The Anker Astro E3 is a powerful external battery that strikes a good balance between large capacity and portability.
The Anker Astro E3 is one of, if not the best external battery pack on market. It combines a large capacity with portability, nice aesthetics and strong support options. You also get several useful features such as automatic shut-off and a low-battery warning too.
This external battery pack can fully charge your cell phone, whether it’s Apple, Android or some other brand, four or five times before you have to recharge it. The Astro E3 can also charge tablets via the 2.1-amp USB port, but you get considerably less mileage here. The 1.1-amp port is perfect for charging your smartphone when it’s idle. If you want to charge your phone during use, then the extra power draw from the 2.1-amp port is necessary to keep up with power drain.
It has a USB adapter to connect the external battery to your computer or a USB wall charger. It should only take the Astro E3 about six hours to reach its capacity of 10,000 milliampere-hours (mAh). That’s enough juice to recharge most smartphones several times – the average smartphone battery is around 2,700 mAh. Keep in mind that the charge rate is affected by how much power can move through the ports. On laptops, USB ports are often limited to 0.5 amps, which translates into much longer charge times.
One very important thing to consider when looking at an external battery pack is whether it is designed to hold a charge for long periods of time. The Astro E3 can hold a nearly full charge for a very long time. We’re talking months instead of days. This USB battery pack is rated for more than 500 cycles, meaning you can drain the battery to 0 percent and charge it back to full 500 times without worrying about its performance decaying.Once the battery pack is fully charged, it pumps out 3 amps across dual USB ports. This means that the maximum power draw cannot exceed 3 amps. If you have a phone plugged into one port and a tablet plugged into the other, you still get full charging speed on both ports. All of this comes in a sleek-looking plastic housing. This external battery pack fits right in with the current look of most tablets and smartphones.
You will know when the Astro E3 needs to be recharged by the LED indicator lights on the front of the unit. There are four lights total, and with each light that goes out, you lose 25% of the battery’s power. The low-battery warning tells you when it’s a good idea to charge the external battery pack. Unlike some competing external batteries, the Astro E3 comes with multiple adapter cords to ensure you have a cord that’s compatible with your phone. It also includes a USB cable, user manual and travel pouch.