Desk & Power review
Anker 727 Charging Station Review: Six Things, One Socket
Two mains outlets and four USB ports in something the size of a phone. The 100 watts is shared across all six, which is the detail that decides whether it suits your desk.
By Paulo GerchonPublished 2 min read
Illustration, not a photo — we don’t have a licensed image of this product yet.
Anker
Anker 727 Charging Station
Good · researched from 4 sources
The neatest answer we have found to a desk with one free socket and five things to charge. Treat the 100 watts as a pool rather than a promise, and buy the 737 instead if you need power away from the wall.
- Buy if
- Hotel rooms and desks with a single accessible socket · Anyone carrying a laptop, phone, tablet and watch charger · Replacing a bulky extension lead plus separate USB bricks
- Skip if
- Charging two laptops at full speed at once · Anyone who actually wants a power bank · Situations with no mains socket at all
We don’t list prices, because Amazon’s change hourly.
The problem it is shaped for
Hotel rooms have one accessible socket behind the bedside table. Conference rooms have none. Home desks have a strip that is already full.
Two mains outlets and four USB ports in something roughly the size of a phone, with a cord that detaches, is a precise answer to that. Cult of Mac's framing is right: it is good to have both AC outlets and USB in one device for the times your wall sockets are overloaded.
The hundred watts is a pool
This is the number that decides whether it suits you, and it is easy to misread.
Cult of Mac confirms one USB-C port will deliver the full 100W, and Raising Astoria measured a 16-inch MacBook Pro reaching 50 percent in 43 minutes on it. That is genuinely fast for a laptop that size.
But Cult of Mac also notes power allocation adjusts based on how many devices are connected. The 100W is the total the unit can supply, not what each port gets. A laptop alone gets the lot. A laptop plus a phone plus a tablet share it.
For one laptop and some small devices, that works out fine. For two laptops it does not, and no charger this size would.
The LED is a better idea than it sounds
White when plugged in, blue when a USB-C port is pushing 90 to 100W, per Cult of Mac.
Fast charging fails silently more often than it fails loudly. The usual cause is a cable that cannot carry the current, and nothing on a phone tells you that. A light that changes colour when the port is actually delivering full power removes the guesswork.
What it is not
Not a battery. Both Cult of Mac and Raising Astoria say so directly, which implies enough people arrive expecting one. It needs a wall socket.
Not really a travel device in the sense of being usable anywhere, as Raising Astoria concedes: the portability is about the shape of the thing in a bag, not about independence from mains power.
A note on our sources
One of the three reviews we read reports no downsides at all. That is not a useful signal about a product, so we have used it for what it observed, the range of devices charged simultaneously, and not for what it concluded.
Cult of Mac, who scored it 4 out of 5 and described it as a capable specialist, is the more honest framing. This is a very good answer to a specific problem rather than a charger everyone should own.
How it scored
The overall 8.2 is the weighted average of these five criteria — we never adjust it by hand.
Charging performance
Raising Astoria took a 16-inch MacBook Pro to 50 percent in 43 minutes, and Cult of Mac confirms one USB-C port supports the full 100W.
Value
Cult of Mac scored it 4 out of 5 and frames it as a capable specialist rather than a general-purpose buy.
Build quality
ActiveShield 2.0 monitors temperature and throttles output. Cult of Mac found it warm but not dangerously hot with several devices attached.
Ease of use
Six devices from one wall socket, a detachable 5-foot cord, and an LED ring that turns blue when a USB-C port is delivering 90 to 100W.
Portability
About 0.7 inches thick and roughly the size of a large phone per Raising Astoria, with a cord that detaches for packing.
Pros and cons
What we liked
- Two mains outlets and four USB ports from a single wall socket
- Raising Astoria charged a 16-inch MacBook Pro to 50 percent in 43 minutes
- A detachable 5-foot cord, so the brick and the cable pack separately
- An LED ring that shows when a USB-C port is actually delivering 90 to 100W
- Cult of Mac found it warm rather than hot under multi-device load
What we didn’t
- The 100W is a shared budget, so a laptop drops below full speed as soon as anything else is attached
- Cult of Mac scored it 4 out of 5 and calls it a specialist rather than an everyday charger
- Raising Astoria notes it is a desk device despite the portability, since it still needs a wall socket
- It is not a battery, which both Cult of Mac and Raising Astoria felt the need to say
- One of our three sources reported no downsides at all, which we have weighted accordingly
Specifications
| Ports | 2 AC outlets, 2 USB-C, 2 USB-A |
|---|---|
| Total output | 100 W shared |
| Single port maximum | 100 W on one USB-C per Cult of Mac |
| Cord | 5 ft, detachable |
| Thickness | About 0.7 in per Raising Astoria |
| Size | Roughly that of a large phone, per all three sources |
| Safety | ActiveShield 2.0 temperature monitoring |
| Indicator | LED ring, blue at 90 to 100W on USB-C |
How we researched this
We have not had this unit on the bench. This review synthesises the manufacturer’s published specifications, independent measurements and owner reports listed below. Every figure on this page comes from one of those sources rather than our own measurement.
4
sources reviewed
Cult of Mac supplies the port configuration, the LED behaviour, the thermal observation and the only numerical rating, and is the source most willing to name limits. Raising Astoria supplies the measured MacBook charge result and the thickness. A third review was read and contributed the device list it was tested with, but it reports no downsides whatsoever, so it has been weighted least and is cited for what it observed rather than what it concluded. No source ran instrumented power measurements, so the per-port split is described from Anker's behaviour rather than measured.
What we read
Common questions
Can the Anker 727 charge a laptop at full speed?
Is it a power bank?
How portable is it really?
Does it get hot?
What does the LED ring tell you?
The bottom line on the Anker 727 Charging Station
The neatest answer we have found to a desk with one free socket and five things to charge. Treat the 100 watts as a pool rather than a promise, and buy the 737 instead if you need power away from the wall.
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