So I went searching for a replacement. I ran across Anker products. They had batteries from 8000 mAh all the way to 20,000. I was trying to find a happy middle ground between portability and power. I was turned onto the Anker 2nd Gen Astro3 because of it’s high capacity of 12,000 mAh and it’s smaller size(about the size of two iPhone 5’s stacked). Easy to put in my camera bag, but especially awesome because it has 3 USB ports that have PowerIQ charging capabilities.

This means an extremely fast charge which is important if you can’t be tethered to your battery pack or just need a quick boost.

Well Anker was kind enough to send me a unit to test out and it could not have come at a better time. I just purchased the iPhone 6 and decided to do a project where I would be using the iPhone as my main camera, shooting slow motion video of dancers all over the NYC area over the course of 3 days. So this meant; not only did I have to use my phone to coordinate with the people I was meeting, scheduling, use GPS, and of course have Pandora going 24/7 with my headphones in to be a true New Yorker, but I also needed to use it to shoot slow motion videos over the course of a day. Needless to say it was intense on battery life.

REAL TIME USAGE:

Here is what my usage looked like:

Well let me just tell you this, by the end of day two the Anker battery backup still had 2 bars of power left to it! I was using it constantly. To give an idea of usage per tick of power, of which it has 10(light bars): Charging my iPhone 6 that has a larger battery than my iPhone 5S from 5% to 100% 4 times and my assistants iPhone 5c 3 times to 100% brought the battery pack down to 6 available “lights” of power. That is less than half for 7 full charges! I was blown away.

CHARGING SPEED:

What really got me was charging time. I could go from 60 – 85/90% in 20 minutes. That is incredibly fast. I was averaging 1-3 % per minute while plugged in, even with two devices charging at once.

Charging the unit itself is relatively quick as well. If you plug it into a wall(recommended) it can be charged to full from 0 in about 6-7 hours. USB it takes significantly longer, something like 11-12 hours.

Specs:

Capacity 12000mAh
Output 5V / 4A (total)
Input 5V / 2A
Weight 300g / 11oz
Size 111 x 83 x 26mm / 4.4 x 3.3 x 1.0in
– See more at: http://www.ianker.com/product/79AN7904S-BA#sthash.oOcSDF8a.dpuf

Price:
$45.99 on amazon.com at the time of writing this.

Conclusion:

This thing is a beast. It is pocketable if you don’t have a bag and light enough to not be a burden, but I would highly suggest carrying this in a bag or purse. It isn’t really a convenient accessory to your skinny jeans, but it is small enough to be an option if you know you are going to need a lot of power and won’t have a place to charge for an extended period of time. Of course if you need something slimmer Anker sells a variety of products with smaller dimensions at the price of mAh, albeit very small increments.

I had no idea what to expect with this thing, so I was carrying my laptop with me as well because if my iPhone died during this project, my shoot would have been ruined. I didn’t have to bring out my laptop once for charging purposes.

Overall I would suggest this battery pack to anyone looking for a 2-3 day pocketable power supply for their phones. It packs a punch with it’s powerful battery and quick charging abilities. Not to mention it comes with a carrying case, has a nice soft rubbery grip feel to it, and for a battery pack, looks kinda cool! Plus with it’s ability to charge 3 devices you better believe those around you are going to ask you to use it as well, which I was worried about, but with such a high capacity battery, it never drained the battery to the point where I wasn’t covered! When it comes to dollars per mAh of power this is top of the line.

Oh and if you want to see the final result of my first iPhone 6 slow motion video with over 15 dancers all over New York City. Check it out here: