Anker is recalling over 1.1M power banks due to fire and burn risks (theverge.com)

Furthermore, a smaller brand is likely long gone by the time such trouble turns up, so the recall never happens and you're on your own, my friend.

Conversely, I bought one Anker product 13 years ago and it was DOA. Never bought from them again and I'm constantly surprised by the glowing opinion that people have had of them in the years since.

appreciate it, had me wonder if any more were and came across: https://us.anker.com/pages/product-recalls

from the page:

  - Anker PowerCore 10000 power bank -Recalled in June, 2025
  - Anker 334 MagGo Battery (PowerCore 10K)/Anker Power Bank/Anker MagGo Power Bank - Recalled in September, 2024
  - Anker 321 Power Bank (PowerCore 5K) - Recalled in June, 2024
  - Anker 535 Power Bank (PowerCore 20K) - Recalled in February, 2023

>However, Anker is only recalling units sold in the US

So the customers outside the US can go F themselves and burn in a fire? Or have they sold those faulty units only in the US. Because I doubt there's any difference between the US and EU powerbanks SKUs.

Anker's not really 'buying cheap' IMO, it sort of started that way but quickly got a good reputation and now it's a household name and a brand that will do a recall.

Buying cheap would be the drop-shipped 'brands' that exist for all of 5 minutes. TNAHEK or FGUYJ or similar unpronounceable all-caps nonsense. (Or 'GoodLife' or 'SuccessDream' or something.)

Why not buy a fire extinguisher? I've been a renter most my life, and I've never lived a place where the landlord supplied fire extinguishers, but they've also never complained about me supplying my own.

Anker isn't some cheap no name brand.

They should be starting to come down from ebay once the recall system picks them up. You're not allowed to sell recalled items.

https://www.anker.com/a1263-recall-form

> To proceed with the recall request, you must provide valid order information.

That would encourage sellers to mail a potential fire hazard, unless it’s clarified that there’s no risk when it’s not connected.

But upvoted for helping everyone realize that’s a problem

Post office probably not too stoked about this plan either

First one I found on eBay was definitely recalled; reported with link and screenshot to accelerate their response.

When I put in the serial number it said my batch was safe. I wonder what percent of batches don't actually apply to the recall

No, it's not.

We have billions and billions of old devices with ancient batteries laying around, pretty much every house in the developed world has at least one, more likely multiple, lithium batteries laying around dead for years.

There is no need to do research or dig into it, the experiment has already been running for years in every house in the nation, and random battery fires are still rare enough to be news worthy. If you find a forbidden pillow (swelled battery pouch), dispose of it, but even those almost never convert to fire/explosion.

Lithium batteries mostly burn when the devices are drawing significant current below the safe cutoff voltage. You can safely discharge a battery to zero chemical energy with a slow draw. They make discharge devices for batteries in RC cars and planes for this. Once the battery has lost enough performance you safely drain it and then dispose of it (not in the landfill because the chemicals are still toxic)- you don't want to leave it partially charged in case it gets punctured in the disposal process.

Letting phone batteries drain naturally is pretty safe, because just leaving it in a low-power mode over time will cause it to self-drain at a pretty slow pace over several months. They should still be disposed of with electronics recycling so that the toxic stuff can be handled, but leaving a phone in a drawer is normally safe. Software bugs that try to turn the phone on into a high-power state right at the safety threshold are the biggest risks, or that you might try to turn it on yourself right at the safety threshold.

Phone fires are typically from software bugs that fail to cut power at the safety threshold, either while a user is trying to squeeze out the last few percent of battery, or if they are in luggage and presumably jostled and buttons keep getting pushed.

They're not called "spicy pillows" for nothing[1]

If they're not swelling, it's fine. If they're swelling, get them out of the house, preferaly into a metal bucket filled with sand.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/spicypillows/

Even when a battery is completely drained in an electrical sense, it retains a lot of chemical energy that can be released if things go wrong.

So an explosion is _less likely_ than for a battery actively in use, but not impossible. Lithium ion batteries aren’t collectibles.

Yes, the battery can become swollen and explode

It's unlikely, but not impossible. What's more likely is that they'll start to expand

Burning isn’t as likely. But I had my old iPhone 4 or 5S battery swell and destroy itself that way while sitting in temperature controlled storage for a couple years.

I won’t be storing such items in combustible containers anymore even though the risk is pretty low and they mostly just swell.

Yup. They sent me a recall for a chocolate half a year later. They clearly think I have a vast amount of self-control.

Lithium packs lose capacity or cease to hold a charge as they age. They aren't supposed to burn your house down.

They even let people fly with their Laptops. From what I know batteries with stiff casing that can't be easily penetrated are quite safe.

I only buy from big brands though. Works never buy no name stuff.

In the RC model aircraft community a common recommendation is to create safe containers to charge large lipo batteries in. People often charge their batteries in old barbecue grills, toolboxes, sandboxes, etc.

> Everything is either pay walled, requires login, or the off chance I can see the article in full - there are so many trackers built into everything that my ad blocker breaks links. Case in point, I can’t even view the official Anker recall page.

Welcome to the internet, sadly this is what it has become. I always run articles through archive.is because they're a nightmare/impossible to view otherwise.

It gets even worse when you're on mobile, shit popping up everywhere constantly, ads in the middle of articles, auto playing video ads, etc.

I even pay ~$26/mo for a subscription to a local news site and they STILL show me ads.

It probably means that there's an issue with the battery cells or circuitry used in this specific model that isn't present in other models.