Now that Apple finally released their Magsafe Battery Pack for iPhone 12’s, is it the
better choice compared to Anker’s PowerCore Magnetic 5K even though it costs $55 more?
Of course, it’s actually Magsafe right? Well, not so fast..
In my testing I found some big differences including 2 things that I haven’t heard
anyone mention yet on the internet, one of which could make or break the purchasing decision
for about 60% of you. Both have their pluses and minuses, but if you watch through this
video I’ll help you make the correct choice of which one you should buy, as well as if
you should upgrade to Apple's Magsafe Pack if you already own a different one.
Since I already mentioned prices, let's start out with that. Apple’s comes in at $99 and
Ankers has an MSRP of under half that, I purchased mine for about $45 on Amazon. Now that Apples
is out I would bet that the price will drop even lower depending on when you’re watching
this video, so you can check out the price using the link in the description below.
As far as size, Apple's MagSafe Pack takes the win. Footprint wise, Ankers is slightly
smaller, but it’s also thicker and heavier. Looking at pictures online it's hard to tell
but putting them side by side you can see that Anker is about 45% thicker than Apples.
Weight wise Anker isn’t that much heavier than Apples coming in at 17% heavier, but
we definitely have a bigger difference comfort wise because the Anker is more boxy.
While the edges are rounded, they aren’t as curved as Apples which means it digs into
your hand more when you’re holding. I wouldn’t say that it’s so bad that it's a dealbreaker,
like I had with my big grey charger, but it's definitely worth considering.
Both use hard plastic for their shell, but ankers is a bit more grippy which along with
the boxy design helps it stay more secure in hand. On the magnetic side Anker doesn’t
change its material, where Apple added a silicon pad which improves grip to your phone.
That along with slightly stronger magnets means that the Apple pack stays more securely
attached to your phone. It's not a massive difference, as the MagSafe pack can still
be easily twisted and popped off, but it's an improvement.
Overall Apples design is sleeker and more simple. There is a single LED light that turns
on when something is happening, and sometimes is on even if the pack isn’t properly charging.
Ankers has 4 lights for showing you the capacity and one more to show you status like if its
one, if its charging or charging something, if a device isn’t properly working.
A huge benefit with Apple's pack is the fact that you don’t have to press a power button
first to make sure it's charging your phone, in fact there is no power button it turns
on automatically when you attach as it transfers data to your iPhone. Because of this, it's
also able to show you the charge capacity within your battery widget, and if it's actively
charging your phone at the time or being charged.
With that the Phone can also choose to stop the charge if it needs to, and unfortunately
at this time there is one use case when it flat out won’t charge your phone and to
me it's really frustrating because that's when I really want a portable battery pack
to keep my battery topped up but Apples pack doesn’t, and thats is when you’re gaming
which is one task which drains your battery quickly.
I started off using a fully charged iphone 12 that had optimized charging off, and my
magsafe pack battery at 50% and played call of duty mobile for 30 min and during that
time my iphones battery dropped to 90%, and if you know iPhone you’ll know that they
stay at 100% for way longer than other percentages.
During that time the magsafe battery pack wasn’t used at all to keep the iPhone charged
which is what many people say is the point of these kinds of wireless packs. After that
I played another 30 min using Ankers pack, and after 30 min I didn’t lose any of the
charge on my iPhone 12 ended with the same amount I started with so its basically drawing
power from the wireless charger and not the phone.
The same thing would go for other intensive tasks that drain your battery like photo or
video editing.
I understand that Apple may not want the heat from the phone to be added to the heat from
the battery, but many people including myself plug our phones into wall power when gaming
and that also heats up our phones and causes screen dimming because of heat, and when gaming
with Ankers pack the screen didn’t have an issue staying at 80% brightness so for
gamers Ankers pack seems to be a lot more flexible.
I’ll be researching this issue more in my detailed full review, so click that circle
below to subscribe to see that and help us reach our goal of 1 million subscribers before
the end of the year, we would greatly appreciate it.
Now let's get into the charging speed and capacity where we have some massive differences.
Right out of the gate Ankers pack is rated at a standard 5000 milli amp hours where as
Apples shows a measly 1460, but that doesn’t tell the whole story.
Apple is doing something very unique, and that's using batteries that have a voltage
of 7.62 compared to 3.6v in Ankers and every other battery bank.
If we do the math the equivalent milli amp hours would be 2920, much better than 1460
but still less than 60% of Ankers, but we also have to factor in charging and circuitry
efficiency which is where my detailed real world testing comes in.
