Anker Prime 20,000mAh Power Bank Review
The Anker Prime is a powerful, high capacity battery pack willing to be called “le chonk,” “el grande” or “captain mAh.”
Verdict
This high-tech portable battery pack can charge a couple of devices simultaneously at extreme speeds and is impressively quick to charge. It’s an ideal charging powerhouse for those with little patience.
Pros
- Handy screen, with menu system
- Awesome power output
- Fast charging (with a 100W adapter)
Cons
- Some buggy behaviours at maxed-out charging
- Dodgy level reporting out of the box
- High price for a 20K battery
Key Features
- Built-in displayA surprisingly large screen shows the charge level and the power being supplied to each of the ports.
- 200W outputWith 200W maximum output, you can fully charge two average laptops at max speed and still have power left over.
- 100W chargingIf you have a 100W power adapter, the Prime only takes around 78 minutes to charge.
Introduction
The Anker Prime is a powerful but portable high-capacity battery pack. Its brick-like shape gives it the character of a bludgeoning weapon, its 20,000mAh capacity is high, and it can still be easily stashed away in a rucksack.
Power and speed are the key appeals here. It can be charged at up to 100W, and can charge two devices at up to 100W simultaneously.
That’s right, the Anker Prime can charge two laptops at once, likely at full speed depending on the laptop, and there’s a third USB for your low-power electronics too.
The major stumbling block is the cost. £129.99/$129.99 may seem a small fortune to pay for a way to stay charged up on the go, but it’s also about as close as a battery bank gets to being exciting.
Design
- Embossed plastic shell
- Colour embedded colour display
- Optional charging dock
Anker’s Prime is pretty high-tech for a battery pack. Its shiny-looking front is home to a colour LCD screen that can display a bunch of information.
You can see the charge level, the speed at which the Anker Prime is being charged up (in watts). And the wattage each connected device is getting while on charge.
There’s also an indicator of how long the Prime can carry on trucking at its current discharge rate, and an estimate of the time until it’s fully charged when getting topped up. All of this is very intuitive, and very useful. Nice work, Anker.
However, the build may not be what you expect from glancing at Anker Prime’s photos and price. This is a plastic power bank. And that glassy-looking front panel over the screen? It’s plastic too. It picks up greasy smudges in an instant, and is sure to pick up scuffs before too long as well.
You might want to invest in a carry pouch before throwing the Anker Prime Power Bank in a bag, where it’s bound to end up on the reg. The sides have a grippy battery of embossed lines running down them, but after handling the Prime and giving it a close look, you realise it isn’t quite as glossy as it may at first appear.
Does that matter? Maybe not, but its appearance is likely to age fairly swiftly unless you treat it well. There’s no water resistance either. And while it’s sturdy, I can imagine the horror I’d feel after dropping it onto a hard floor.
Anker also offers an optional charging dock, which interfaces with five little metal contact points on the bottom of the Anker Prime. This costs an additional £69.99, though. You could buy a decent Android phone for the cost of the pair combined.
There’s more to this bank than most, though. For starters, it has an interface. The button on the side, rather than just lighting up the screen, is used to flick through a series of menu screens.
These let you see the number of charge cycles the Anker Prime has been through, the battery health, alter the screen time out and set the screen brightness between medium and high settings. I’m not normally a fan of putting screens in gadgets that don’t need them, but here the combo really works.
Performance
- Up to 100W charging for recharge in 78 minutes
- Up to 200W output
- 58.18Wh tested output performance
The Anker Prime Power Bank comes with some pretty startling numbers attached.
It has 20,000mAh capacity, can charge two laptops at up to 100W simultaneously and can itself be charged at 100W. It’s clearly a battery bank made primarily for high-power devices like laptops, or for fast-charging phones. It can’t charge loads of things at once without additional hubs, though, as there are only three sockets here.
There are two USB-Cs, which can work as inputs or outputs, and a classic USB-A for charging only.
I’ve checked out all the numbers. For capacity, Anker claims 72Wh (20,000mAh at 3.7V), and my tool registered 70.72Wh input from flat to a full charge. The Prime may keep a little slice in reserve so it can still display that all-important “0%” charge message on-screen after running dry.
It absolutely can charge at up to 100W, tested using an adapter made for a beefy Samsung Galaxy Book laptop. But this usually kicks in when filling the Anker Prime up from around 20% charge to 50%. This wasn’t entirely consistent, suggesting it’s guided carefully by the temperature sensor inside the Anker Prime. You’ll need to supply your own fast-charging adapter, as one is not included.
A full charge took 78 minutes, and that’s when it stopped drawing power. In my last charge-up test, it displayed 100% at just 52 minutes.
This is something you’ll likely notice in your first couple of weeks with the Anker Prime: its battery level reporting starts in a right state. It began shutting down while displaying 30%, but this was just a case of the battery needing to calibrate itself as it has since settled down. If you buy an Anker Prime, give it time to settle in rather than assuming something is wrong.
When charging a 65W laptop, the Anker Prime outputs 58.18Wh of the 70.72Wh used to charge it. This gives it an efficiency of an entirely respectable 82% (although I’ve seen higher from Anker). You might get slightly better results if you keep the screen switched off, but the display is all part of the appeal.
And while the battery level estimate may be way off from day one, the power figures (both in and out) shown on the screen are on the money. Well, 95% of the time.
The only issue I saw was when charging two laptops, one at a blistering 100W. The Anker Prime displayed 100W for both, even though the other one had a maximum input of 65W. Its 100W mode isn’t foolproof when used solo either. My test with the Samsung Galaxy Book laptop threw up a message suggesting to use an official charger after a few minutes at 100W, before limiting charging to the 40W mark.
Charging at 65W, including with two laptops simultaneously, worked just fine on all occasions, though.
The third USB-A port is meant to be able to charge devices at up to 65W. But you may be disappointed if you expect all fast-charging phones to be able to use all of it — brands like Xiaomi, Honor and OnePlus use tweaked proprietary systems where Anker’s Power IQ 2.0 gets on better with USB-PD and Quickcharge 3.0 devices.
When charging the Nubia Z60 Ultra I reviewed recently, for example, it wouldn’t pull more than around 27W, despite being an 80W phone.
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Should you buy it?
You want serious portable power
The Anker Prime is an order of magnitude faster than the average battery pack, capable of doling out and taking in power at pretty stunning rates.
You want to fast-charge Chinese phones or are on a budget
This battery pack is not cheap and is not immune to the occasional bout of odd behaviour either. And thanks to near-unavoidable compatibility issues, some very fast-charging phones won’t charge at the full rate.
Final Thoughts
The Anker Prime is a powerhouse power bank that can charge not just most laptops up at full speed, but two of them at the same time.
That’s quite a skill for a power bank that, while small, isn’t the giant slab often associated with ultra-high capacity units made for PCs.
The price is quite high, battery level reporting takes a while to settle in, and you’re likely to encounter some little issues at the highest charging rates. But this is an impressive brick nonetheless.
How we test
We thoroughly test every power bank at Trusted Reviews, using a USB Voltimeter to not only test elements like maximum wattage but to measure its total output to gain insight into efficiency and more.
Tested input, output, maximum wattage and more using a USB voltimeter
Charged both phones and laptops during testing
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FAQs
It is not water resistant.
There’s no wireless charging option here.
The charging dock is purchased separately, as is a charge adapter (up to 100W).
Full specs
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Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
