Review: Anker Powercore Speed

While there are many sailors who are willing to run their generators all night, I have this ethic where the goal when anchoring or mooring is to turn off the generator as quickly as possible. This time, our boat actually had new enough batteries that running the generator for 2 hours around dinner time was sufficient.

Now, 2 hours isn't nearly enough to get all the phones, cameras, electric toothbrushes, kindles, etc. charged. I had a big collection of battery banks (some were gifts, some were bought for cheap on sale), but for a sailing trip like this, what I wanted was a QC battery bank: I didn't care how slowly it put out the power, but I wanted it to charge fast when plugged into a quick charger. Strangely enough, this was a difficult feature to find.

I ended up with the Anker Powercore Speed with QC3. From empty, it would charge to 70% full within 2 hours, which kept all the electronics we brought with us fairly happy. This is an unusual case, but if you're in the market for something like this, nothing else will do. Recommended.