Cutting through marketing slogans and tech jargon can feel like a full-time job when you're shopping for gadgets, but it's worth knowing exactly what you're getting with your new electronics. That's especially true of chargers and batteries, where making the wrong choice can leave you without power when you need it or even damage your devices. The PowerIQ label has appeared on Anker chargers for years now, and it's actually worth knowing what it means before picking one up.

Chargers and electronics use multiple different charging standards for delivering and receiving power. You may have seen other terms like QC (Quick Charge) or PD (Power Delivery), depending on which manufacturer's products you're using. PowerIQ, or PIQ, is Anker's proprietary tech that governs how quickly chargers with the technology send power to a connected device's battery.

According to Anker, PowerIQ chargers are able to detect what device they're connected to and adjust their power output based on what voltage is best for the connected battery. In theory, that allows PowerIQ chargers to charge devices quickly without delivering much power and damaging the connected device. PowerIQ chargers are generally considered safe for that reason. Fast-charging devices always carries some risk of diminishing their battery life in the long term, and while PowerIQ chargers might offset that risk somewhat, there's no way of eliminating it completely.

PowerIQ chargers aren't necessarily any faster than those using other standards. Charging speed is determined by the device being charged as much as by the charger, so pure power output doesn't mean as much as it might seem. If a device can only accept a 12W charging speed, for instance, it doesn't matter if a charger can deliver 100W, which some current chargers using any standard are capable of.

Not every device is designed to accept every standard, either. PD is the most common standard, but QC is widely used in Android devices as well. These days, the distinctions matter less than they used to, since the latest versions of PD and QC (4.0) are partially cross-compatible with each other. The same is true of PowerIQ. The latest version of PowerIQ, PIQ 4.0, is compatible with QC and PD 3.0, meaning newer PIQ chargers support fast-charging on essentially any device.

New Anker chargers have also integrated displays that let you see information about the devices you're charging. Since PowerIQ chargers monitor the devices they're connected to, these chargers can display information about temperature and wattage in real time. Whether that information is actually useful to have is another matter, but there's certainly no harm in being able to see it at a glance if you're interested.