SanDisk iXpand 15W Qi charger, Twelve South MagicBridge Extended
Chunky wireless charging
£46.99 FROM SanDisk, shop.westerndigital.com FEATURES Qi wireless charging, USB-A to USB-C cable, mains charger
While SanDisk is a name you’d normally associate with storage, its iXpand line has been iXpanding (ahem) into other areas. The company has now thrown wireless charging into the mix with the iXpand Wireless Charger Sync (with up to 256GB of storage), and this standalone Qi charger.
This charger’s chunky design and circular shape makes it look like a corpulent coaster. The underside is ringed with vents to keep the pad and, by extension, your iPhone cool, while the top has a grippy silicone ring to stop your device sliding off. A 1.8m USB-A to USB-C cable and mains charger are included. The iXpand Wireless Charger packs 15W of power, although it can only deliver a maximum of 7.5W to your iPhone 8 or later thanks to charging limits imposed by Apple.
While the iXpand charger doesn’t work with MagSafe, it’ll still charge an iPhone 12 equipped with MagSafe or stowed in a MagSafe (or any) case measuring up to 5mm thick. A small, telltale LED lets you know whether or not your device is charging correctly – glowing red when it’s not and blue when it is. The LED also flashes red if it detects a foreign object such as a coin. So far, so standard.
Like most Qi chargers, juicing up your iPhone can take a while despite the presence of Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3.0 tech – we managed to get our iPhone 12 Pro from 75% to 95% charge in about 50 minutes.
Rob Mead-Green