Anker PowerHouse 535 Power Station review

Anker has been entering more and more tech markets almost monthly over the last few years. The company has come a long way from its original cellphone cable beginnings. One of the latest offerings is the PowerHouse 535 Power Station.

I’ve been testing this mammoth battery pack for a few weeks, and Anker has made another brilliant product. Let’s check out this great, but very specific, piece of hardware in our full review.

Design

The first thing that will jump out at you is the PowerHouse 535 is a brick. It’s big, bulky, and somewhat heavy. But that’s what you’d expect from basically carrying around a tech-juiced car battery.

The entire PowerHouse 535 is cased in a plastic shell but has small touches of niceties with an ergonomic handle and soft-touch rubber feet on the bottom. Anker has built this thing like a tank, but that’s all intentional and well done.

The front is definitely the business end of the PowerHouse 535. Here you find an LED status display, car charging port, the AC two-prong outlets, and USB options. Just below these power jacks, you have a LED light bar meant to be used as a flashlight or emergency beacon.

Power options

Let’s dive more into the power outlets available on the PowerHouse 535. From the left side, you have the car adapter socket, a PowerIQ3 USB-C port, three PowerIQ USB-A ports, and finally, four standard two-prong AC power outlets.

The AC outlets offer a full 110-volt output just like your home outlets. This gives you a great option while out camping or in power outages. These outlets can function with normal loads from things like lamps, small heaters, and charging laptops. The max on the AC output is at 500W, so it’s worth noting it can’t output the wattage to run things with serious heating elements like toasters, microwaves, or most coffee makers.

The USB-C has Anker’s PowerIQ3 proprietary fast-charge system. This allows the PowerHouse 535 to charge from 15-Watts to a maximum of 60-Watts based on the device plugged into the battery. Whether it’s your smartphone that only supports the 15W or your USB-C powered laptop at 60W, the PowerHouse communicates and pushes the max allowed.

The USB-A ports are not as powerful but are just as capable. These are able to charge up to 36-Watts maximum. This is more than enough for all your peripherals. This also has PowerIQ onboard to communicate with each device plugged in.

Performance

I can’t complain about the end results of the PowerHouse 535 in the least. Everything I’ve attempted to charge with this monster has been successful. Anker rates that you can run a desk lamp for over 32 hours with this guy and while I did use it for this function, I didn’t stretch it this long. However, I don’t doubt it for a moment.

I was able to mimic the recharge of the Macbook Air that the company rates at eight full charges. I have a Dell enterprise Latitude laptop that was able to get a little over seven charges from completely dead. Seeing as how my Dell has a larger battery than the Air, I’d say the eight recharges is more than realistic.

Everything else I threw at the PowerHouse 535 was just as seamless. I charge phones, laptops, tablets, and even other battery packs using all four outputs. Whether it was the car adapter, USB-C, USB-A, or standard AC all functioned as you’d expect from the PowerHouse.

The LED display comes in handy with details of each charge. This shows the percent of battery left on the PowerHouse itself in large characters. Just below this, it shows an estimated time left at the current output before the PowerHouse will need to be recharged.

The bottom left shows the device being charged and the rate at which it’s receiving the output. The top right shows an icon for which the output method is being used. You get a different icon for each output.

You also have a tactile power saving button to the far right of the PowerHouse. This has no effect on the devices while charging. The trick is that when enabled it kills the battery pack of the PowerHouse once the output device is fully charged. This makes saving priceless charging for the next device a breeze.

When you do deplete the PowerHouse 535, Anker has you covered there as well. The included 120-Watt charging brick makes getting your maximum capacity easy as pie. It still takes a little over three hours to get back to a full charge but this is understandable for a battery station of this size.

Conclusion

Anker has a compelling battery mammoth with the PowerHouse 535 Power Station. While it’s in a niche market of campers and doomsday preppers, it covers pretty much every essential output and many devices while away from home or electricity.

The one drawback may be the price. You have to actively want this solution at $500. However, if you are in the market, I can’t think of a better option. You can find the Anker PowerHouse 535 for sale on the company’s main website or long-time partner Amazon.