Wireless chargers for iPhone
Jason Cross reveals what to look for when picking out a charger for your iPhone 8, X, XS, or XR
Beginning with the iPhone 8 and iPhone X, Apple has finally added wireless charging to the iPhone. That continues with the XS and XR. For years, many Android users have had the ability to simply plop their phone on a pad to juice it up, but to do that with an iPhone used to require a special (and bulky) case.
Wireless charging isn’t always a great substitute for plugging in, but it’s a very convenient way to keep your phone topped off through most of the day. A wireless charger on your desk means no more plugging and unplugging throughout the day, and a full charge when you head home from work. A wireless charger next to your bed makes it easy to grab and go in the morning, or just pick up your phone to ’check one thing’ without fussing with the lightning cable. We’ve tested a load of wireless chargers, and these are our favourites.
Qi versus PMA
There are two major standards for wireless charging: PMA (Power Matters Alliance) and Qi. If you see a charger that only supports PMA, keep moving. Apple’s iPhones support Qi. Fortunately, this is by far the most common standard for consumers, so you shouldn’t have much trouble finding a compatible charger. What’s more, every Qi compatible charger should work just fine with the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, X, XS, XS Max and XR, even if it doesn’t specifically list support for them on its packaging or marketing materials.
5W versus 7.5W performance
iPhones initially shipped with wireless charging limited to just 5W. That’s pretty slow, but then again, the in-box power adaptor is also only 5W. So wireless charging really isn’t any slower than the (admittedly pitiful) power adaptor that comes in the box.
The iOS 11.2 update increased the maximum wireless charging speed to 7.5W. That’s 50 per cent faster, but charging speeds vary, and they slow down
a lot as the battery gets full. Still, if you want the best performance in a wireless charger, look for one that can support 7.5W or more. Some pads support faster charging speeds only on some Android phones, but are limited to 5W on iPhones.
For charging mats that don’t come with fast-charging adaptors, you’ll want to look at the store pages to see what is required to enable higher-speed charging. Some enable faster charging only when using an adaptor with Qualcomm’s Quick Charge technology, some work with any high-wattage USB power adaptor (like the iPad adaptor Apple sells). See what is required before buying a new adaptor.
Flat or standing?
You’ll see two types of wireless chargers on the market: flat pads, and angled stands. A flat pad is simple and easy, but you might want to consider a stand. With a stand it’s a lot easier to use your phone while it’s charging up. And with the iPhone X, a standing charger makes it easy to unlock your phone with Face ID without picking it up.
Portrait and landscape orientation
If you get a stand instead of a flat charger, you’d be wise to make sure it’s made to work with your phone in both landscape and portrait
orientation. Most of the time, you’ll plop down your phone standing upright. And Face ID on the iPhone X only works when the phone is upright, too. But a charger that works well with your handset in landscape mode makes it easy to play certain games, and of course watch videos, without taking your phone away from those precious free electrons.
Of course, if you bristle at the idea of buying nonApple stuff, you can just wait for the AirPower wireless charging pad. For full details see page 37
Tested chargers Belkin Boost Up Special Edition Wireless Charging Dock for iPhone + Apple Watch Price: £149 from fave.co/2Tz7pHj
If you need to charge both your iPhone and Apple Watch, you can do a lot worse than Belkin’s Boost Up Special Edition stand. Available in black or white, it’s got an elegant design with a nice mix of matte and glossy finish.
You can’t charge your phone in landscape orientation – the charge pad is too high up, and larger iPhones would run into the Watch charger. And unfortunately, the middle of the Apple Watch charger is white (even if you have the black stand), but there’s no officially supported way around that.
Phone placement is easy and charging rate is solid. The stand supports 7.5W charging for your iPhone and 5W for your Watch, both simultaneously. There’s a little USB-A port around the back if you need to charge another device, too. The Watch charger is arranged
vertically, perfect for those with loop-style bands that prevent you from laying your Apple Watch down flat.
