i purchased this device:
to charge my Anker 737 Power Bank ( reviewed separately )
it’s a really neat AC charger, and i like it.
but the $120 price doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. for $150 the 737 Power Bank has batteries and a color OLED screen while for $120 the 747 has NOTHING.
i feel like the 737 should have been $200 instead of $150 but 747 should have been $80 instead of $120. but it is what it is.
what you’re paying for with 747 is a device that is compact, well made and versatile. i still think you’re paying too much but i couldn’t find any other AC charger that fit my needs.
here is a teardown of a very similar model, which will give you the idea of build quality:
and here is a sciencey review of the 747 ( along with a few others ) that will give you the idea of measured performance:
essentially it is the smallest, highest performing and best built charger you can get. does that make it worth $120 ? absolutely not. but once i know what is best i can’t get anything else provided i can actually afford the best.
in my personal testing it got quite hot - almost painfully hot - but based on my analysis of the teardown video i have concluded that these temperatures are acceptable so long as you don’t use it at maximum power on regular basis. if you were to use it to power a macbook that was mining bitcoin it would probably not last very long as internal components would be near their thermal limits 24/7 but in my use case i have estimated that i would only hit those temperatures occasionally and the unit DOES feature protection that detects excessive temperature and reduces output accordingly, plus unlike many other AC chargers in this power range it is Safety Listed in US.
the million dollar ( ok $50 ) question is why did i replace the $70 Aftertop ( 140W PD 3.1 ) charger with this $120 Anker if i returned the Aftertop because it was getting excessively hot and Anker is getting almost equally hot …
well my frens the devil is in the details - both get painfully hot on the surface but Anker actually has that surface in thermal contact with internals whereas Aftertop probably does not … i say probably because i haven’t seen a teardown of the Aftertop, but evidence points in that direction. if my assumption is correct that means internal components of the Aftertop are actually at a much higher temperature than those of the Anker despite similar suface temps. furthermore Aftertop documentation does not mention reducing power when overheating is detected whereas Anker explicitly mentions this. it is possible, again, that Aftertop also does that - perhaps they should hire somebody who can speak English and write about it somewhere - until then, i’m going to enjoy my refund.
finally the Aftertop can reach its full 140W power using a single port driving only the 737 Power Bank whereas the 747 AC Charger can only reach 100W out of its 150W capacity on any single port … which seems like a disadvantage until you realize that plugging Aftertop into the 737 Power Bank IMMEDIATELY sends its internal components into an inferno even if nothing else is connected. by contrast with 747 AC Charger i was able to plug in 737 Power Bank and a phone at the same time and i still wasn’t at full power which means the internal components were still not baking at the highest setting.
so overall it was a combination of better engineering and build quality, better documentation and better fit for my use case of the Anker that made me conclude it is worth the premium over the Aftertop …
not to mention i have been using Anker products for a decade and never had a bad one whereas Aftertop doesn’t even have a website, nor a safety listing …
so do i recommend the Anker 747 GanPrime AC Charger ?
NO, but only because of the price
if you’re an obsessive compulsive autist like me you must have the best
but if you’re a sane person you will understand a phone charger isn’t worth $120
in my testing phones only pulled about 15 watts from the 747 in other words only 10% of it’s power capacity … even my Samsung Tablets at most pulled 20 watts … even if you used all four ports at the same time to charge two phones and two tablets you would only be using 60 watts, or less than half its capacity …
you really need either some kind of a computer or a high-end power bank like Anker 737 to pull enough power from the 747 to justify the expense …
the problem is your computer probably already comes with an AC adapter …
so the use case for 747 is limited, but for me it’s perfect. i can use it to charge my 737 Power Bank and still have ports and power available to charge something else at the same time, such as phone or tablet …
side note - in my testing i have discovered that by using a cheap cable i can reduce the power drawn as 747 is smart enough to detect the power limits of the cable - in practice that gave me 3 power levels - 90 watts using proper PD cable, 50 watts using regular USB-C cable and just 15 watts using USB-A cable. that means i can dial in exactly how fast i want to charge my 737 Power Bank and how hot i want the 747 to get in the process simply by choosing which cable to use for charging.
you probably thinking - why not just use the cheaper Aftertop charger with a cheap cable and avoid overheating that way ? well because i’m not the only one using the charger. i needed an idiot proof product. the Aftertop made it too easy to potentially set the house on fire ( by simply using the product as intended ) and very little reason to believe the Chinese would lose any sleep over it.
final verdict: Anker 747 AC Charger is very good, but overpriced and you probably don’t need it.