“What’s that wire going from your backpack into your pocket?” I asked my friend at a birthday party back in January. “Oh, that’s my Anker!”, he replied, as though the answer was obvious.

“What the hell’s an Anker?”

A week later, Anker was one of my favorite purchases ever: a 10,000 mAh battery about the size of my cell phone that I could keep in my backpack and use for a charge whenever I needed. Just how much of a charge? Well, my Galaxy S4 could suck a little over 3 full charges out of it, while my girlfriend’s iPhone could get a little over 4.

A few months later I was looking to buy the same as a gift for someone when I found that they had a new, upgraded model out: the Anker 2nd Generation Astro 3 Charger. At $45.99, I had to do it. This bad boy spits out 4 amps among 3 charging ports. Unlike the previous model which had separate ports for Android vs. iPhone (you could use whatever you wanted, but they were optimized for the amperage of their respective devices), this model has all 3 “Smart Ports” that detect your device’s optimal configuration and charge it as efficiently and quickly as possible.

I haven’t done any math or timed it yet, but I will say that it charges WAY faster than my car/wall chargers. And best of all, it’s lightweight and you can take it anywhere. This new model will fully charge a high-capacity phone like the Samsung Galaxy S4 about 4 times and an iPhone can get 6 full charges out of it! And yes, you can charge multiple devices at once, it will just slow it down a bit.

I hate that this device is necessary, but I love that it’s available. One day the cell phone manufacturers will stop this camera resolution circle jerk and start focusing on battery life, but until then, Anker is the way to go!