The iPhone Air has surprisingly good battery life for users with light-to-medium daily usage habits. But if you are going to be away from a charger for a long time, especially going travelling like on a plane, you’ll probably want to carry some extra juice with you.
Apple has made its custom MagSafe Battery for iPhone Air, that fits precisely beneath the camera plateau on the back of the phone. But another big competitor in this space is Anker, with the Anker Nano Power Bank in a similar size promising 5,000 mAH capacity at half the price of Apple’s offering. But how much extra battery life should you actually expect to get from these power banks, and which is best?
Apple MagSafe Battery design
The Apple MagSafe Battery feels quite premium. It is made of soft-touch plastic with a very rubbery cushioned front plate, that pops smoothly onto the back of the iPhone Air. The battery is only 6.5mm thin, but takes up basically the entire width and height of the iPhone Air up to the camera plateau region. It is just small enough such that you can easily attach it while the Air is inside a Bumper case.
The Apple MagSafe Battery has no visible buttons or indicators. If you connect it to a power source, it has a single LED that briefly shines orange or green to indicate charging status.
When connected to the iPhone Air, you can view the current percentage of the MagSafe battery in the iOS Batteries widget. You also get an exclusive MagSafe lock screen animation.
Anker Nano design
The Anker Nano feels solid, with the same plasticky material used on every face of it. The outward-facing back features a subtle Anker logo, with all the regulatory legal text printed on one side. You can get it in black, white or green color options.
The other side has one button, which when you press it lights up a strip of four LEDs that indicate current charge status of the battery, in 25% increments. They also light up when the power bank is plugged in, so you can glance over from across the room and see if it has finished charging.
It is stubbier than the Apple MagSafe Battery, meaning it is smaller in width and height but a little thicker in return (8.6mm). As shown in the photo above, when attached to the iPhone Air, the bottom of the Nano is slightly inset from the bottom of the phone. This makes it slightly harder to align to the MagSafe magnets than Apple’s, but it’s not a big deal in practice.
How much extra battery life can I get?
Magnetic power banks are very convenient, because you can just slap them on the back of the phone and charge and get on with your day. But wireless charging is inherently inefficient compared to plugging in a wire. The quoted capacities of wireless power banks represent the size of the internal battery cell, but what actually makes it to charging the battery in your phone is very different. You can expect energy losses of about 30% with wireless charging.
This is particularly relevant the iPhone Air, whose chassis gets noticeably warm when you charge it with any method. Apple says the MagSafe Battery has special software integration to optimize how it charges the phone. So, I was curious whether Apple’s bespoke battery for the iPhone Air would actually beat the Anker Nano in terms of how much it charged, in reality.
The Anker Nano is advertised as a 5,000 mAh capacity. Apple does not publish the milliamp hours size of its MagSafe battery, but teardowns have revealed it houses the same 3,149 mAH battery as what is found in the iPhone Air itself. Apple’s official product information indicates the battery will add about 65% additional charge to the iPhone Air.
To test, I drained my iPhone Air to 20% and then put on each power bank and left the phone idle on my desk to try and charge as much as possible. I repeated the test a couple of times with each product, but the results were highly consistent across each run.
It turns out the Apple battery is more efficient, but not enough to overcome the additional capacity offered by the Anker Nano. The Apple MagSafe battery charged the iPhone from 20% to 84% in about 75 minutes.
Based on their capacities, you’d expect the Anker to charge for about 50% longer. It didn’t. It managed to charge the iPhone from 20% to 100% before dying, which means you get about an extra 16% of iPhone Air charge out if it compared to Apple’s first-party battery accessory. That’s a 20% improvement, not 50% as the difference in capacities would naively suggest, so Apple’s ‘smart behavior’ charging system does seem to be more efficient. It’s just not enough to beat the Anker’s beefier, bigger, battery cell.
Note that my tests were conducted in arguably the best conditions; the phone simply lying on my desk in my cool office. It’s possible that results may vary in different conditions, like in warmer temperatures or when the phone is charging in a pocket or bag. But generally, you should expect the Anker Nano to provide a bit more juice.
Conclusion
Overall, I think I have to give the win to the Anker Nano Power Bank.
The Apple MagSafe Battery feels slightly more premium in the hand, but it’s double the price and definitely not twice as nice. The software integration with Apple is cool, but I actually like that you can check the current charge of the Anker one without having to attach it to the phone first.
The Anker is a bit thicker, but basically identical in weight. I think if you were planning to use a battery accessory full-time, the thinness of Apple’s offering might be more appreciated, but if you are going to use a battery bank often, you shouldn’t be using an iPhone Air in the first place.
The Anker Nano is great for those times when you need it, like travelling. The combination of iPhone Air with Anker Nano will give you more total battery life than an iPhone 17 Pro Max. An added bonus is that it is available in a black color option, which perfectly matches my space black iPhone Air. The Apple MagSafe Battery only comes in white.