I personally was super excited about Apple coming out with their own MagSafe pack because
of much faster chagrin than regular Qi charging, and this one is rated at 15 watts compared
to only 5 watts of the Anker, and it can provide close to that if you’re using it as a passthrough
wireless charging station.
You actually get about 9.5 usable watts of wireless charging which is slower than the
12.5 with Apple's dedicated puck, but that's still much faster than Anker's 5 watts of
pass through charging so your iphone will charge about twice as fast.
But unfortunately if you’re using it on the go without being plugged into the wall
it will also only provide 5 watts just like Ankers pack, which ruins the biggest reason
why I wanted a genuine Magsafe Pack from Apple.
Now I was still a bit optimistic because Apples higher voltage and efficient coil and circuitry
could mean that we might still get faster speeds and better efficiency, so let's go
ahead and see just how much charge this thing can provide compared to Ankers cheaper solution.
I tested with a practically new iPhone 12 and started with it fully dead.
Apples Pack took 3.5 min to turn the phone one which seemed good, but Ankers did so faster
at 3 min.
After 15 min my iPhone 12 reached 9% charge where Anker reached 10% and after 30min MagSafe
was still 1% behind at 18% compared to 19%.
Skipping to the one hour mark, Apples Pack got us to a measly 36% and ankers still 1%
ahead at 37%.
I have to pause and say that these speeds are really disappointing, if Apple had actually
allowed full Magsafe speeds the iPhone 12 would reach this amount in 35min instead of
an hour, and with that it seems like Apples 5watt charging any more efficient than Ankers..
After 1 hour and 30 min apples reaches 53% and Ankers 52%, and after 1 hour and 45min
Apples was at 57 perfect compared to 59% for Ankers pack showing that its still slightly
ahead.
And thats where another level of disappointment came, because that is where Apples Magsafe
pack was completely drains of its battery, meaning your iPhone 12 will only get 57% extra
charge from this $99 pack and it will take a long time to get it, and of course with
12 Pro Max it will be much lower than that.
Anker kept going until it reached 87% charge, so we get an additional 30% capacity for an
iPhone 12 compared to Apples Pack, or about 52% more usable wireless charging capacity
compared to Apples, which is interesting because the milli amp hours at 3.6 volts are roughly
45% more.
This shows us that although Magsafe might be more efficient in the way that Apple doesn’t
have to use as large of cells, overall real world charging efficiency isn’t really better,
and if you’re only trying to reach 50% charge Ankers can do that faster, and it can provide
charge while doing tougher tasks.
With that, how long do these take to charge? Well Apples is fairly quick since it accepts
15 real world watts through lightning compared to 9.5 and because the battery is smaller.
If you’re only charging it, it will be complete in 1 hour and 15 min compared to 3 hours and
15 min so if you want to quickly charge before going somewhere Apples takes the win.
There are a few other differences that you have to know about before choosing which one
to buy.
First off, the MagSafe pack uses lightning to charge which can be more convenient if
you don’t use usb-c, but it doesn’t come with the cable like Ankers does. Because of
this, the only way you can charge a device is using wireless charging not wired charging.
And if you’re not charging an iPhone 12, just like Apples $40 Magsafe Puck, in regular
qi charging mode it will only output between 2.5 to 3.3 watts. So if you want to charge
a friends older iPhone or android phone, Anker will be able to charge it about twice as fast,
and the same thing goes with charging AirPods.
So It will take about 6 hours to charge AirPods Pro with Apples Pack compared to 3.5 hours
with Ankers.
With that, the lightning port can’t output power at all, where Akers can output about
just over 8 watts, so if you have a cable with you AirPods can charge in 2 hours, or
the times that you care about charging speed and capacity Ankers can be used as a regular
power bank and give you a full 100% charge and much faster than wireless charging.
Of course many people don’t buy these for that, but it's nice to have the flexibility
to bring an Apple watch charging cable or top off other devices.
The last thing I have to mention is reverse wireless charging since its been in the headlines,
but for me this feature is practically worthless for a number of reasons. The only benefit
is if you accidently plug your phone in and not your back and you’re chagrined overnight
you’ll get some charge, but I’ll be covering this in detail in my full review.
Overall, unless you don’t care about capacity and flexibility, and you don’t already have
a magsafe puck at home and you want to use this as a charging base overnight, or if you
really care about branding I would go for Ankers. It's less than half the price, with
more capacity and flexibility and can still pass through charge overnight.
But you guys let me know your thoughts and which one you would buy. Click that circle
above if you want to subscribe to see the full review and check out our other vids right
over there. This has been Max and I’ll see you in the next video.