Should Anker make a battery bank capable of charging a Mac book pro? I think the answer is yes, this product would revolutionize the game against their competitors. For a price point between $80 and $130 it would be the perfect product. Share and ask Anker if you think a product like this should exist!
Power Bank for Mac Book Pro (Late 2016-mid 2017)
Personally I think change begins from within.
I buy my portable devices with one eye on their chargers, because I have far more individual control of my choice of device than I have power over influencing others to do what I’d like them to do. Your on actions are more powerful as they have an immediacy than your own opinions.
The device I use at home is not the one I travel with, due to the charging issue.
There are a few small things you can differently. Buy a small tablet for the use of media consumption with smaller screen often these last a long time such as 8 hours. They also recharge fully off $20-$30 batteries. Consider larger tablets with a 15W USB input, these can benefit from batteries in the $30-$60 region. If you do both then their collective power is often enough for a very long time with no need for a battery.
In your case with the ask of a battery for the MacBook Pro - it is a 85W USB-C PD input. The closest match from Anker is a 30W output USB-C PD I link the bundled with charger option, I think there is one not bundled with charger (you’d use your existing charger).
As it is only 30W, you’d use it proactively, i.e. don’t expect it to recharge at full speed so you’d connect before the device is flat, more to slow the drain. A higher wattage battery is probably coming within a few months, that would involve probably a combination of Lithium Polymer and IQ2. I’d expect on release it to be pricey.
Technologically the challenge here is one getting more Wattage out of only 100Wh of cells, any larger than that it is not so easily accepted for flying.
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Hi @cdarienzo1, thanks for your advice and suggestion, I will pass your idea with our product manager, we would love to hear any suggestions on product improvement.
Nigelhealy you do have a good point, but Ravpower already has a product of which I already mentioned. I know people who own RavPower products and personally think they are poor quality. If Anker took in mind their design and reverse engineered it (I am an engineering student) then they could easily beat out their competition. Using my laptop all day really takes a toll on battery and to spend hundreds of dollars on a tablet vs $100 dollars on a battery, in the end most people will settle on the battery idea.
RavPower has their power bank with a 100W three prong outlet and 27,000Ah of possible charge. https://www.ravpower.com/ravpower-27000-external-battery-charger-AC-Outlet-black.html
Anker should take into account that most laptops now and in the future that most laptops will have USB-C and can run of power banks.
Their design should be a product under $150, be able to have a 100W output and at least 20,100Ah of charge. This would become a necessity for college students, programmers and people with jobs on in the field.
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Thank you so much for reading my post, if you see what i said in response to another person on this forum (quote below) then this is what you guys should consider, also reverse engineering is something that should be considered also.
Anker offers a 18 month warranty. The challenge Anker has the higher wattage of output the hotter the cells become along with hotter electronics doing the DC-DC conversion, so the thermals are compounded. The hotter, the faster the cells age. About 12W per 3400mah is a common maximum upper for quality cells, so a 26800mah is be able to do about 100W. Such a product would have some challenges of being rather hot, the failure would be higher and if any of the cells in the series connection could be caused to fry and then burn. Anker would then be exposing themselves to real risks of brand damage and worse, and if you imagined if it ever caught on fire on a flight in more than the rare situation what that would do the Anker brand perception.
There are many considerations here where the revenue earned from such higher wattage products come with potential downsides of greater loss.
Lithium Polymer can drive a higher wattage and new chipsets are more efficient so cause less heat in the DC-DC process. I do think what you ask for is eventually possible but I can see the challenge Anker has a business to run…
What I do is:
- I keep a server at home running a VM, which has a powerful cpu, lots of RAM, and fast drive. I use it via RDP, VNC, SSH to access its power from a low power device.
- I use a Chromebook around the house, if I I need to tap performance, use the above. It dooesn’t physically like transit (I’ve had to replace cracked screen total of 4 times in 2 years across 2 heavily used Chromebooks)
- I use a Pixel C when I’m traveling, it is fairly performant, only needs 15W input, and RDP to any apps not on Android (such as Visio). It has a tough outer metal case and seems to be long term withstanding heavy use. When it dies I’ll probably get one of the newer tougher Chromebooks.
- I use a Nexus 7 also for long flights, it only needs 10W input On a flight there’s real risk of damage from liquid from clumsy crew, passengers and turbulence.
A smaller screen less powerful portable device will get more hours of recharge benefit than a larger device. There is a maximum of 100Wh for FAA and CAA so say my Pixel C 34Wh battery would get a little over 2 full recharges off 26800. Your Macbook pro late 2016 is (you werent precise which model so picking an example one) is 95Wh so that same 26800ma 100Wh would not offer a full recharge. So your Macbook would last half the time of my Pixel C.
