Baseus Blade 2 65W Smart Power Bank review: Great design, so-so capacity

It’s rare to find a power bank that seems specifically designed to serve laptops rather than mobile phones, but that’s what the Baseus Blade 2 65W Smart Power Bank seems created to serve. 

Slim enough to fit inside a backpack’s laptop sleeve alongside your MacBook, it at first glance appears like the perfect companion to your on-the-go computer. But its 65W power delivery and capacity mean that it’s not quite up to the task of keeping your laptop juiced, and not quite up there with the best USB-C portable battery packs for MacBook.

Price and Availability

The Baseus Blade 2 65W Smart Power Bank is available now, priced at $99.99 (which is roughly £80). It’s on the expensive side for power banks then, and though its design would lend it justification for that price, in practice it’s a little too weak to recommend without a steep discount.

What I like

Though I have my reservations about the performance of the Baseus Blade 2 65W Smart Power Bank, I’m all for its design — conceptually, at least.

Weighing just over half a kilo and measuring 6.4 x 5.2 x 0.4 inches, that’s just 7.3mm at its thickest point, making it slimmer than most phones, let alone laptops. As a flat slab, it makes it easy to slip into the same backpack sleeve compartment as your MacBook then, without adding hardly any noticeable bulk.

Available in blue, silver, and orange styles, the charger comes equipped with a small and useful screen on its front. It tells you handy stats like the charge left in the battery, current charging speed, and charging time. With an accompanying app, you can tweak what this display looks like too, and even customize the words on its screensaver. 

The Baseus Blade 2 65W Smart Power Bank also features two USB-C input/output ports. Both can be used to recharge the battery itself or an external device, with a max input of 60W and a top charging output of 65W. As both can be used at once, it’s possible to use the battery as a passthrough charging setup, too — power the battery and recharge it from a wall socket, while also refilling up the internal battery of your device of choice.

What I don’t Like

The design of the Baseus Blade 2 65W Smart Power Bank makes a good first impression then, but it’s less impressive in practice — at least when used with a laptop like a MacBook, which is what you’d assume it’s aimed to be paired with.

The 12,000mAh battery sounds like it’d be enough to fully recharge a computer like my 13-inch M2 MacBook Air, which has a capacity of 4730mAh. 

BUT! In practice, that’s not true. While mAh (milliampere-hours) is a relatively reliable way of measuring battery capacity, it doesn’t fully factor in performance across devices. And the reality is that the voltage demands of a device like a MacBook Air, even when paired with an external battery mAh capacity higher than the mAh rating of its own internal battery, means that some chargers can’t keep up. 

And that’s what’s happening with the Baseus Blade 2 65W Smart Power Bank. Using that M2 MacBook Air as an example here, I got around 50% of my Mac’s battery back from a full charge of the battery — perhaps slightly more with the machine off, slightly less when doing intensive tasks on the computer at the same time. The battery fully depleted in about 45 minutes in this scenario. Add in the heat generated during the process (not a worrying amount, but an energy expenditure that exacerbates the issue), and you’re quickly running out of power before the MacBook is refilled.

Now, the conversation is different with smartphones — their voltage demands are lower, and you can comfortably recharge an iPhone 15 Pro with almost enough charge left over for a second refill. Likewise, I fully recharged my M2 iPad Pro 11-inch without issue.

But everything about the Baseus Blade 2 65W Smart Power Bank screams for it to be paired with a laptop. And it’s just not quite up to that task.

Competition

If you’re after a battery pack for iPhones and iPads, you’re spoilt for choice — I’d point to the Anker MagGo Power Bank 10K as a recent decent for that purpose, and it too features a handy screen, if in a different form factor.

But it’s a bit trickier to find one up to the task of fuelling your MacBook. You’ll lose out on the svelte design of the Baseus model, but opt for the UGreen 145W 25,000mAh battery and you’ll get a MacBook and an iPhone charged with ease. It’s chunkier, but that massive capacity makes sure your laptop isn’t left wanting. You’ll find it usually on sale cheaper than the Baseus model, too.

Should you buy it?

You should buy this if…

• You want a slimline battery
• Being able to top up two USB-C devices at once is important
• The flexibility of charging two devices at once appeals to you

You shouldn’t buy this if…

• You need to fully recharge your laptop away from a wall socket
• You’ve got room in your bag for a chunky battery
• You’re only looking to charge one device at a time

Verdict

With a bigger capacity, the Baseus Blade 2 65W Smart Power Bank would be an excellent MacBook accessory. I’d happily take a few extra millimeters thickness to the battery as a trade-off. But as it stands, beyond a quick laptop top-up,  it’s better suited for phone and tablet charging — and there are options out there better suited to those needs, too.