I picked up an Anker 533 Powerbank (PowerCore 30W) this weekend, as it seemed to meet all my requirements:
- I trust the brand. I’ve had one of their older models for five years now and it’s still working reliably. Friends that bought from other brands have complained about significant decline in capacity after a year, or it stopped working.
- The latest generation of Anker products all seem to include 12V support now (previously only 15V).
- It’s a compact 10K battery with two USB-C PD ports, and one USB-A.
This did not work out well.
It reports about 2 hours battery life with Syntakt, and 5 with Digitakt.
I haven’t tested it fully, but it drained 25% in 30 minutes so it seems accurate enough.
I didn’t think Syntakt drew that much power. I was expecting at least 3 hours.
In future, I suppose I should be looking at 20K+ powerbanks (there’s a Belkin 26K that looks good).
When more than one device is connected, all outputs drop to 5V.
Despite the 30W rating, it doesn’t seem to support two 12V outputs, or 12V+5V.
And once the output has dropped to 5V, I could not get 12V out of the USB-C ports again without hard-resetting the powerbank.
This also seems to be true of my previous Anker power bank, now that I’m aware of it.
This is done by shorting it out with a C-to-C cable connected to both outputs. I don’t like that.
The USB-C ports also get stuck at 5V if the low-current charging mode is activated.
12V over USB-A did not seem to be affected in either case. That always worked without having to reset it.
Oh, and if you connect more than one device - even if they are all 5V - power is cut as you connect each one.
So it will reset anything being powered by it, rather than charging.
.
On a related note, I can no longer recommend the MyVolts StepUp adapters.
Despite only using one sparsely over the course of 3 months now, it no longer stays on many of my USB-C cables reliably. Even the slightest touch can cause it to cut out.
I would recommend trigger cables that are hard-wired, with clearly-labelled outputs.
Many of the cheaper ones don’t seem to indicate voltage or polarity, and that seems dangerous.
That leads into the other reason I can no longer recommend the StepUp adapter.
It still lights up green even if it’s not delivering 12V.
The only reason I know this is because I have a USB tester:
These things are quite affordable now, and are handy when troubleshooting USB power issues, or monitoring what devices are drawing.
When the powerbank is stuck in 5V mode, green.
And when it’s connected to my old Anker power bank, that only supports 9V and 15V over PD (no 12V support) it will output 9.25V and still lights up green.
Now in most cases the voltage is going to be low enough that a 12V device just won’t power up.
But maybe some devices are still going to run if you send them a lower voltage, and could potentially be damaged.
Seems like a bad design to me. It should only light up green if it’s delivering 12V.
They released USB cables with a “power meter” built in at the same time as these StepUp adapters, but they only display wattage.
It’s a neat thing to have built into the cable, but it seems like displaying voltage would be far more relevant for USB-PD - so you know what is being delivered before connecting it up to a device.