireless chargers and, of course, power banks.
This makes it easy to quickly snap a charger right onto the back of your phone, and it eliminates any issues with alignment that you may find on other wireless chargers that lack this magnetic connection feature.
There is now a newer standard called “Qi2” which is fully adopted by the latest Apple models and beginning to come to Android phones too. It offers the seamless alignment and speeds of the MagSafe system to models that aren’t only from Apple, and we’d expect to see it appear on more phones in the future.
Extras
While you’ll probably have most of the cords that you’d need, we’d expect a power bank to at least come with a recharge cable and maybe some extra useful wires. It’s also a nice extra when it comes with a decent carrying pouch to keep the battery and cables together.
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