The Best Portable Power Banks

The short version

If you want one charger that handles a laptop, a phone, and earbuds at once and shows you what it’s doing, get the Anker Prime 737. It’s heavy and it’s not cheap, and those are the only two complaints. If you mostly need to top up a laptop and would rather carry something flatter for less, the Baseus Blade does nearly the same job without the display. If you only ever charge a phone, stop reading and buy the INIU 10,000mAh; more capacity and wattage would be headroom you’ll never use.

Everything below is the reasoning behind those calls.

How we evaluate, and why trust us

We’re a product-research desk. For this guide we compared eleven power banks across three capacity tiers, read the published output specs against what the port hardware can deliver, and cross-checked owner reports for the failure modes that only show up after a year: swollen cells, dead ports, frayed captive cables.

We have not published formal bench numbers for charge curves on this guide. Where we cite a wattage or a capacity, it’s the manufacturer’s rating, labeled as such. What we add is judgment about which specs matter for which buyer, and where a number on the box doesn’t survive daily use. Our full method, including how we separate measured results from manufacturer claims, is in how we test. The desk runs on reader support, not vendor money: no brand can buy a place on this list or a better score.

Who this guide is for

“Best power bank” is the wrong question. The right one is “best for what.” A power bank trades off three things you can’t all maximize at once: capacity (how many charges), output (how fast, and whether it can feed a laptop), and portability (weight and pocketability). Push one up and at least one of the others comes down. So we split the field by the job:

• Charge a laptop on the move. You need 65W minimum, ideally 100W or more, and at least 20,000mAh. That means weight. The Top Pick and Runner-Up live here.
• Day-long phone insurance. You need 10,000mAh and pocketability. Output above ~25W is wasted. The Budget pick lives here.
• Travel without a bag of cables. You want an all-in-one (battery, wall charger, and cable) in a carry-on-legal size. The Best for Travel pick lives here.

The picks

Top Pick: Anker Prime 737 (PowerCore 24K)

The 737 is the closest thing to a do-everything brick we’d recommend without an asterisk on capability. Anker rates it at 140W total output across two USB-C ports and one USB-A, with 24,000mAh of capacity, enough to refill most phones four-plus times or give a 13-inch laptop a meaningful top-up while charging a phone alongside it. The feature that earns it the top slot is underrated: a small display that reports watts in and watts out in real time. That readout settles arguments. It tells you the laptop is pulling 90W rather than stalling at 18W on a tired cable, so you swap the cable instead of blaming the bank. Most packs leave you guessing.

The tradeoff is blunt. At roughly 630 grams it’s real heft in a bag and a non-starter for a pocket, and it costs more than plain packs of the same capacity. You’re paying for the output ceiling, the three-device simultaneity, and the readout. If you don’t need all three, you’re overbuying. Read the full Anker 737 review for the detailed verdict.

Runner-Up: Baseus Blade 100W

The Blade makes a clever bet: most people who want laptop charging don’t need three ports or a display. They need a flat object that slides into the same sleeve as the laptop. Its 20,000mAh capacity and 100W rated output cover the great majority of ultrabooks, and the laptop-shaped body is the most bag-friendly design in the category. It typically sells for meaningfully less than the Top Pick.

What you give up is information and a port. There’s no readout, so remaining charge is a guess until it dies, and you get two ports rather than three. For a single-laptop, single-phone person who values slimness and price over telemetry, that’s an easy trade. Our full Baseus Blade review walks through where the 100W rating holds and where it sags.

Budget: INIU 10,000mAh Slim

This is the pick for anyone whose answer to “will you ever charge a laptop from this?” is no. At around 200 grams it disappears into a jacket pocket, its 22.5W output refills a phone quickly enough, and 10,000mAh is roughly two phone charges on paper, a full day of insurance and then some. It’s also, reliably, one of the cheapest name-brand options going.

The ceiling is real. 22.5W is fine for phones, sluggish for tablets, and irrelevant to laptops, and the plastic shell doesn’t feel as built-to-last as the metal-bodied picks. But buying more here would pay for capability you’ve said you won’t use.

Best for Travel: Anker Power Bank with Built-In Cable

The travel pick solves a different problem: the cable you forgot and the wall charger you didn’t pack. This one has a USB-C cable built into the body and fold-out wall prongs, so a single object is your battery, your cable, and your wall charger. At 10,000mAh it sails under every airline’s carry-on battery limit, and the all-in-one design is the kind of thing you stop appreciating because you stop having the problem.

The cost is a 30W output ceiling, below the laptop picks, plus the structural reality that a captive cable can wear out and take the convenience with it. For a frequent traveler who values one-bag simplicity over raw speed, that’s a fair price.

How to choose

Work top to bottom and stop at your first yes:

1. Will you charge a laptop? If yes, you’re in 65–140W, 20,000mAh territory: Top Pick or Runner-Up. Pick the 737 for the display and three-device charging; pick the Blade for slimness and a lower price.
2. Do you hate carrying cables and chargers? The Best for Travel all-in-one earns its keep.
3. Phone only? The Budget pick. Don’t overbuy.

Two numbers worth internalizing before you shop: watt-hours (capacity in mAh times voltage, divided by 1,000) is what airlines care about, and almost every consumer bank is under the 100Wh limit. And delivered capacity is always less than the printed mAh. Plan on a bank handing over roughly 60–70 percent of its headline number after conversion losses.

Related reading

• The Best Portable Monitors, the other thing worth carrying for a mobile setup.
• Streaming Devices: Roku vs. Fire TV vs. Apple TV, for the stationary side of your gear.
• How to Choose a Power Bank, the longer walkthrough if you want the full reasoning before you buy.