So back home now after 5 days. Tech worked / didn't work.
Worked:
- turned out I needed to spend like 8 hours a day on my "laptop" without power sockets nearby so the "laptop" good battery life and USB-C recharging off Powercore was the perfect answer.
- often I'd have no opportunity to recharge at evening so I was like 14 hours between wall-charger so carrying Powercore to survive tech-heavy day was the perfect use case for Powercore.
- one day I was carrying the laptop in that pouch with its charger/cables all day and its an easy light carry, so that's like 14 hours tech-heavy usage in a small bag and devices nearly fully recharged still at bedtime.
- on my flights I used the Bose QC35, worked fine and the Slim 5000 is a good flat form-factor recharger for the Bose in the taxi time between flights and bedtime.
- the 6ft cable is perfect when distance to wall, like it worked well when in bed, laptop on my lap and plenty of cable length to the wall. That 6 inch cable is perfect for when just sat at a desk and put the Powercore next/under device with no desk clutter.
- as I was on the offensive when stationary keeping Powercore connected to my devices (swapping between laptop, phone, watch), which meant when moving all my devices were nearly fully charged, I did get back to bed with nearly fully charged devices so I was continually safely with spare device power to handle any unexpectedly bad day (weather, etc) which did not happen.
Didn't work:
- I tried lasting a day with just carrying the Slim 5000. It barely lasted til lunchtime, 5000mAh was way too little. So I had to carry 10000mAh. If I had to rely on 5000mAh then my devices would be less charged by end of day and more vulnerable to (didn''t happen) overnight issues. Then I hit the problem of Anker's lack of USB-C everywhere. My cable I had to make the Slim 5000 recharge my phone / laptop could not be reversed to recharge the Slim 5000 as it did not have USB-C recharge port. I hadn't packed that day a MicroB cable. So proof that Anker's lack of USB-C input Slim 5000 causes adding a cable. This is a simple example of why Anker's glacial lack of embracing USB-C when devices are USB-C is causing you to carry an extra cable just to compensate for Anker's slowness in embracing USB-C.
- The 10000mAh when it was used did last all day but it would be nearly empty and it is a slow recharger so it really does need 8 hours to recharge itself. This makes it a "just enough" product of its just-enough mAh for the day and just recharges fast enough to be fully charged the next day. The Powercore 10000 remains the densest, smallest, lightest for 10000mAh, hence in a just-enough it remains Anker's best product when you're carrying everything on your back. That is disappointing Anker has not improved on a 2 year old product.
- I tried using both my Slim 5000 and the 10000 together one day, that meant I easily had spare mAh at end of the day but I didn't have enough faster 12W ports for all the recharging of both Powercore and my devices at night. This meant I was actually needing that Aukey 12W (of which Anker makes what appears identical product now) just to get port count up to 5 to recharge them all and I was still wanting a 6th port because the 10000 was a slower recharger.
- while 10000mAh is just enough carried energy it is a nuisance of 1 ports, I'd ideally like 2 or 3 ports so I can sit down with all devices kept charge and just unplug something when moving. I kind of got that with two Powercore but then that causes too few Powerport ports problem.
Conclusion: Nearly perfect, difficult to improve.
10000mAh just used by itself worked "just enough" and the Slim 5000 as spare mAh (I needed 10Ah) and good form factor at times. I don't really see anything Anker is currently making would make it sufficiently better to spend a lot of $$$ on anything better. I'd ideally like say a 2 or 3 -port 10000 which recharged faster like of USB-PD off a 4-port USB PD, I'd still carry the Slim 5000 for form-factor situations and as spare power. But A slim 5000 with USB-C input and output and Anker selling USB-C input Soundcore would then make a full system. Such products nearly exist from Anker but recent releases they trade more ports for bigger size so its not clear overall if its any actually better. Anker's shipping MicroB Soundcore products means I must carry a Powercore with Type-A ports which makes the Powercore bigger, and a cable for that.
So what means is Anker has not really, yet, made anything which is a game changer in technology for a few years now, if anything they are part of the problem holding everything back, every time they try to improve things they have worsened something else, the trade-offs are very slight and rarely worth upgrading from products which are still working perfectly fine.
Anker needs to:
- ship Soundcore with USB-C
- come up with smaller size USB-C Powercore
- not dilly dally wait for smaller higher power Power Delivery USB-C multi-port products.
