How to Buy: a power bank

Retail advice to help you buy better

The amount of power banks on offer can seem quite overwhelming for my shoppers. Then to make it worse they have technical jargon!!! mAh, w, MagSafe….WTF!

Well never fear, I have tried and test them all. Different sizes, shapes, colours, brands, powerful and not powerful and here’s my easy to follow breakdown.

I have also made a list of my recommended power banks. To make it easy for you I have labeled each with the info I’m about to tell you so hopefully you’ll be able to make a very quick and painless decision at the end of this article.

Let’s start….

First: look at the mAh

All this is telling you is how much charge your power bank can hold. As a very rough guide (because theres more to add to the recipe of shopping success) :

• 5,000mAh – usually small, light and a great size for a handbag. Think night out phone top-ups rather than a day out of power you can also share with a friend.
• 10,000mAh – Enough for roughly 1–2 phone charges, depending on your phone and charging efficiency.
• 20,000mAh+ – much better suited to travelling, charging several devices or powering larger devices. I wouldn’t be looking for less for a laptop for sure!

The temptation is to think bigger must be better, but it isn’t necessarily. More capacity usually means more weight, which brings me to the next thing I look at…

Next: Look at the watts

mAh tells you how much charge the power bank holds. Watts tell you how much power it can deliver at once.

As a general guide:

• 20–30W – great for phones and smaller devices.
• 45–65W – suitable for many tablets and laptops.
• 100W+ – useful for higher-powered laptops or faster laptop charging.

Think about the size

There is absolutely no point buying a brilliant power bank if it’s so heavy that you never actually take it anywhere or too big for your handbag. For travel or work, I’m prepared to go bigger because having more capacity is useful. And if I want something capable of keeping a laptop going, I accept that it’s probably going to take up more space.

Buy for how you’re actually going to use it, rather than automatically buying the biggest capacity you can find. Thats AFTER VALUE.

What about MagSafe?

I get asked about MagSafe charger all of the time.

I LOVE a magnetic power bank for everyday use and because they are cordless and my one has a stand so I can stand my phone up on the desk.

MagSafe is Apple’s magnetic charging system. A MagSafe power bank attaches to the back of a compatible iPhone, and gives you wireless charging.

Don’t forget…if you want to purchase a MagSafe charger you must have a MagSafe phone case on your phone.

So, which one should you buy?

This is where I come back to After Value.

The best power bank isn’t necessarily the most powerful one. It’s the one that has enough power for what you need, in a size you’ll actually take with you.

If you only ever need an emergency boost for your phone, you probably don’t need to carry around a huge 20,000mAh battery.

If you’re regularly working from your laptop away from home, that tiny handbag charger probably isn’t going to cut it.

And if what you really want is something you can snap onto your phone while you’re out shopping, walking or travelling, convenience might matter far more than having the biggest numbers on the box.

Buy the one that solves your problem.

Oh and lastly theres so many lush colour options, get one that fits your mood and style!

Time to Shop

My full list of tried and tested power banks