Anker Prime Foldable 3-in-1 review: Fast, foldable 25W Qi 2.2 charging

Price When Reviewed

$149.99

Best Prices Today: Anker Prime Wireless 3-in-1 Charging Station

We’ve tested many of the best portable wireless iPhone chargers, and the move to the fastest 25W Qi 2.2 means there’s little difference between the speeds of wired and wireless charging.

The Anker Prime Foldable 3-in-1 stands out by combining fast 25W Qi 2.2 wireless charging, active AirCool cooling to sustain peak speeds, a sturdy foldable travel-friendly design, and an included 45W wall charger. While compact enough for travel, it isn’t the smallest foldable 3-in-1 charger you can buy. Anker’s 3-in-1 Prime Wireless Charging Station utilizes Anker’s MagGo and AirCool technologies in a lightweight, compact form.

How portable is it for travel?

The palm-sized Anker Prime Wireless Charging Station folds into a compact, pocketable form that’s about as long and wide as a playing card and a little deeper than a full pack: 3.74 x 2.38 x 1.22 inches (95 x 60 x 31mm). It looks a bit like a power bank, but it’s not—to use it you must plug it into a wall charger—it ships with an Anker 45W power adapter and a long 5ft (1.5m) USB-C cable.

It weighs 7.9oz (224g), which is about the same as an iPhone Pro with a case on.

The iPhone-charging pad is mounted on a stand that can be vertically adjustable from 0-60 degrees.

The Watch module is nicely hidden and protected when the charger is folded. Pull the iPhone charging module into stand mode and the Watch charging pad is revealed. Click it and it springs out, where you can straighten it for use.

It comes with two handy non‑slip Watch stickers, which is a thoughtful touch. I test a lot of the best Apple Watch chargers and I can assure you that the Watch often sits or hangs at a disconcerting angle. These should stop that, if it bothers you.

Behind that is the Qi charging pad for an AirPods case.

How fast does it really charge?

• iPhone 16 and later: 25W
• iPhone 12-15: 15W
• Apple Watch: 5W
• AirPods: 5W

The Qi 2.2 standard in Anker’s MagGo means up to 25W for iPhones 16 and later, while earlier iPhones still charge at Qi2’s 15W.

Does the cooling fan actually make a difference?

It’s important to state that this is “up to” 25W as various environmental factors can negatively impact this maximum wireless charging speed. The chief troublemaker is temperature. Batteries don’t like getting too hot, and charging creates some heat during the process.

If the iPhone feels like it’s getting too hot, it will throttle the speed of or pause/stop charging altogether. What should be 25W might drop to 20W, 15W or 10W or, when too hot, 0W.

The standard way around this is active cooling by fans. Anker’s cooling tech is called AirCool. The fans keep the connected iPhone as cool as possible—Anker claims that heat build-up is reduced by up to 30%—to maintain a steady flow of power without the phone shutting off power when it gets too hot. In Anker testing, a drop of 9.4°F increased charging speed by 24%.

One potential problem with fans is they can be noisy. Anker measured the Prime 3-in-1 Foldable as operating at just 19dB while actively dispersing heat through its built-in airflow system.

You can hear the reassuring fan in action, but you really do have to bend you head right next to it to listen in. We wouldn’t regard it as intrusive in any way.

The charger has a small LED ring that you can single-tap to check the current airflow cooling status: solid blue when Airflow cooling is on; solid white when Airflow cooling is off; and flashing orange if the connected adapter is incompatible or a metal object has been detected on the charging surface.

Double-tap the light ring to toggle the airflow cooling on or off. The light turns off automatically after 10 seconds so it’s not a constant distraction as a nightstand.

ESR’s cooling fans are called CryoBoost, and Belkin’s ChillBoost. Mophie’s StealthCharge technology takes a different approach by moving all the hot components away from the charging pad and into the stand’s base in its Mophie 3-in-1 and 4-in-1 StealthCharge Wireless Charge Stands—thus removing the need for fans in the first place.

Many Qi2.2 chargers don’t even try to cool down the charging module or iPhone, and we expect those to rarely hit a full 25W.

Speed testing actively cooled 25W

Only iPhone 16 and later support charging as fast as 25W; earlier iPhone are limited to 15W. Anything earlier than the iPhone 12 lacks MagSafe and will be lucky to get 7.5W even with very careful placement on a flat Qi charging pad.

In our real-world tests—I don’t live in or have access to a temperature-controlled laboratory—25W wireless charging took an iPhone 16 Pro from 0-50% in just over 30 minutes, compared to around 45 minutes for 15W.

That difference doesn’t matter if you always charge overnight, but if you charge during the day, you’ll appreciate the speedier charging.

Batteries slow down charging as they reach being fully charged, which is why we measure to 50% for a raw-speed comparison.

Watch and AirPods fast-charging

The Watch charger is rated at 5W. While we’ve seen Apple Watch chargers at 7.5W, Apple classes 5W as Watch fast charging.

There’s no such Apple rating for AirPods fast-charging, but you can certainly charge them much slower than with this charger’s 5W Qi pad but probably not any faster.

Is it worth the price?

The Anker Prime Wireless Charging Station (3-in-1, MagGo, AirCool, Foldable) is priced at $149.99 / £129.99. It’s also available at Amazon and Amazon UK where we have witnessed decent discounts.

That’s about the same as Ugreen’s rival 25W MagFlow 3-in-1 Folding Wireless Charger, although there are cheaper 25W travel 3-in-1 chargers such as the $79.99 Kuxiu X40 that folds into a smaller 2.5 x 2.5 x 0.7 inch (64 x 64 x 18mm) form.

Choosing between these 3-in-1 chargers should come down to design preferences. While the Ugreen is again smaller at 4.7 x 2.4 x 0.8 inches (12 x 6 x 2cm), the Watch charges at the back next to the AirPods rather than being suspended as on the Anker.

Of them all, the Anker feels the most sturdy, which is maybe the compromise for its slightly larger form.

Should you buy the Anker Prime Foldable 3-in-1 Wireless Charging Station?

This good-looking and super-fast wireless 3-in-1 charger is compact and lightweight enough for travel but works just as well as a sturdy desktop charging station with an adjustable stand.