The power brick supplies enough juice to do all of this at once, but it’s otherwise sort of annoying. It’s exceptionally large for a wireless charger and will easily cover three plugs on your power strip. It connects to the stand via a barrel connector rather than USB-C, so you can’t really use it for any other devices. Still, this is the kind of thing you plug in once and leave on your bedside table or desk, not something you’ll move around.
If only the price wasn’t so high. £149 is three times the price of other high-quality wireless phone charging stands, and sticking a nice little Apple Watch charger on the side isn’t enough to make that price differential worth it.
Belkin Boost Up Wireless Charging Stand Price: £64 from fave.co/2TB51j1
The Boost Up wireless charging stand looks like something out of a sci-fi series, and not in a good way. It’s a big circular disc propped up on a large and oddlooking stand that kind of looks like a retro-future easel. To be frank, it’s a bit of an eyesore.
Power is supplied by a bulky AC adaptor permanently attached to a power cord, ending in a barrel connector, which will be a pain to replace if you lose it and can’t be used for any of your other gadgets. Haven’t we all learned that Micro-USB or USB-C is the way to go here?
There’s no denying it works well, though. The generous width and curved corners of the bottom
make it really easy to drop your iPhone on the stand without getting the alignment off, and the way the phone holder’s sides cut up a couple inches makes it really great for landscape orientation. It also maintains a strong charging connection even through most cases, and it’s very stable – poking and prodding your phone while it’s on the charger won’t cause it to tip or slide around.
Anker PowerWave 7.5 Stand Price: £38 from fave.co/2WKXC2N
Anker’s new PowerWave products greatly improve quality over its older wireless chargers. The new stand looks good, as long as you’re okay with the white colour. A small blue charge indicator on the front is subtle enough to use on your bedside table. The angle is steep enough to make it suitable for unlocking your iPhone X with Face ID while your phone is resting on your desk.
Anker includes a Quick Charge 3.0 compatible power adaptor and a matching white Micro-USB cable, but the cable is way too short. Anker’s spec sheet says it’s three feet long, already a little on the short side, and we measured it at 34 inches. The charger supports 7.5W charging on Apple devices and the 10W fast charge mode on the latest Samsung flagship phones.
The power coils inside cover the entire back of the stand, so we had no trouble charging our iPhones in either portrait or landscape orientation. A little cooling fan blows air out a vent in the rear to keep the charge coils cool, which keeps the charge rate from slowing
down. If it’s especially quiet and you put your ear up next to it, you can hear the gentle whirring sound.
Funxim Fast Wireless Charging Pad Price: £25 from fave.co/2WNAhxB
The extended delay of Apple’s AirPower charging pad has left plenty of time for knock-offs to claim a stake. Funxim successfully crowdfunded its effort on Kickstarter, and now it’s here.
For what it is, it’s not bad. This is a £25 pad that can wirelessly charge your iPhone and Apple Watch at the same time. And it works well, even charging our test iPhone through a substantial plastic case. Because it supports the Qi standard, like all iPhonesupporting wireless charging pads, it will also charge
most Android phones with wireless charging. Naturally, the price comes with a set of compromises. The pad has a large circular cutout to one side, into which you install your official Apple Watch charger. You’ll open up the back to loop around the cable and plug the USB end into a USB-A port hidden in the base.
What’s more, the pad itself is made of a hard, smooth plastic that encourages the phone to slide around (especially without a case). When my iPhone X vibrated while on the pad, it slid around as if pushed by a ghost. What’s more, I had to be fairly precise with my placement in order for the phone to charge. While the pad is oblong, the charging area for the phone is only right in the centre; place it too far to the side and it won’t charge. And of course, your Apple Watch has to go on the Watch charger you supply.
Kickstarter backers may have been given a free Quick Charge 3.0 compatible power adaptor and MicroUSB cable together with their purchase, which makes this a pretty good deal. But the need to supply your own Apple Watch cable (at £29 from fave.co/2WNE1yP), the precise placement required, and the too-slick design make it hard to otherwise recommend.
