A $150 Power Bank With Liquid Cooling, for a Problem I Have Never Had

UGREEN’s MagFlow Pro is a 10,000mAh magnetic power bank that charges an iPhone at 25W over Qi2, and it has a micro pump moving coolant through the inside. There is a window so you can watch the liquid go round. The company says peak temperatures stay up to 18°F, around 10°C, below the industry benchmark. That is UGREEN’s number, not an independent test. List price is $149.99 in the US, it has a USB-C cable built in, and the port and cable both handle up to 45W when you plug in rather than stick it on.

Before the price, the question I always ask: what is this for?

Fast wireless charging does heat a battery, and heat is what wears a battery out over years. So the problem is real in principle. In practice I have never once put a power bank on the back of my phone and thought this is too hot. A power bank is not what you leave the phone charging on overnight. It is what you use on a bus, at an airport, in the middle of a day that went longer than planned, for twenty minutes at a time. That is not where years of heat damage come from.

So I am being sold a fix for the part of charging I do least.

$149.99 for 10,000mAh is a lot. You can buy a competent magnetic bank of the same capacity for a third of that, and the honest comparison is three cheap ones versus one with a window. Capable and cheap come before cool looking, and the pump is doing most of its work on the third C. I do not doubt the engineering, and I am not going to tell you the liquid is fake. I am telling you I cannot find the person whose phone was damaged by the thing this prevents.

So, do I buy it? No. If you charge from a bank constantly, all day, every day, in a hot place, there might be an argument here and I would want to see someone measure the battery health difference before I believed it. For everyone else this is a $150 answer to a question nobody asked, with a viewing window so you can enjoy it. It also sticks out below the iPhone Duo, like most magnetic accessories on that phone.

One practical note: it is routinely discounted well below list. Check the price on the day rather than the one on the box.