5 Dimes Media
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The reality of portable chargers
03/10/2026
The reality of portable chargers
Good morning Nerd Herd and welcome to another blog post...this time we are tackling portable chargers. These super convenient battery packs can keep your phone alive when you're not home or near a wall outlet. They can be life savers or help you get through that extra lengthy weekend long baseball tournament without missing all of the exciting moments. First up, i want to tackle the form factors. Typically these battery packs are square or rectangular and provide several charge ports for you to plug in various devices, from Micro USB to USB-A and USB-C respectively. These will usually require a wall brick with a USB type port to connect the battery pack for charging. Then once charged, you will need whatever charging cable is appropriate for your device. This is by far the most common application, but it is fading in favor of some other more convenient options. The caveat here is to get a good quality wall brick, I recommend getting a 45-100W wall brick for charging these units and these are easily found on Amazon. These battery packs will offer a variety of ports as well so you can have multiple options to recharge your unit. There are also some battery packs that come with wall prongs so you can just plug it into the wall for charging, no cable needed for that...you may still need one for charging your device, but you won't need a wall brick for these units. Next, let's look at one of the newest convenience options, built-in cables. I'll tell you up front, I had a unit with a built-in USB-C cable and I babied it and it still died after 4 months. Now the battery pack did have additional ports so i could use a typical phone cable and charge it, so all was not lost. But still, it is very frustrating to pay for a feature that is so flimsy. I have seen units with multiple attached cables (USB-C and Lightning) but i think I would steer clear of these units. Maybe other brands will have better quality and if anyone out there would like to see a stress test comparison of battery packs with built-in cables, let me know in the comments. Lastly, let's look at MagSafe or Qi charging which allows you to "wirelessly charge" or magnetically attach the battery to your device without a cable for recharging. These are very convenient but you will probably need a wall brick and cable to charge it up. Once that's done. you can leave all the cables behind, magnetically attach it to the device and off you go. These units are getting thinner, sometimes come with a charge level screen on them and generally keep the cable mess to a minimum. Next let's look at juice, because that's what really is going to drive the recharge on our devices, right? Battery packs measure their battery output in Milliampere Hours (mAh). I've seen units ranging from 3,000 mAh all the way up to 25,000 mAh. So, in the real world, what does that mean? Generally speaking, 5,000 mAh will give your phone one full charge from 0% to 100%, so i try to use that as my baseline. These units out here that push 3,000 mAh are for topping off a device and if you have a newer phone, that may be all you need to get through the day. Ultimately, you're still only going to get 60% out of it, so if you plug in your device at 10%, you'll drain the battery pack when your phone hits only 70%. I use a 10,000 mAh battery pack for travel days (equal to 2 full recharges) and i have a 25,000 mAh pack for when i'm camping (equal to 5 full recharges!) and while I've never drained either one, i will be honest, a 25,000 mAh unit is probably overkill in 95% of situations. Now, we've looked at different styles and power ratings, let's look at cost. Right now on Amazon, Ridge has a MagSafe battery pack featuring 2 built-in cables (USB-C and Lightning), a digital screen to show charge level %, a divot specifically for charging an apple watch and boasts 10,000 mAh of output for $79. In my opinion, it's a good deal but i personally would get no use out of the attached cables or the watch charger. Now, for a direct competition comparison, Anker offers a MagSafe battery with 10,000 mAh but without the built-in cables, apple watch charging capability or digital charge level for $60. A bit more bare-bones, but for me, this would be all i need. Gopetl offers a 3,000 mAh MagSafe unit that is ultra low profile for $50, which i can't recommend if the Anker offers 3 times the capacity for only $10 more. Lastly, there's a unit on Amazon named LuckyFellow, it offers wall prongs for charging the battery, MagSafe charging for your device, 3 attached cables (Micro USB, USB-C and Lightning), a spot for charging an apple watch and 10,000 mAh for $35. <-- IF anyone has this unit, let me know how fast it died because i can't believe at that price point that it's a solid unit. At the end of the day, decide what features are important to you and don't pay for features you won't use. I would also like to throw in a couple extra notes here, one being that I would not recommend attaching a battery pack to a device when the charge on the device is above 20%. Let the phone get down to 10-20% before attaching the battery, this will help your device battery cycle its power more efficiently. Secondly, these units can provide some serious heat, so whenever possible, charge them in an open area i.e. on a table while you eat, for instance...not in your pocket! These things can get hot enough to explode and if you opt for a cheaper unit (looking at you LuckyFellow), they may not tell you if they have safeguards in place for overheat or voltage protections, so don't take the chance. As always, if you ever want more information or would like to know more specifics, i'm always here to help and I hope some folks out there find this info useful. You can reach us on the contact form on this site or by email at and we are graingerdangertv on instagram. For reference: The units in the thumbnail are all chargers i own. From the top, is a 5,000 mAh Anker wall plug unit, I can actually plug it in the wall and charge my phone from it at the same time, essentially using it as both my wall brick and a portable charger. The next unit down is my oldest 10,000 mAh Anker battery pack, it charges via USB-C and uses USB-A for output. Below that is my 25,000 mAh charger from Anker and you can see it's gigantic and bulky. It uses a USB-C input and both USB-A and USB-C for output. The two on the bottom, the one with the cable loop is my "broken" Baseus 10,000 mAh charger with the built-in cable that no longer functions. I use a standard USB-C cable to charge it up and charge my devices. I like the amount of power it has and the small size and that's why I keep it around. Next to that is my 10,000 mAh MagSafe phone charger, small compact and thin and it does require a wall brick and cable to charge it.
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