Anker PowerPort Wireless 10 Price: £17 from fave.co/2BiWHgH
Anker’s skinny little PowerPort Wireless 10 is a pretty slick item. It’s easily one of the thinnest charging pads I’ve seen, and can disappear into a bag with you even noticing. It supports charging speeds up to 10W on compatible phones, which is great, but you need a Quick Charge USB adaptor to get that performance. Unfortunately, there’s no USB adaptor of any kind in the box. That’s sort of a shame, too, because the price is the only thing giving me pause. We like the ring of blue LEDs that ‘breathe’ for about 10 seconds before turning off, to let you know a charging connection has been made. We like the size. We like the grippy top that your phone won’t slide around on. Plus, it’s just £17.
Anker PowerPort Wireless 5 Stand Price: £19 from fave.co/2BktsKE
Anker’s PowerPort Wireless 5 stand is a decent choice for iPhone X, XS or XR users who want something with the right angle for Face ID, but a number of small annoyances keep it from being a clear winner.
First, there’s charging speed. Anker employs two charging coils for excellent coverage, and as a result the stand works great whether your iPhone is in portrait or landscape orientation. But it’s limited to 5W speed, not the 7.5W supported by iPhones. And of course, that’s a bit slow for Android phones, too. Secondly, the base is just a little bit too short. The result is that, when you try to use your phone while it’s on the stand, your tapping will constantly cause it to tip back a little. If the base extended back even a half inch more, this would probably be avoided.
And finally, while the price tag looks pretty good, that’s without a Micro-USB adaptor. It’s still not overpriced, but it’s not the bargain it seems at first.
RAVPower Fast Wireless Charger Price: £12 from fave.co/2TuufQd
RAVPower makes two wireless chargers that essentially have the same name. Depending on where you look,
they’re usually just called ‘Fast Wireless Charger’. This one is extremely inexpensive at around £12, while the other one costs almost three times as much. Believe it or not, that one is the better deal.
This charging pad does not come with a power adaptor, but at this bargain-basement price we can hardly hold that against it. This pad only charges iPhones at a 5W rate, and other quick-charge Qi enabled devices up to 10W (if you use the right power adaptor). It’s heavy and stable, and comes with a nice flat Micro-USB cable.
But raised rubberized bumps on the top of the pad only cover the left and right side. Depending on how sloppy you are about placing your phone, you could easily miss part of it – why not just make it a complete
circle as most other pads do? It’s a minor design flaw, not a deal-breaker. But the slower iPhone charging speed makes it hard to recommend.
Samsung Fast Charge Wireless Stand Price: £39 from fave.co/2WFPTTH
Like its flat charging pad cousin, Samsung’s fastcharging wireless stand isn’t much of a looker. The round shape is all wrong for a stand, as it sticks out awkwardly to the sides when you put your rectangular phone on it. Still, at least it loses the clear plastic coating in favour of a uniform glossy black finish.
This stand is a good deal at around £39. It supports fast charging – both the iPhone 7.5W limit and faster
speeds for Samsung’s phones – and it comes with a Micro-USB adaptor powerful enough to enable it. There’s even a little fan inside that keeps the charging coils cool. Don’t worry, you can’t hear it unless you really strain in a very quiet room.
The angle is appropriate for activating Face ID, and the stand resists tipping well enough that a little gentle phone use won’t cause it to wobble.
RAVPower Fast Wireless Charger + QC3.0 Adaptor Price: £21 from fave.co/2BoKOGb
Not to be confused with the other, less-expensive ‘Fast Wireless Charger’ by RAVPower, this other ‘Fast Wireless Charger’ includes a Quick Charge 3.0 compatible adaptor (up to 24W on supported Android phones) and has an entirely different design. Despite the higher price, it’s a better buy. The design is a little plain, but it’s unobtrusive and highly functional. The pad is heavy and wide enough to be really stable, and there’s a nice wide
rubberized ring around the top to rest your phone on and prevent sliding or scraping.
