Performance

For testing, I swapped the Anker 733 Power Bank out with my standard charging adapter and have been using it to charge all of my devices. This includes my Samsung S21 Ultra, Razer Blade Stealth laptop, and anything else around my desk. Unlike with the 727 Charging Station that I previously took a look at from Anker which wouldn’t charge my phone in its fastest charging mode, I didn’t have that problem with the 733 Power Bank. This is huge for me because my phone is of course what I use and charge the most. Using a 100-watt capable USB Type-C charging cable with a power meter built-in I did some testing with the 733 both with it plugged in and then also unplugged to test out the battery pack as well.

With the 733 plugged in the Samsung S21 Ultra charged at 24-26 watts. Switching over to my laptop it pulled even more at 51-53 watts showing that the 733 which is rated at 65 watts is capable of charging at that rate. This of course was with the 733 plugged in and just one device.

testing 4

From there I unplugged it and redid those same tests. The S21 Ultra charged at the same 26 watts which is good. But when on battery power the Razer Blade Stealth struggled. It peaked at 30 watts but my laptop itself seemed to struggle to know if the charging source was enough to power things. The laptop would dim the screen in power saving mode and then come out of it, going back and forth. Most of the time pulling just 10 watts. This was still enough to keep charging it, but not ideal if you are trying to charge and use the laptop at the same time. The reason for the lower wattage when on battery is because the 733 Power Bank is 65-watt capable only when plugged in, on battery, it is limited to 30 watts. This is more than enough for charging most devices including my phone which charged at its fastest rate, but for my laptop which can pull more, it struggled. This is most likely a limitation of the power that the batteries can output and will be a downside for some people, in my specific case I’m not as worried about charging my laptop. But having a little more capability would be nice to help cover a portable device like the Steam Deck. 30 watts is enough to handle your phone, Nintendo Switch, and most other smaller devices though. 

testing 5

From there I did dive into checking out how the 733 handles more than one device being plugged in. But before covering how that worked I should run through what Anker has listed as its capabilities. For single port charging when plugged into a wall either Type-C plug can handle 65 watts and the type-A connection is capable of 22.5 watts. Switching to battery power drops the Type-Cs down to 30 watts and the A stays at 22.5 watts. When plugging in two devices you can see that they have ports tied in together sharing power. So when plugged in if you use the top Type-C connection and the bottom Type-A you can get 45 watts from the C and 20 watts from the A the same goes for if you use both Type-C plugs. But using the middle Type-C and the Type-A is only capable of 15 watts on either. On battery power no matter the combination you are limited to 15 watts for each port. Anker’s 3 port charging picture is a little more confusing because this just shows that when plugged in you get 65 watts total or 15 watts total when on battery. This just means that the power will be divided across the three devices plugged in.

testing 1

testing 2

testing 3

So how did testing charging multiple devices at once go? Well, when plugged in and having my laptop and phone both plugged in charging went well. My laptop pulled 31 watts while my phone would charge in “fast charging” mode which isn’t the faster “super fast charging” mode which means it was charging at up to 15 watts, not the 25 that I would normally see. Unplugging the 733 to try to charge both devices on battery on the other hand caused a mess. With this setup which was using the two Type-C connections, neither device would charge. The charger went into a reboot loop over and over. Closing my laptop did help though. When running my laptop was demanding more power than the 733 would put out. But when the laptop was closed it would at least work. Of course, the 733 can only output 15 watts in that situation so power was limited and I was seeing 15 watts total across both devices, not per device as the Anker website implied. Unplugging my laptop also didn’t increase the charge speed until after I also unplugged the phone so keep that in mind as well. 

As far as battery capacity goes the 733 Power Bank has 10,000mAh in total capacity. You can look at your device battery capacities to get an idea of how much this can potentially help you. For example, my S21 Ultra has a 5500 mAh capacity, so I would get just under two full charges from the 733 before it would need recharging. The standard iPhone 14 is rated at 3279 mAh and the iPhone 14 Pro Max is 4323 mAh so you would get three charges on the standard iPhone and two on the Pro Max. The Nintendo Switch is 3570 mAh so almost three charges for it as well. Laptops, even the smallest on the other hand will get you at most one charge and often less than one. This shows once again that the 733 Power Bank is great for charging them when plugged in but is still best for your phone and other devices on battery. The front of the 733 does have a battery indicator with the small pinhole LEDs on the front button that will show capacity in 1/4s. You can also use this button to put the device in trickle charge mode, which will turn on a green LED and limits charging rates to 7 watts no matter what. This is good for charging things like earbuds that will sometimes only charge to 80% without this mode.

image 1

 

Log in to comment

We have 1779 guests and no members online

supportus