Best Portable Power Banks of 2026

Charging a laptop from a battery is the one job a phone pack can't fake, and this is the pack here built for it. Anker rates it at 165W total with 100W on a single USB-C port, which is enough to run and recharge a 13-inch ultraportable rather than just slow its drain. If your version of portable power means a MacBook and a deadline, this is the shortlist of one.

Two USB-C cables are built in: one retractable to about 2.3 feet, the other short and doubling as a carrying strap. The retractable one is the smarter of the two, we found — it removes the small ritual of digging a cable out of a bag — and the strap means the pack arrives at a café with everything it needs already attached. Both are moving parts, so treat the retraction mechanism gently and it should outlast the trip.

It is not a pocket pack. At 6.18 by 2.13 by 1.93 inches it's a block that rides in a laptop bag or a backpack, and you notice it on your shoulder. The payoff is capacity: 25,000mAh works out to about 92.5Wh, just under the airline carry-on ceiling, which makes this the largest pack in this group that a laptop user can still fly with.

The catch is price — the highest here, several times what a 10,000mAh pack costs — and the failure mode that comes with any pack this expensive. Some quit inside the first year, and a retractable cable can be the first thing to go; the 18-month warranty is the backstop. If your workday leaves the house with you, that's the cost of not hunting for an outlet at three in the afternoon.

At 60,000mAh this pack works out to roughly 222Wh, which puts it well past the airline carry-on limit of 100Wh — and past the 160Wh ceiling that needs special approval. That's a real limitation if you're shopping for a travel pack, but it's also the wrong frame. This is a car-camping, road-trip, storm-season pack, and judged that way the capacity is the point.

Five devices charge at once from two USB-A ports, a USB-C port and a built-in 3-in-1 cable covering USB-C, Lightning and micro-USB, all fed by 22.5W. The digital display reads out an exact percentage, which we appreciated more on a pack this size than on a pocket one — you want to know whether you're leaving with 100% or 40%. It refills a phone several times over and still has room for a tablet.

It earns its place in a hallway cupboard or a trunk rather than a backpack. At just over 15.5 ounces it's a two-hand lift, and a full refill takes most of a night, so it's a pack you plug in on Sunday and take camping on Friday. One caution: 60,000mAh in a case 5.9 inches long and 1.1 inches thick is dense even by current standards, so judge it by the charges it actually delivers rather than by the badge. Treated that way, it's a lot of backup for the money.

The appeal is a small physical habit: you put the pack against the back of an iPhone, the magnets grab, and the phone starts charging with no cable involved. At 0.56 inches thick and 7.6 ounces, it adds less bulk to a phone in the hand than we expected, and the matte finish and metal frame make it feel like part of the phone rather than something clipped to it.

Underneath the magnetic pad it's a 10,000mAh pack with a 30W USB-C port, so a tablet or a second phone can charge by cable while the iPhone sits on the back. The wireless pad tops out at 15W — Qi2-certified fast for wireless, still slower than a cable into the same phone. For top-ups between meetings that's fine; for a full refill before a flight, use the port.

Two limits worth knowing. It's built around the iPhone's magnet array and Anker doesn't recommend it for Android phones, so it's a poor fit for a mixed household. And wireless charging runs warm; this pack is no exception. That's the standard rather than a defect, but you'll notice it against your ear on a long call.

At the highest price of any 10,000mAh pack here, you're paying for a habit rather than for capacity, and more milliamp-hours are available for less. It's worth the premium for the person who charges in short bursts all day and never wants to think about a cable, and it isn't for anyone who mostly charges a phone inside a bag.

Four built-in cables — Lightning, USB-C, micro-USB and USB-A — sounds like overkill until you're the person everyone hands a dead phone to. Add the three ports and this pack will run six devices at once, which is a family-car feature more than a solo one: phones, earbuds and a tablet all charging from one brick, with the cables stowed in the body instead of tangled in a glovebox.

We like it for exactly that job. 50,000mAh hands out charges across a long weekend, the digital display tells you when to stop sharing, and 22.5W is quick enough that nobody complains. What it isn't is portable in the pocket sense: it measures 5.82 by 2.83 by 1.18 inches and you know it's in the bag. Charge it the night before you leave, not the morning of — a pack this size takes the better part of a day to refill.

The warranty is the bit to weigh: 12 months, the shortest of any pack here, on the device most likely to be lent out and dropped. That's the trade for the price and the cable count, and for a pack that stays in a car or a cupboard it's a trade worth making. Just don't expect it to be the one you slip into a jacket.

Ten thousand milliamp-hours usually means a slab in your bag. This one measures 4 by 2.6 by 0.5 inches — the smallest 10,000mAh pack in this group — and it disappears into a jeans pocket or a small purse in a way none of the 20,000mAh packs here can. We kept forgetting it was there, which is the highest compliment a daily pack can get.

It isn't slow, either. 45W on USB-C is enough to fast-charge a phone at its own maximum and to give a tablet or a thin laptop a useful top-up, and the built-in USB-C cable is two-way: it charges your phone or refills the pack, so the cable you'd otherwise forget is the one you need. A small LED display shows the remaining percentage, and two USB-C ports plus a USB-A let three devices share it.

The price is the sticking point. It costs more than any other 10,000mAh pack here, for something that stores half of what a 20,000mAh pack holds for less money. What you're buying is the footprint and the wattage. If your bag is already full — a small purse, a running belt, tight jacket pockets — that trade makes sense; if it isn't, buy capacity instead.

For the least money here you get four built-in cables — USB-C, Lightning, micro-USB and USB-A — plus three ports, six devices charging at once, and three separate ways to refill the pack itself. The cables are short, tucked into the body and reinforced where they fold, which is the part that usually fails on packs like this.

It's 10,000mAh, 9.2 ounces and slimmer than an iPhone 14, so it goes into a bag without a second thought. Because the cables are short, a phone hangs close to the pack rather than swinging from a long lead — handy on a train with no table, less handy if you want to keep using the phone at arm's length while it charges.

The compromise is on the inside. Refilling this pack is slow, so plan an evening on a charger rather than a quick top-up before you leave, and some units stop working within months, which is why the three-year warranty carries more weight here than on the pricier picks. We keep coming back to it for the glovebox and the school bag: cheap enough to own two, good enough to get a phone through an evening.