It’s fast, too. On iPhones it supports the 7.5W charging speed, and up to 10W fast-charging on other compatible phones.
Spigen Essential F303W Fast Wireless Charger Price: £16 from fave.co/2WNjlHw
Spigen’s fast-charging wireless stand has a nice A-frame design, but the extra-large lip at the bottom is a bit of an eyesore. More importantly, the angle is not steep enough. It’s very stable to be sure, but we found that an iPhone X is often positioned too far back to easily work with Face ID.
One feature we really like is the way Spigen uses two charging coils, one above the other. This gives the stand great coverage and makes it easy to get a good charging connection whether your phone is turned to landscape or portrait orientation.
Spigen Essential F301W Price: £15 from fave.co/2RJ2z8l
The F301W is the charging pad sibling to the F303W stand. It’s inexpensive
at about £15, but the price does not include a power adaptor. Fortunately, it will work with almost any USB power adaptor, and will support faster charging if you have a Quick Charge adaptor.
The F301W suffers from a couple of small design flaws that really annoy, however. The Micro-USB connection is recessed, with a very narrow cutout surrounding it. The included cable fits fine, but most of the other Micro-USB cables we tried did not. Also, the top of the charging pad has a convex slope, with a rubberized ring in the middle. Placing your phone on the ring is simple enough, but it’s not wide enough to be really stable there – it’s too wobbly.
It’s a shame, because the price and performance are fine. All it would take a slightly different shape to the plastic mold and Spigen would have a terrific product.
Are you interested in a charger you don’t see listed here? That’s not surprising – while we try to cover the most popular brands, there are literally hundreds of wireless chargers on the market. We can still help make sure you get a product you’re happy with, though. The next page contains some helpful general advice to consider when deciding which wireless charger to buy.
Editor’s choice Mophie Charge Stream Pad+ Price: £54 from fave.co/2WJSdci
The Charge Stream Pad+ is a substantial upgrade over Mophie’s previous charging pad offering, the Wireless Charging Base. At a retail price of about £54, it’s a little on the expensive side, but it’s a better buy than the Wireless Charging Base was.
While the Wireless Charging Base used a proprietary power adaptor that connected to the charge pad via a small barrel connector, the Charge Stream Pad+ uses a Micro-USB cable and adaptor. The connector for it on the pad is deeply recessed, which makes it hard to use other Micro-USB cables with it, but at least you can use the adaptor and cable to charge other Micro-USB devices (like digital cameras or Android phones).
Charge performance is improved, too. It tops out at 10W on supported Android phones, though the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, X, XS and XR are limited to 7.5W (that’s an Apple thing, not a Mophie thing).
The pad itself is a good size with a large sweet spot, so it’s easy to plop down your phone without worrying about getting it perfectly centred. The hefty weight and
rubberized finish prevents the pad from sliding around on your desk or your iPhone from sliding on the pad. It can easily charge through modest iPhone cases, and the small status light is subtle enough not to distract you in a dark bedroom.
Oh, and it’s now available in white or black, so you can more easily match your furniture or iPhone.
RAVPower RP-PC069 Wireless Charging Stand Price: £31 from fave.co/2TykVeb
RAVPower’s latest charging stand is a nice improvement over its previous models. It’s got a sleek, unassuming design with a nice big rubberized pad to rest your phone on, and two coils so your iPhone will charge in either portrait or landscape orientation. The angle is steep, almost entirely upright, which made us worry that Face ID wouldn’t work well. In testing, Face ID worked just as well as with most other wireless charging stands.
This new charger supports 5- and 10W modes on Android phones, and Apple’s own 7.5W standard on the latest iPhones, too. RAVPower has improved the cooling to keep the charging coils from getting too warm, which can slow down charging performance.
The braided Micro-USB cable is a nice touch, but it’s only about four feet long. We had trouble making it reach the socket with the stand sitting up on a desk. As with so many other wireless charging stands, it can be a little wobbly if you try to use your phone with too much force. Making the base just a little bit longer in back would have made it less prone to tilting.