Best power banks 2016 UK: What's the best Power Bank? The 20 best power banks, portable chargers & emergency chargers, best power bank reviews - best power banks for the festival- and holiday season

Phones get faster every year, but battery life doesn't seem to get any better. If you need to keep your smartphone - or tablet or other USB-powered device - going all day, you need a power bank. We've rounded up the 20 best portable chargers available in the UK in 2016.

What's the best power bank? The best power bank is the Zendure A2, which strikes the perfect balance between price, portability and capacity. Read more about the Zendure A2 and some of the best alternative power banks you can buy in our best power banks chart below. Also see: Best tech to take on holiday 2016.

Phones get faster every year, but battery life doesn't seem to get any better. If you need to keep your smartphone - or tablet or other USB-powered device - going all day, you need apower bank. We've rounded up the 20 best portable chargers available in the UK in 2016. Also see: How to charge your smartphone or tablet faster

Power banks come in all shapes, weights and capacities, from emergency credit-card-sized devices such as the Onaji Pawa that offers a quick boost to keep you going until you get home, to the ultra-high-capacity LimeFuel Blast Pro L240X, which might charge your phone in excess of 10 times - ideal if you`re going camping or have several devices to charge. Then there are those able to recharge their own battery using solar power, which could mean you never need charge your devices using mains power again. That could save you a few quid on the electricity bill - if you have the patience. Also see: Best MiFi 2016.

Can a power bank charge your phone in 5 minutes? The truth behind Zap&Go, Simpiz iTron, Pronto & other five-minute power banks

You're joking, right? One day, yes, most probably; right now, no way.

Recently, some of the latest power banks have started hitting the headlines for their apparent ability to charge your phone in five minutes. It sounds preposterous because it is.

What these power banks are actually able to do is refill their own batteries sufficiently within five minutes that they can then fully charge your phone (which is still awesome, but not quite as awesome as how you first read that news). How quickly they can supply that power to your phone depends firstly on how much power they are able to output, and secondly how much power your phone can accept.

As an example, the Simpiz iTron (which we'll shortly be receiving for review), uses DUBI 1.0 technology to refill its own 9000mAh battery in 18 minutes. If you consider that as 3000mAh per six minutes, it would certainly have enough power to fully charge most phones within five minutes.

When it comes to then transferring that power to your phone, the Simpiz iTron's fastest output is Quick Charge 2.0. This is incredibly fast, but if you have or will have one of the latest devices that support Quick Charge 3.0, such as the Xiaomi Mi 5 or LG G5, it's not actually the fastest charge they are able to accept. RavPower's Turbo+ is the first Quick Charge 3.0 power bank we've seen, but expect many more to appear in this round-up over the next few weeks. Also see: Graphene batteries: what you need to know.