Sales of power banks have exploded as our smart devices hunger for more and more power just to keep it alive throughout the day. We have hundreds if not thousands of different power bank designs to choose from. There are compact ones that are just good enough to give your device an emergency jolt of power. And then there are the larger power banks with capacities of more than 10,000 mAh that can charge your devices multiple times.
Not all power banks are made the same even those with identical capacities. What most power bank users fail to consider when buying one is the charging speed. Most large capacity power banks only have a maximum charging current of 2A regardless of how many charging ports it has. That means if you connect 2 devices to the power bank, each device will only charge at 1A or at half the speed compared to charging just one device at a time. The Anker Astro3 Power Bank on the other hand, is the only power bank that we know of that has a maximum charging current of 4A.
The Anker Astro3 has a total of 3 USB charging ports letting you charge a tablet plus 2 smartphones at the same time. Each port uses intelligent PowerIQ technology circuitry to determine the maximum charging speed based on the device and also the total number of devices being charged.
This does not mean that you can charge twice as fast as a comparable 2A power bank but it does mean that you can charge 2 devices at once without affecting the charging speed of both devices. The Anker Astro3 also has a very high energy efficiency rate of about 80%. This is about 10% higher than most other chargers. What this means is that the Anker Astro3 can actually fully utilize about 80% of the 12,000 mAh capacity for charging a device. In other words, it is comparable to a 14,000 mAh power bank with a 70% efficiency rate.
In real world performance, you can expect the Anker Astro3 Power Bank to fully recharge an iPhone about 6 times while a Samsung Galaxy S4/S5 can be recharged almost 5 times.
The power bank is about 4.4 x 3.3 x 1.0 in in size and weighs a pretty hefty 11 oz. This is quite a bit of weight to carry around but it is a small price to pay for the peace of mind knowing that you have enough battery to last the day.
Where to Buy Anker Astro3 Power Bank
