Anker 2nd Gen Astro 6000mAh Portable Battery Review
A Closer Look at the Anker 2nd Gen Astro Battery
The retail packaging for the 2nd Gen Astro battery is similar to the rest of Ankers product line: Its also very minimalistic. The outside packaging lets you know that youre getting the second generation Astro and also what capacity the battery is.
On the bottom of the box, you can find just a little blurb with what Anker is about: To make the smart life easier.
Opening up the box, you catch all of the contents inside. Included in the box, aside from the battery itself, is a very nice carrying pouch, an 18 inch USB cable with a MicroUSB end, and the instruction manual. The instructions will let you know how to get started using the battery and how to read the LED indicators on the Astro battery.
Looking closer at the 6000mAh 2nd Gen Astro, you can see the nice matte and rubberized exterior finish. This has a very nice feel to it and also does provide some grip to assist with not sliding on certain surfaces. You also cant help but notice that the exterior is very plain. I honestly didnt have a problem with this since that makes for fewer things to go wrong.
Give your battery a gentile shake and you will catch an array of LEDs hidden underneath the minimalistic exterior the same side with the Anker logo. When the LEDs are off, you will not even notice this feature exists, which helps keep the battery looking very clean when it is just sitting there.
There are a total of 10 LEDs, each indicating 10% of the charge of the battery. I like this feature very much as you get a more accurate representation of what charge level your battery is at.
A concern that some people may have is in regards to the shake to activate mechanism during transport and travel, is the fact that it could cause the battery to unintentionally drain. Anker promises that the LEDs on this battery will not have a noticeable impact on the batterys capacity. Some food for thought: This battery is listed to take on 100,000 shakes and not lose even 1% of the batterys capacity. In the time that I had to play with this battery, I too did not notice any unwanted drainage.
The opposite side of the battery has nothing to show.
The right end of this Astro battery features the MicroUSB input port, which charges at 1 amp, and the full sized USB port for charging your device up to 2 amps. It is labeled IQ on this device to let you know that this particular port features PowerIQ.
The left side has all of your specifications and government approvals.
Lets move on and see how this performed for my daily use with my Samsung Galaxy S3.