Anker's charging lineup, ranked: which ones are worth buying

Anker has spent the last decade systematically dominating the consumer charging-and-cable category. The company sells more than forty different chargers, power banks, and cables under at least three sub-brand names. Many of those products are nearly indistinguishable from each other; many are sold under shifting model numbers that make it hard to tell which generation is which. The catalog is genuinely unwieldy, and the typical reader trying to buy a charger has more options than they should reasonably have to evaluate.

What follows is a tester’s guide to the Anker products that earn their place in a typical backpack, and the ones that we have stopped recommending. The testing window covered six weeks of daily use across two staff members who travel more than average. Both testers used the products as primary chargers for laptops, phones, and an assortment of accessories.

#1 Anker Prime 100W (4-port) — Top pick

Cost: $79.

The Anker Prime 100W is the right answer for most travelers in 2026. Its GaN-based design fits 100 watts of output into a brick small enough to displace one item in a packed travel kit, the four ports (three USB-C, one USB-A) are usable simultaneously without throttling for most plausible combinations of laptop-plus-phone-plus-tablet-plus-watch loads, and the PD negotiation with a wide range of laptops has been reliable in our testing.

The single 100W port is sufficient for a 14-inch MacBook Pro at full charging speed and acceptable for a 16-inch MacBook Pro (which will charge a bit more slowly than with Apple’s 140W brick). Adding a second device knocks the laptop port down to 65W or so, depending on the second device’s draw — fine for most use cases.

The cable that ships with this charger is unremarkable; bring your own. The detachable AC plug occasionally feels less secure than fixed-prong designs.

This is the one charger we would buy if we could only buy one.

#2 Anker 737 Power Bank (24K)

Cost: $149.

The Anker 737 is a 24,000 mAh power bank with a 140W maximum output that can charge a laptop at full speed for an extended period. Its capacity will bring a 16-inch MacBook Pro from low battery to nearly full once, with some left over. Two USB-C ports and a USB-A port make it serviceable for charging multiple devices at once.

The 737 is meaningfully larger and heavier than smaller power banks, and we would not recommend it for travelers who are mostly charging phones. If you need its capacity — long flights, multi-day conferences without consistent power, outdoor work — it is worth the size and weight. If you do not, a smaller bank will serve you better.

Note that lithium battery capacity does degrade over time and use; we have tested 737 units that are 18 months old and still at roughly 90 percent of original capacity, which is acceptable.

#3 Anker Nano II 65W

Cost: $39.

The Nano II 65W is the answer to the question “what should I bring to a coffee shop instead of my laptop’s bundled brick?” It is small, light, and capable of charging most ultraportable laptops at full speed. Its single USB-C port limits it to one device at a time, which is fine for the coffee-shop use case.

Anker has multiple chargers in this rough configuration — different model numbers, slightly different ports, broadly similar performance. The Nano II is the most consistently available and the most polished of the bunch. Any 60-65W single-port GaN charger from Anker (or from a competing brand of similar reputation, like UGREEN or Baseus) will do roughly the same job.

#4 Anker MagGo Power Bank 5K

Cost: $69.

The MagGo 5K is a magnetic Qi2-compatible power bank that snaps onto the back of an iPhone (and supports Magsafe alignment). 5,000 mAh is enough to substantially extend a phone but not enough to fully recharge most current iPhones from a low battery. Wireless charging is meaningfully less efficient than wired, so the effective capacity that actually reaches the phone is lower than the headline number suggests.

The MagGo is a polished consumer product that works as advertised. We do not love the value proposition — for most users, a slightly larger wired power bank gives you more useful charge for less money — but for users who specifically want the magnetic-attach experience, this is a good representative of the category.

#5 Anker SoundCore Cable (USB-C 2m)

Cost: $19.

A serviceable 2-meter braided USB-C cable rated for 100W charging. Build quality is fine and the cable has held up across the testing period without obvious wear at the connector. We would have called this a recommendation a few years ago when good braided cables were less common; now, several brands sell similarly good cables in similar price ranges, and we do not see a strong reason to specifically prefer the Anker.

What we’d skip

The proliferation of branded sub-product lines (Anker Soundcore, Anker Nebula, Anker Eufy, Anker Prime, Anker MagGo) has produced a confusing situation in which similar-sounding model numbers can refer to meaningfully different products. We have stopped recommending products in this category that we are not specifically certain we have tested in their current form.

Several budget Anker chargers (the 30W and below tier) are essentially indistinguishable from each other and from the cheapest competitors at the same wattage. For these, any reputable brand at any reasonable price will do; there is no meaningful Anker advantage to seek out.

We have also stopped recommending Anker products with extensive smart-home or app-required features. The Anker app sprawl over the last few years has become unwieldy, and we are not confident about long-term software support for many of the smart-charging features marketed at the high end of the line.

What to actually buy

For most travelers: the Anker Prime 100W (4-port). Pair it with a single good braided USB-C cable from any reputable maker. If you need extra capacity for long away-from-power stretches: the Anker 737 power bank. For everyone else, the entry-level Nano II 65W is enough.