Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
Over the past month or so, I’ve been stuck in power bank land, testing several different designs, capacities, and form factors. Most of these have been Qi2 and Qi2.2 power banks, with magnets that align perfectly well with my Pixel 10 Pro and Pixel 10 Pro XL, and a supposedly fast — on paper at least — charging speed.
I’ve carried these in backpacks through busy days, in my pockets while traveling, and in my rental car while driving around. After all was said and done, I learned a few lessons from my experience, like the fact that the advertised battery capacity of a power bank is almost double what you really get when you charge your phone, and that the Pixel 10 Pro and Pro XL don’t like older Qi chargers. They also still charge really, really slowly over Qi2 and Qi2.2.
I also realized, with every passing week, that there was one power bank I kept gravitating back to, picking it up among all others when I was heading out the door, it’s the sexily-named Baseus PicoGo AM31 5,000mAh ($35.99 at Amazon). Here’s why this has been my favorite.
It’s small, slow, and doesn’t completely charge my Pixel…
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
The photo above should be enough to showcase what makes this tiny power bank special. The PicoGo AM31 is more compact than any other Qi2 portable battery I’ve seen, measuring a measly 0.45 inches (around 1.1cm) in thickness, with a footprint of 2.3 x 3.4 inches (5.8 x 8.6 cm) that only covers a fraction of my Pixel 10 Pro XL. It’s very light, too, weighing only 0.29 pounds, or 131 grams, which is around half the weight of my phone with the case on.
When I first held it, it almost felt like a toy, despite its solid build quality. I’ve been using nothing but 10,000mAh+ bricks for the past eight years, so I wasn’t excited about the prospect of “downgrading” to a 5,000mAh power bank, even though I liked the portability… on paper. Based on experience, though, I knew not to expect more than 3,000-3,500mAh of actual charging capacity, due to the loss in voltage conversion and heat generated by the charging process.
My first tests with the Baseus PicoGo 5,000mAh solidified my fears: Over Qi2 (15W), it took a whopping 140 minutes to charge my completely idle Pixel 10 Pro from 20% to 71% before it died, and 120 minutes to charge my completely idle Pixel 10 Pro XL from 20% to 69% before it died. Not ideal, not at all, especially if I’m out and about and need a quick top-up on my phone. Waiting more than two hours for half a charge feels like a total waste.
When used over 20W USB-C, the Baseus PicoGo was much faster and a little more efficient. 52 minutes to get the Pixel 10 Pro from 20% to 85%, and 54 minutes for the Pixel 10 Pro XL from 20% to 80%.
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