- Apple finally released a MagSafe power pack
for the iPhone 12 which came out around nine months ago
and it costs $99, but there's also a lot of other options
on the market like this
Anker PowerCore Magnetic 5k wireless charger,
which costs half as much.
They both have features that the other one doesn't have,
so should you pay twice as much?
Hi I'm Jerry, and a lot of people were waiting for Apple
to release a MagSafe power pack
'cause it's just the obvious idea
for a MagSafe equipped phone.
But there's lots of other options on the market
like I was just saying,
so let's go ahead and compare these two side by side
and see which one makes sense for you.
Inside the box of the Apple MagSafe case is well,
nothing really except the battery.
Inside the box of the Anker you get the battery
along with a USB-C cable to go with it.
The design of these two power packs is pretty similar.
They're almost the same dimensions and width and height,
but the Anker is a little bit thicker
than the Apple MagSafe battery pack.
They're both made out of a hard plastic and they both feel
like they're made pretty well.
On the bottom you have a charging port on both of them
along with status lights or indicators,
but the Anker battery pack actually has a power switch
to be able to turn the device on and off.
And when you put these two battery packs side by side,
you can see the little bit of difference in the thickness
of the anchor battery pack,
which is just a little bit thicker.
The anchor weighs about 130 grams
whereas the apple battery pack weighs about 113 grams.
Now with the LED status light on the bottom
of the Apple MagSafe power pack,
it really just turns on momentarily either when you connect
or disconnect a cable or connect or disconnect it
from the phone.
So when the battery pack is in use or charging over time,
you don't get a status indicator on the bottom
so you're not really sure about the charge status
of the device itself beyond initially seeing green,
if it's charged and Amber, if it's getting low.
However with the anchor, you actually
get four status LED's on the bottom, which tell you
basically what percentage 25, 50, 75 100% charged
and you get a blue light indicating the status as well
whether it's charging or being discharged.
So you get a little bit more physical, visual feedback
from the Anker than you do with the Apple charger.
Connecting either one of these devices to the back of the
iPhone is purely self-explanatory, there's magnets
on the back of the power pack that automatically align
with the magnets in the iPhone itself
and they just snap on like so,
and of course they are interchangeable and you can go back
and forth, whatever you want to do.
And what I found over the last few hours
is they both feel credibly sturdy like the feel
like they have the same amount of force
holding the battery pack on so there should be no difference
um between which one's going to be better at staying
on the iPhone 'cause the both feel pretty sturdy.
Although I found something kinda interesting
with the Apple MagSafe power pack,
when you bring it close to the phone,
when the magnets start to grab each other,
It's like there's something in the power pack
that just kind of bring something forward.
It feels like something's moving inside
of the Apple power pack, lemme see if you can hear
that on the camera.
(clicking noise)
Yeah it's weird right? So,
I'm curious to see what the tear down looks like because
it almost feels like magnets are being pulled forward
or something that's being pulled forward.
Maybe that tells the iPhone that, "hey,
this is a MagSafe compatible battery pack"
and it does something a little bit different
Maybe it allows the 15 Walt wireless charging
which we'll get to in just a moment.
As far as the sizes of these batteries go,
it looks like the Apple MagSafe battery pack has two
1,460 million power batteries inside so just under
3,000 total and the Anker PowerCore magnetic 5k
has a 5,000 milliamp power battery.
From those numbers alone you can probably sumrise
that you get a little bit more juice out of the Anker
than you can from the Apple.
On the bottom of these two power packs you have lightning
for your charging port on the Apple device
and you have USB-C on the Anker.
Now one of the advantages that Apple has
over the Anker is the integration with iOS.
After you update your iPhone to 14.70 you get
some additional features with the MagSafe power pack.
You get more integration into the software,
so you can actually see what the charging percentage is of
the battery itself. So you can see right here
we are connected and
there is a full charge on the battery pack,
the iPhone is now charging and it is at around
I don't know, 48%, 46%.
Another one of the benefits of the Apple charger
is you can actually plug your lightning port
into either one of these devices and it will automatically
charge the other device as well.
