Anker® Astro3E 10000mAh High Capacity Power Bank Pack Portable External Battery Charger

Anker® Astro is a line of portable external batteries designed for our modern mobile age. High capacity power and compact designs make these batteries a reliable power companion on the go. With affordable prices and great Anker customer service, never get stranded without power again.

Product Features and Technical Details

Product Features

Huge Capacity, 10000mAh; Add 4-5 full charges or 40 hours of talk time to iPhone 5 / 4S / 4, 3 full charges for Samsung Galaxy S3, a full charge for iPad / iPad 2, or 400% + to most mobile phones' battery life Dual USB ports: charge one device with up to 3A output, or charge dual devices at 3A total max; Custom Android and Apple ports specially designed to charge Android and Apple products; Can individually or concurrently charge Android phones and iPhones at full speed; LED indicates charge level Slim & stylish design, 0.6 inch thick; Easily fits into your bag to provide instant power; Charge your devices anytime, anywhere; PERFECT for long plane flights, road trips, or whenever you need to charge your mobile devices wherever you are. Use a 1.5A adapter (not included) for fastest charging the Astro3E.

Reliable Lithium Polymer battery ensures high quality; 500+ recharge cycles over the life of the battery

Package includes: Anker External Battery / 4 connectors for most phones / 1 spring USB power wire / 1 user manual / 1 convenient travel pouch.

Dimensions

Size (LWH): 5.51 inches, 2.76 inches, 0.59 inches

Weight: 8.48 ounces

Product Features

Battery Type: Lithium Polymer

Customer Reviews

By David Parenteau

Amazon Verified Purchase

Pull out your big-pockets and don't expect something light, but plenty of power is in this package.

The Praise (Good Things)

* Small form factor for the amount of battery content

* Charge status and level indicator LEDs

* Automatic power off

* Custom circuitry for Android and iOS devices

* A selection of connectors for various devices

* Excellent value for cost

The Raze (Bad Things)

* Included spring-coil cable and construction is not too good

* Possible evidence of no full-discharge protection

* The "convenient travel pouch" is too small and not convenient

The Haze (Things to Consider)

* Slightly larger than a large Smart Phone

* Substantially heavier than a large Smart Phone

* Charges more slowly than the power it supplies

* Will not charge low-power-draw devices due to Auto-Off function

* Charging this device draws more power than some chargers can provide

* Does not come with an AC power adapter to charge itself

The Details...

This battery comes in a comfortable packaging with good instructions and a few extras (They gave me a bookmark... A bookmark? Really?). A zip bag contains the various adapter attachments: Apple 30-Pin, USB Mini, USB Micro, and a standard 5V Barrel connector. The other end of all of these adapter attachments is a smaller-than-normal barrel connector that plugs into the female barrel connector at the end of the spring cable. The other end of the spring cable is a standard USB A male connector, same as you would plug into a computer. There is also a mesh-bag carrying case.

Sadly, I have to touch on two raze items right here:

The construction of the USB spring cable and the adapters is nothing less than shoddy. I had to quickly convert to using a normal cable that came with the phone and tablet over the included spring cable. The USB A side of the power cord has trouble maintaining connection with the battery and the adapters have trouble maintaining connection with the device. While this nice compact cable would be a great boon to many, the poor quality makes it next to useless, with constant wiggling of the connections often needed for it to continue to operate.

There is also a mesh, draw-string carry pouch. This carry pouch is just barely too small for the battery pack to fit in and allow it to close and there is no way to easily store the connectors and previously-mentioned faulty spring-charging cable. Then I thought, "Maybe it's just meant to hold the adapters and cable!"... But then it's hugely overkill and the battery pack itself is not included in the carrying. The carry pouch really ends up being more of a hindrance than a convenience.

While both of these items are really secondary and overall not worth a star off. Anker may want to consider a better design and quality for the adapters and the bag, for example a carry bag that can securely hold the battery itself with a Velcro flap instead of a drawstring and a secondary pouch for the connectors. As for the connector cable, besides substantially-better construction needed, they might have better luck with adapters that go from Micro-USB to the other formats. That would allow the use of Micro-USB with no special adaptation and fewer adapters needed for the other forms.

What I would honestly love to see is some way to have things plugged into this without the cable sticking out so far. Phone and Battery, back to back with a low-profile connection to each would be truly-portable charging.

Battery for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a late night snack..