If you still insistent on retofitting a post-decision battery solution to your existing laptop decision, then consider the Powercore+ 26800 PD (Note: there are about 7 26800 products so get that exact one) and then plug it in at every opportunity, e.g. when sat down, and use that slow the drain. In my case my most power hungry portable device is 15W but I usually carry just a 10W output Powercore and its often able to keep the tablet fully charged as 15W is really for both recharging and operating the tablet, chances are your laptop isn’t needing 100W all the time. You’d probably find the 30W from the Powercore+ 26800 PD is sufficient and useful and available now from a brand you prefer. Or wait, I think a 60W is in the works but could be 6 months. I do own a 26800 15W output which in my case really gives a very long period away from the wall socket. The recharging is much slower but its still useful this approach.
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great suggestion
Hi AnkerOfficial, I’m looking forward to Anker Power Bank that supports fast charging for my 13-inch MacBook Pro 2017 Touch Bar.
It’s my first post. I found this discussion after I did googling: Power Bank for MacBook Pro 2017. Because most information I found on internet and many online communities was only for 12-inch MacBook, not 13-inch MacBook Pro 2017 Touch Bar. I really hope in future Anker Official will release Anker Power Bank that supports fast charging for 13-inch MacBook Pro 2017 Touch Bar.
Hi @ari2, welcome to the Anker Community!
Fortunately, Anker already offers a power bank that will be able to charge your 13" MBP at a fast rate! Check out the PowerCore+ 26800 PD.
This will not charge your MBP at full speed, though. The output on this power bank via the USB-C port is 30W. Your MacBook can accept up to 60W of power.
If you are looking to charge your MBP closer to full speed, I’d recommend waiting a couple months. Anker should be releasing PowerCore+ II 20000 around the end of the year with support for 45W PD. It should also be cheaper than the current offering.
Hope this helps!
Your forgetting he mentioned he has a touchbar, while it will charge at a significantly slower rate it’s almost negligible as per another user who tested this. Due to the touchbar drawing more power than what the battery pack can sustain, they did say it would charge when the comouter was off though
sorry dude… there is currently No battery that can fast charge or even charge a MacBook pro touch bar at normal speed. My MBP 13" gets about 2-5% per 5 min using the usb-c 20100 PD. Normally i get can get 50% in 45min if I am lucky with the included charger.
hold ya horses @joshuad11, that is not true other wise I would be in possession of multiple 26,800 PD batteries.
isn’t this counter-intuitive to what you just said about how it can charge at a fast rate?
bingo! you got the right answer you get a 
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So it will charge it much faster than non-PD ports (whether that be USB-A or USB-C - like the PowerCore+ 20100), but it won’t charge it as fast as the original charger.
Even if the Touchbar slows charging speeds, it should be faster than nothing at all… 
@cdarienzo1 The PowerCore+ 20100 does NOT support Power Delivery. This is probably why you have encountered such slow charging speeds to begin with.
Again, though, I’d wait for PowerCore+ II 20000.
So is this being thought about in too small a manner? Think through the entire use, discharge, recharge cycle.
So this is the problem which obviously can be solved cheaper:
- use the Mac-whatever, it goes flat
- plug in your very expensive Powercore 26800 PD to recharge your Mac-whatever
- plug in your PD and recharge which takes 4 hours
- premusably the Mac-whatever got recharged enough to last 4 hours
- repeat
- problem as you only have 1 charger you can never be fully charged on everything so next day have something not fully charged
Another option:
- use your Mac-whatever plugging in a much lower cost option like the Powercore 26800
- this is the same amount of energy inject but just slower
- eventually the non-PD is discharged, at this point you have consumed the exact same amount of energy as with a PD
- then recharge which takes “just over 6 hours”
- you begin next day fully charged using Anker chargers.
Other advantage of the alternative:
- it only needs a 1 port PD charger and 2 port non-PD to charge all concurrently.
- gosh that is what Anker actually sells!
- recharge the MAc-whatever and your non-PD 26800 concurrently overnight and resume next day both fully charged.
So I call this cheap proactive charging, not an obtuse wandering around deliberately causing a Mac-whatever to be flat and then seeking to pay extra for a fast Powercore. No, instead you discharge your lower cost Powercore slower earlier, it is the same amount of energy released slower so it slows the discharge of the Mac-whatever and recharging fits with the current Anker chargers.
I guess times have changed then, haha. 
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I got the 26800 20W input for $30 13 months ago and its the biggest most powerful Anker battery I own, I’m stretching out of that till significantly better comes. With this I can recharge everything I have overnight, but I know that won’t last forever.
Nostalgia - remember when discount codes appeared and we had like 2 seconds to win. Less stressful now 
Seeing that you’ve won the $150 prize, you could pick this up with that!
For everyone else, there’s an absolutely insane deal of the PowerCore+ 26800 PD going on right now… 
Go check it out!
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If you ask me then i will recommend Anker Power Bank for MacBook Pro as my first choice and then will suggest Ravpower and other brands.
I’m using Anker PowerCore for my MacBook Pro.
This charger works really well with my MacBook and Nintendo Switch as well. It extends my playtime from 4 hours to all day! I would recommend this product to anybody who looking for solid chargers.