Under a thousand: A power bank with some wireless charging speed up its sleeve

Looks shiny-ly premium

The power bank has a premium metal finish. (Express Photo)

The Aerosync Snap looks surprisingly premium. We got the silver unit of the power bank (it is also available in blue, purple and yellow), and it cut a very compact, shiny figure, with a solidly built plastic body with a metallic finish, and its wireless charging area highlighted by a shiny silver strip. The lower part of the power bank has a USB Type-C and Type-A port, and between these two is a strip of five LED lights that show the amount of battery left in the power bank.

The power bank is about 12 mm long and weighs around 270 grams. It is a little heavier than a smartphone, but is small enough to be easily carried inside a jacket pocket, and will not take up too much space even inside a bag. You get a magnetic ring in the box as well as a rather short, 6-inch USB Type-C to Type-C cable.

Wired, wireless charging…it’s got the works

Compatible with Qi2-capable smartphones. (Express Photo)

There is a fair bit packed inside that very compact-looking package, though. The Aerosync Snap comes with a 10000 mAh battery and very decent charging speeds, considering its price. The USB Type-A port charges at 22W, the Type-C at 22.5W and the wireless charging speed stands at a very good 15W. There’s more – the shiny wireless charging area of the power bank is actually magnetic, so you can actually stick the power bank to the back of your phone and keep using it as it charges wirelessly.

If your phone supports wireless charging but does not have a magnetic back, then you can simply attach the magnetic ring in the box to its back to make the power bank stick to it. As an added bonus, the power bank itself charges relatively quickly – it supports 20W charging (most power banks in the segment charge at a rather sluggish 10W-15W). Add to that support for pass-through charging, which lets you charge your phone through the power bank even while charging the power bank itself, and you have a pretty good feature set for a device whose price hovers around Rs 15,000.

Works very well and is terrific value for money!

An excellent compact power bank. (Express Photo)

And it all actually works very well indeed. We have been using the power bank as our primary power backup source for more than a week and it has generally turned in a very good performance. The magnets on the Aerosync Snap are pretty powerful and the power bank stuck very solidly to our iPhone 15 (review) and 16 – while it did add to the bulk and weight of the phone, we never felt it would fall off. Mind you, the magnetic connectivity also depends on the cover you are using on the phone – the power bank does not stick too well on phones with thick covers.

We used the attached magnetic ring to use the power bank to wirelessly charge our Pixel 9 and again the results were impressive. Mind you, while 15W is speedy by wireless charging standards, it is still well behind wired charging speed – half an hour of wireless charging got our iPhone an extra 20 per cent of power while charging it using the included cable off the Type C port for the same amount of time upped battery levels by about 40 per cent. The wireless charging option, however, is super for those times when you need to use your phone on the move while still needing to charge it – the strong magnets help!

The 20W charging speed means that the power bank itself gets fully charged in about four hours, which is not bad for a power bank of this capacity. The five LEDs on the power bank gave us a decent idea of how much charge was left in the power bank and the fact that one of them lit up in green when the power bank was charging a device fast was a bonus.

All of which makes the Ambrane Aerosync Snap terrific value for money, whether you get it at its branded price of Rs 1,599 or grab it when it dips (it frequently does – it was Rs 1,099 on Blinkit a few days ago). In fact, it makes great sense for those who own an iPhone and want a power backup with magnetic wireless charging but do not want to break their bank accounts. This is perhaps as good as a wirelessly charging power bank gets on a tight budget. And it does pretty well in wired charging mode too!