Nobody can deny that the digital world of today is a power-hungry place. Charging stations have cropped up all over and it's not uncommon to see folks' phones plugged into the local wall sockets at coffee shops or bars or hotels. Phones and tablets are faster, brighter, and more powerful, but they eat batteries like mad. Even with an extended life battery clipped to the back or stuck inside, most people will find themselves running low at some point. That's where an external charger battery comes into play

Let's start with some numbers and quick facts:

USB specification carries 5V (five volts). Officially, it carries 500mA (milliamps), or 0.5A. Running something at 500mA for one hour will consume 500mAh (milliamp-hours) of energy. Amps are a unit of DRAW - or "pull" - not "push". If a battery has 1,000 mAh of capacity, it can have a 500mA draw for two hours. With 10,000mAh of capacity, it can support the same draw for 20 hours. The mA or Amp rating of a power supply (3A in the case of this external battery) is how much load (pull... remember?) it can take without overloading. It will not "push" that much through and kill things, however it can have problems if the load placed on it exceeds its capacity. So basically, a battery can provide energy for hours equal to its capacity in mAh divided by the average draw in mA.

Batteries are just a chemical reaction that makes electricity. More chemicals means more energy can be stored. But more chemicals also means a bigger battery and a heavier battery. Plus it's important to consider that the Lithium-Polymer battery stores electricity at 3.7 volts, so there also has to be circuitry to change that up to 5V for the USB connector. More power takes more space and more weight. As a good example, the battery in an HTC One is 2,400mAh, or a bit under 1/4th the capacity of this. Thus, this device will have a battery that is about four times the size and weight of the battery inside the HTC One. That also means this can recharge an HTC One about four times.

Got all that?

Just make it work FASTER!

Both Apple and Android device makers (as well as others) realized that it takes a Long Time to charge a battery with only 500mA of input. So they made their devices capable of drawing more power, often 1.5A or more. They needed a way to know whether they were plugged in to a normal USB port that could only deal with 0.5A though, so they wouldn't overload the port. So both developed circuit signalling that would allow a high-amp charger to identify itself so the device would use the higher current and charge faster. Both of these signalling methods are enabled on this external battery, which is a boon to quick-charging devices.

Pocket-Sized Power - For big pockets

This is important to consider. This is bigger than a large smart phone. take the HTC One again as an example:

5.4 x 2.7 x 0.4 inches <- HTC One

5.6 x 2.8 x 0.6 inches <- Anker 10,000 External Battery

This battery is a bit bigger than the entire cell phone in all directions. Now, in my case, I wear cargo pants due to everything I need to carry for work. Not only do I have normal side pockets big enough to completely hold a 7" tablet, but I also have cargo pockets. Having effectively "another phone" in size and about two or three phones in weight is no big issue for me. If you have a very small handbag or wear tight pants with tiny pockets, this may not really be "pocket sized" for you. At the same time, this is the most-compact power supply I have found so far, with the amount of power it holds being very good for its size. It's easy to find others that are just as big or even bigger yet hold substantially-less juice. It's also easy to find others of the same price or more expensive that can't hold as much juice either. So in both Power/Size and Power/Cost, this is a winner.

Features that matter

The Charge Level Indicator LEDs will tell you how it's doing both when charging this battery as well as when using this battery to charge other things. The simple push-button operation makes it easy to turn on and it will turn itself off when the current draw is under 80mA. Nothing connected? It turns itself off. So you can check its battery level with a push and see if you need to recharge it before heading out. Many phones also draw less than this when they are fully charged and asleep, so again, auto-off.

However it's important to note that 80mA minimum. Some things like Bluetooth headsets and other devices draw very little current when charging. Try to plug in a tiny little on-the-ear headset and charge it and you might be in for a surprise as it doesn't draw enough power to keep the battery pack on.

Feed Me!

Another thing to consider is that the battery itself draws 1.5 amps when charging. Remember: It doesn't come with a power supply unit. Plug it in to your average computer USB at 500mA or a charger that can't provide enough juice and suddenly... Doom. There is a chance for overloading the supplying source, which can cause it to heat up substantially. Voltage can drop on the supply, causing the external battery pack to not charge at all. And in the even that the battery pack recognizes that it can't get enough current, remember how long we discussed it would take to charge the 10,000mAh battery at 500mA? Yup. 20 hours. More, actually, since there is conversion loss in the charging circuits.

Oh, hey, look! There are reviews that talk about charging it for four hours and not getting past one LED lit and the wall charger heating up. So there are precisely the symptoms of charging on a normal computer USB or with something like a 1A wall charger.

Hopefully this will help you..

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