Anker Prime 100W GaN Charger Review: What You Get When Two Ports Are Busy

It’s smaller than a 100W GaN charger has any right to be. Set it beside the white brick that shipped with a MacBook and you’ve got the whole product argument in one glance.

The finish is a soft grey metal-look plastic with PRIME pressed into one side. That’s the top of Anker’s range talking, not the cheap end.

Three ports sit on the face: one USB-A above two USB-C. No screen, no touch control. That’s what separates it from the Smart Display models further up the line.

The box holds the charger, a welcome guide and a 24-month warranty. No cable. Anker says so on its own product page, and if you don’t already own a 100W-rated USB-C cable that’s a second purchase, because a lesser cable will quietly cap the speed you paid for.

At 43.5 by 29 by 67.8 mm, it’s about a matchbox with a plug on the end. The Anker 100W charger weighs 170 g. You’ll feel that in a shirt pocket and never in a bag.

Gallium nitride is what buys the size. It runs cooler and wastes less as heat than the silicon in an older charger, so the same power fits a smaller shell.

Learn the port layout before you need it in a hurry. USB-A on top tops out at 22.5W, so it’s for a watch, earbuds or a phone. Never a laptop.

The two USB-C ports underneath carry the real power.

Anker specifies ActiveShield 2.0 for temperature monitoring and PowerIQ 4.0 for negotiating what each device may draw. Both are manufacturer claims, not independently measured.

The plug folds flat against the body. Macworld noted the UK model runs a little larger than the US one because of the three-pin shape, which is a fair trade for not having prongs digging into your bag.

With both USB-C ports in use, the Anker Prime 100W splits its output 65W and 35W rather than evenly, according to measurements by Macworld. That single fact is the difference between the number on the box and what your second device gets.

The headline holds where it counts. Plug one device into either USB-C port and you’ve got the full 100W, enough to fast charge every MacBook except the 16 inch Pro.

Macworld put that to work and took a MacBook Air M3 up 50 percent in 30 minutes from a single port. An iPhone 15 gained 56 percent over the same half hour, and an 11 inch iPad Pro gained 36 percent.

MightyGadget saw the same shape with two devices drawing at once, reporting 100W to one and 88W to the other across a lighting kit and a power bank.

The uneven split is a design decision, not a fault. Anker treats the top port as the laptop port, so the machine that needs the power gets it and the phone waits a little longer.

Add a third device and the ceiling drops again, to 89W across all three. The number on the box is a single-port figure, not a budget you can spend three ways.

Picture it at an airport gate in Amsterdam: laptop in the top port, phone in the second, earbuds on USB-A. Your laptop still charges at speed, and your phone crawls.

Nothing is broken; you’re watching the split do its job.

Nobody has published a sustained efficiency figure for this unit, so we’re not quoting one. The charge-percentage testing above is what exists, and that’s what the verdict rests on.

The practical reading: this is a one-laptop charger that’ll keep two smaller things alive alongside it. It isn’t a three-laptop charger, whatever the total suggests.

Will it charge your laptop?

Look at the charger that came with your laptop. If that plug is rated 100W or under and the machine takes USB-C, this fills it at the same speed, whoever made it.

Most 13 and 14 inch ultrabooks ask for 45W to 65W, so they sit well inside. The ones to check are 15 and 16 inch workstations, which often ship a 130W or 140W plug. This will still charge them, but not at their full rate.

Darleene’s version: if you’re charging a laptop and a phone, the laptop gets most of it and you won’t notice. If two people both want a laptop charged from this, one of you is waiting.

ActiveShield 2.0 is Anker’s own temperature monitoring. Anker says it checks the case many times a day and pulls power back when the charger runs hot.

Macworld found no temperature problem in normal use. Under a sustained laptop fast charge it was a different story, and the reviewer found it warm enough to notice.

Give it air. A charger working at its limit inside a closed drawer or under a pillow is the situation to avoid, and that goes for every GaN charger at this wattage.

170 g and a folding plug is what makes this a travel charger rather than a desk charger. Folded, nothing catches on the inside of a bag. That’s the whole reason the hinge exists.

What the weight buys is not carrying a laptop brick and a phone plug. One charger covering both is a real saving in a one-bag setup, before you even count the size.

Universal 100 to 240V input means the electricity is never the problem. A hotel room in Singapore, a rental in Lisbon, your kitchen at home: it’ll run on all of them.

The plug is the problem. It’s fixed to the body with no swappable heads, so the moment you cross a socket standard you’re packing an adapter as well.

Chargers that ship interchangeable plugs solve this. This one doesn’t.

Darleene’s takeMy three-port charger is the one thing I never unpack. One plug does my phone, my iPad and my headphones overnight, and that’s one adapter in the case instead of three.

Materials and internals are as Anker specifies them. Confirm the exact certification marks on the unit and packaging when yours arrives.

Charging Speed earns the top mark because the headline is real where it matters. Macworld’s MacBook Air M3 result, half a battery in half an hour from one port, is the claim doing what it says.

Portability sits close behind. 170 g for 100W is small by any measure. The honest qualifier is that Anker’s own A2343 hits the same wattage in a smaller body, so this isn’t the most packable 100W plug even within the range.

Value for Money is the middle score, and the fairest way to see it is against its own siblings. The A2343 reaches the same 100W in a smaller, lighter body. The A2676 adds a live per-port display that would tell you exactly what this review has spent its time explaining.

Against those two, this is the sturdiest of the three and the least interesting, and all three leave you buying your own cable. A 24-month warranty runs across the range, so it settles nothing either way.

Travel Versatility is the weakest, and it’s the criterion we weight hardest, because it’s what our readers fly with. Universal voltage and folding prongs are both here. A fixed plug with no swappable heads is what keeps the score down.

The total lands at 7.8 rather than the straight average because the core job is done well and confirmed by someone who had the unit in hand. It doesn’t land higher because the travel limitation is real, and we’re not discounting it to protect a rounder number.

This charges a laptop properly from a plug you can forget is in your bag, and measured testing backs that rather than a specification sheet.

You pay for it in flexibility. One plug shape, no heads to swap, and a second USB-C port that gets 35W rather than half.

Want one charger for a 13 or 14 inch laptop and a phone, mostly plugged in at home? Easy recommendation.

This is a one-laptop travel charger that does its main job at full speed and tells the truth about it only if you read past the headline number.

Shortlist it if you want a single plug for a laptop and a phone that packs flat. See how we test, or see where it ranks against the rest in our best GaN charger roundup.