This entire article is a mirror of our video that is published on YouTube. We highly recommend the video format of this content since many things aren’t easy to show in written format.
With the introduction of USB-C, this little cable plug can be plugged into so many devices – phones, laptops, tablets, speakers, keyboards, mouse, gamepad controllers, monitors, power banks, wireless chargers, desk fans, gaming consoles, and so many more.
That is amazing since ideally, we can use only one charger and cable for everything.
But that is where things get confusing. Out of all the devices I have listed, the power that those devices require ranges from a mere 0.5W all the way up to… well, whatever power that is the limit. There is no one charger that we can go out and buy now, and expect it to work with every device in the world.
I’ve seen so many people on Facebook Groups asking why their new chargers don’t fast-charge their phone and only to be disappointed.
That is because of how complicated chargers really are. They might look like any other chargers out there in the market, but under the hood, they’re very different.
Before we begin, let’s backtrack a little. A few years ago, we have a charger included in the box of whatever we bought. Buying a phone? We have a charger inside – but the reason for that is most probably because their phone is using some bullshit proprietary charger, like Sony Ericsson’s multi-pin thing or those Nokia phones with the barrel jacks that come in whatever diameter the manufacturer had left in stock.
Nowadays, some phone manufacturers don’t include a charger with the phone, but some phone manufacturers still do. It makes sense for the latter group of phone manufacturers since they probably want to push their “fast charging technology” and hence, they need to include a charger in the box so that we, the customer, can experience it on our own.
And when it comes to “fast charging technology”, we need 3 things to make it work. First, we need a charger that supports fast charging (obviously), a phone that supports said fast charging technology, and also a cable that supports said fast charging technology.
I can give you a few examples now. OPPO’s VOOC fast charging only works with their own charging brick, cable, and phone. With that said, not all OPPO phones support the same VOOC speeds. Some are faster, some are slower, and they’re most probably not cross-compatible.
Realme also uses the same fast charging technology as OPPO, hence all Realme phones can use VOOC charging bricks and cables to fast charge.
Huawei has its own fast charging technology, so Huawei users will need to use Huawei’s charging brick and cable to fast-charge a Huawei phone. If we plug in a Huawei phone to an OPPO VOOC charger, it will not fast charge.
This is what it means by charging standards a.k.a. protocols. Each company has its own unique way of achieving fast charging, that is why Huawei phones cannot fast charge using OPPO’s VOOC charger.
What about USB-PD?
USB-Implementers Forum, a non-profit corporation that standardizes how USB works, has something called USB Power Delivery, or USB-PD for short.
I won’t go into detail about what USB-PD really is and how it works. To keep it simple, this is a charging standard developed by the USB-IF that any other company can use. Be it Apple, Intel, Samsung, Huawei, OPPO, Acer, ASUS, ViewSonic, Dell – even you, can implement it on a device and use it.
Just like what we described earlier, to use USB-PD, we still need 3 things – a charger that supports USB-PD standards, a device that supports USB-PD, and technically a cable that supports USB-PD but not really. We just need a cable that supports the high wattages without melting itself.
Since USB-PD is such an open standard, we can quick charge different phones that support USB-PD using just one charger. We can even charge a laptop using this one charger!
But USB-PD is constantly pushing the boundaries too. The latest version is USB-PD 3.1 and it supports up to 240W of power! That means high-end gaming laptops can fully embrace it and charge via USB-C as well!
That can be a possibility and I really hope that it comes a reality – but we have a few problems in our hands right now.
You see, the USB-IF doesn’t have a good track record when it comes to standardizing stuff. They themselves became the villain when they literally messed everyone up by first renaming USB 3.0 to USB 3.1 Gen 1, then USB 3.2 Gen 1. They’re all referring to the same standard with 5Gb/s throughput!
And the USB-IF never enforced the cable manufacturers to label what wattage is supported. You see, a USB-C cable that supports 65W and another USB-C cable that supports 100W of power both look the same. However, they’re very different. While the 65W cable didn’t melt when I plug it into a 100W charger, my device didn’t receive the full 100W. To the average consumer, this could baffle someone to oblivion and blame the device manufacturer instead, even though they did nothing wrong.
Oh – one more thing. Earlier when we mentioned that we need 3 things to make fast-charging work, we mentioned that we’ll need a device that supports the fast charging standard. That in itself is actually separated into two parts. The first one is charging IC.
Throughout my time reviewing stuff on this channel, we came across a lot of different devices. For me, I’ll always use my own charger and cable so that I don’t clutter my desk.
What I then realized is that some devices can only be charged with a 5V charger and do not accept anything higher. For example, the Lensgo microphone that we reviewed? That thing can only be charged with a 5V charger. Same goes for the Machenike wireless mouse.
This is because the charging IC – that circuit board that handles the power that the device receives from the charger – doesn’t support USB-PD. What baffles me was during our review of the Sudio Bluetooth speakers. We had two at that time. The grey one can be charged using my trusty 100W GaN USB-PD charger even though the speaker only takes in like 10W of power, but the black one can only be charged with a 5V charger. That’s what I mean by charging IC being at fault.
Secondly, is the software side of things. This is primarily for phones. We have some phones like Samsung that can disable fast charging but many don’t. Samsung let’s the user decide in software, which I truly appreciate.
For example, the Xiaomi 11T Pro with that 120W charger. It doesn’t take in 120W for the entire duration of the time. As you can see on this graph, it’s actually split into a few tiers.
We can see that in the lower battery percentages (red color), it’s extremely fast. Then after a certain threshold, the charging speed slowed down in the green color region, then eventually the charging speed starts to taper off at the blue color section. This is all software.
We also had a weird issue that we can pinpoint if it’s either due to hardware or software. You see, ASUS has laptops that comes with a 100W USB-C charger. So in our minds, we can just get a 100W GaN charger with a cable that supports 100W and use it as a charger too, right? Turns out, no. The laptop reports that it’s “charging slowly” instead of at its full capacity. This happened twice – once on the ROG Flow X13, and another time on the ASUS Zenbook 14X UX5400E.
… so what’s my point?
Okay, so this entire video seems to be a rant or an info dump. However, I don’t see how we can easily explain this without diving into the technicalities. There are many things that seem unrelated but they’re actually an integral part of the charger – like the cable for example.
The reason why I’m doing this video is because, in a video by Swell Entertainment when she reviewed the Manscaped ball shaver – yes, don’t question why I watch these videos – she found out that the charger included with the Manscaped ball shaver can also charger her iPad and the excitement on her face was just golden. And she described this entire situation in the best way possible.
My charger recommendation
So – after testing so many different devices, which charger do I recommend? I’ll obviously go with Ugreen’s 4-port 100W GaN charger. I gotta be transparent with you guys – they did send us the chargers for free but they have no input in our content – and this video is also #NotSponsored. I just love the charger since it’s versatile as it supports a lot of different fast-charging standards, and has 4 ports.
There are other brands with such chargers too – like Innergie, Baseus, Anker, yada yada – they all should work the same if they all claim to support those fast charging standards.
My cable recommendation?
As for cables, I really don’t have any recommendations. My best bet for you guys is actually to get a Thunderbolt 3 or Thunderbolt 4 cable, but they’re expensive.
So… just buy any cables that say whatever wattage and hope that it works as intended?
We still have a lot more to talk about chargers
Still, there are many things that we’ve not talked about in this video – like what’s the difference between traditional silicon-based chargers vs the new GaN chargers, the transfer speed differences between USB cables, and how to identify them – all of that good stuff.
We’ll leave that for another time as those things are also very complicated topics.
Where to buy the charger? (Affiliate links)
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