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Reviewed.com / Michael Desjardin
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Credit:
Reviewed.com / Michael Desjardin
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This tiny powerhouse offers quick charge times and high portability. It doesn’t include any built-in charging cables, but that’s not a deal breaker. Read More
This Magsafe-compatible battery works best when wirelessly charging recent iPhones, so you’ll notice a dip in performance when charging other devices. Read More
The four-inch charging cable can make this fairly awkward to use, and its charge times aren’t all that impressive. But it’s lightweight and versatile. Read More
Modern mobile devices can do pretty much everything. Your smartphone is a camera, a video player, video game console, an MP3 player, and a notebook, all in one compact package. Unfortunately, using all of your handset’s functionality can eat up its battery power, fast. That's where a USB battery pack can help your phone. It will charge your iPhone or Samsung on the go, no power outlet required.
After weeks of research and testing, we've concluded that the Mophie PowerStation PD (available at Amazon) is the best portable charger to buy for, most people. It’s a compact 6,700 mAh battery pack that It’s a small, well-designed battery that offers a lot of features for a reasonable price. It supports high-speed charging and stores enough power to fully recharge a Galaxy S10, twice.
The PowerStation PD's USB-C and USB-A ports make it highly adaptable.
Magsafe charging for iPhone 12 series +
Qi Wireless charging for other smartphones
USB-C port
Qi Wireless charging is slow
USB-C port is slow to charge other devices
Impressive battery
Can be slow to charge
Integrated cables are too short
Works as power supply and USB battery
Not as compact as others we tested
Days of research and testing led to our figuring out which batteries are the best suited for use by most people.
I’m Richard Baguley, a veteran tech writer who has been testing and writing about technology for over 20 years. During that time, I’ve tested and written about a wide variety of hardware for publications such as Reviewed.com, Wired, PC World and many others. I understand the underlying technology that makes a battery work and know how to test to see whether or not one’s worth your money.
For this guide, we’ve focused on portability over power, looking at battery packs that are light and compact enough to include in your everyday carry but offer enough power to provide your phone or tablet a charge or two. If you're looking for high-capacity power banks to charge your laptop or larger device, we are currently testing those and will publish our favorites soon.This meant looking for batteries that offer between 5000 to 10,000 mAh (milliampere-hour) of power storage. After researching the most popular and well-reviewed USB battery packs in this mAh range, we called the most popular and well-reviewed models that we were able to find.
Each battery in this guide was put through a number of tests:
These tests gave us an excellent overview of how much juice these USB batteries are capable of delivering. Additionally, we also gave consideration to the design, build quality and features of each battery.
A modern USB battery pack comes packed to the gills with Lithium batteries. These batteries store electrical energy in chemical form, which can be released in a controlled way. A small computer, called a charge controller, is connected to these lithium batteries. The charge controller, as its name suggests, controls the flow of power in and out of the battery pack’s lithium batteries as it charges a connected device and while you’re recharging the battery pack. In the interest of keeping costs low, most of the battery packs in this guide ship without a USB wall adapter. If you’d rather not invest in one, your battery pack can be charged, in many cases, using the same wall adapter you use to charge your tablet or phone with, or by plugging it into one of your laptop’s USB ports.
When shopping for a USB battery pack, you’ll want to keep these terms in mind:
Capacity: The measure of how much energy the battery can store. The capacity of the battery is recorded in milliamp-hours (mAh) or Watt-hours (Wh). Both of these represent how much electrical energy the product can release over time: 1 mAh means that the battery can release energy at a rate of 1 milliamp for 1 hour. 1 Watt-hour means that the battery can release a flow of 1 Watt for 1 hour. As a rule, the bigger the number, the more juice the battery can store. For consistency, we have used mAh in this article.
Power output: A measure of how much power the battery can output at maximum. Measured in Watts, the higher this number, the better. If you are charging an iPhone XS or other large smartphones, it can draw as much as 18 Watts. So, if you want to charge two phones at once, you are going to need something that can output at least 30 Watts of power.
Ports Most USB battery packs come equipped with USB-A ports: the larger, rectangular ports used by most devices. Some offer built-in cables that have plugs for micro USB or Lightning connectors for charging devices like an Amazon Kindle or an iPhone, respectively. Many come packing more recent USB-C style ports that are compatible with many Android phones, Apple’s iPad Pro or the Nintendo Switch. USB-C can safely transfer more energy than the older USB-A ports can. They’re also bidirectional: this means that you can use the same cable and port to charge a device with your battery, or charge the battery itself.
Portability: is how easy the battery is to carry around. A smaller battery will hold less charge, but will be easier to carry with you. A bigger battery will hold more juice but will be harder to carry around.
Richard Baguley is a veteran writer who has written about technology ranging from Alphabet to Zip file utilities. He has contributed to pretty much every major tech publication, including Amiga Format Magazine, PC World, Wired, CNET, Toms Guide, Forbes, and many others. He lives in the Boston metro area with his wife, dog, and an indeterminate number of cats.
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