So if we go ahead and plug the lightning cable
into the iPhone, you'll actually do a reverse charge
and charge the battery pack itself from the iPhone
which is pretty cool and the if you want to do the opposite
and you want to plug the lightning cable into
the battery pack, the battery pack will charge and
charge the iPhone at the same time wirelessly.
Now here's one other thing that's kind of interesting.
If you're not plugged in, you're just charging wirelessly.
The Apple MagSafe battery pack will charge your iPhone
at about five Watts.
Now if you have an iPhone 12, 12 pro or 12 pro max
and you connect to a 20 watt power adapter and you plug
into the battery pack, you actually get up to 15 watts
of MagSafe wireless charging from the battery pack
to the iPhone.
Now with the Anker you can actually go ahead
and plug that in and charge your iPhone at the same time
so now you're charging the battery pack and the iPhone,
but you are only charging at 5 watts
whether you're plugged in or not
the anchor will only charge your iPhone at up to 5 watts.
But a great thing about the Anker that you can't do with
the Apple power pack is you can actually charge
any device wire so if I want to connect my iPhone
wired to this battery pack, I can actually get
10 Watts of charging so now I'm charging at 10 watts
from the Anker via a cord, so you can charge
not just your iPhone but you can charge an Apple watch
an iPad, something else, anything that can charge
with 10 Watts of power. Now common questions out there is
can these devices charge something else other than
an iPhone 12?
And the answer is yes.
So if I put my AirPods on the Apple battery pack you can see
the charging light turn on and so God remove it
and we'll put it on there as well and we get the same thing.
So both of these battery packs we'll use standard cheap
charging to charge other devices.
For example, this iPhone 11
and if I placed it on the charger you have to make sure
that you line it up just right otherwise the coils
are not going to line up so that's the tricky part.
Let's see if we can get it.
There we go.
Okay, so now we are charging wirelessly my iPhone 11
from the Apple MagSave power adapter,
and same thing with the Anker you just have to make sure
that you're lined up correctly otherwise it's not going to
charge for you.
So your next question is probably going to be well,
how fast does it charge my iPhone?
So I did some testing with my iPhone 12 pro,
and I found that the Apple battery pack charged my iPhone
from 5% to about 66% in just over two hours.
Whereas the Anker charged from 5% to 99% before dying
at around three and a half hours.
Now both of these are going to vary depending on your phone.
And my test was with the phone basically sitting dormat
and not being used at all. I checked it a couple of times
to see what the status was, what the battery level was that
but it was pretty much unused
so if you're using your phone a lot,
or you have the 12 mini or the 12 pro max,
your mileage may vary.
So I also wanted to know how long does it take
to charge the battery packs themselves?
So I connected each one to a 20 watt Apple power adapter,
this one with USB-C of course, and this one with lightning.
The Apple battery pack charged to 100% in one hour
and the Anker took about three hours to charge to 100%.
So in $99, the Apple MagSafe power pack for the iPhone 12
will give you more integration into iOS.
You will be able to see the battery notifications
and indications on the phone itself.
You also have the option to connect a lightning cable to
the MagSafe battery pack and wirelessly charge your phone at
up to 15 Watts, the Anker charges via USB-C and will only
charge a five watts period, but you do get
a little bit bigger battery and therefore
a little bit more charge to your iPhone.
And because it's USB-C on the bottom
you actually have the ability to charge other devices
as well. So you can actually charge wired devices.
And if you have a MacBook Pro and an iPad Pro or iPad Air or
other devices that USB-C that use USB-C,
you can just take one charger at one cable
because you can charge your phone with USB-C
when using the Anker PowerCore magnetic 5k wireless
good name.
Oh, and one last thing,
the Apple power adapter comes with a 12 month warranty and
Anker comes with an 18 month warranty.
So you can be assured that your devices should function as
intended.
So let me know below which device
has the features that you want.
Did this video help you make a decision?
What questions do you still have about these?
Let me know below.
Hit the thumbs up button if you liked it
hit subscribe, if you want,
and I'll see you next time.