Which Charger is Fastest - Speed Test - Apple MagSafe

Hi everyone,  

The new  magsafe charger from apple is something that a lot  of people have questions about one of the number  one questions I get asked is what charger should  I use with the usbc plug that’s on the end of  it and so there’s quite a few options whether  you’re using an apple charger or not I want to try  and answer which ones the best and this charger  will charge up to 15 watts on the new iphone 12  series so if you have an iphone 12 an iphone 12  pro like this an iphone 12 mini or iphone 12 pro  max you’ll get the most benefit out of it because  it will charge at 15 watts thanks to it aligning  right over the charging coil properly so you  get the least loss of efficiency so you’ve got a  coil here a coil inside the iphone and the magnets  help align it but depending on the charger you use  makes a big difference now this particular charger  is also compatible with any qi compatible device  it will charge with an older iphone so an iphone 8  plus for example ill show that here and show you  the charging speed and then also any qi compatible  phone from apple or android or any other device.

So let me go ahead and show you that and how am  going to show you that is I have a meter here this  meter will actually measure the amount of power  going through this meter so well go from the  charger to the meter from the meter to the device  and it will tell us the voltage the amperage  and how many watts you’re actually charging at  now I have a bunch of different adapters here  and right away we can get rid of two of them  because the non-pd power adapters are not really  going to charge you any speed meaning the usb-a  adapter which is the older five-watt charger  from apple it really doesn’t charge at any speed  and also the Samsung adapter that’s usbc or usb  a to usbc or whatever you choose to use it with  so neither of these really are worth even trying  they charge about half a watt so I’ll show you  some of that in a moment but let’s first try a  standard test where well use the new 20 watt  adapter that apple recommends to use with massage  now you can charge it 20 watts using this usbc  to lightning or 15 watt using massage adapter  so first let me show you how this works at 20  watts well plug it in here well take usbc to  the top of the adapter here or the meter here.

  

and then well take this and plug in a usbc to  lightning cable so well plug it in here and  Relying on the worth nation of your telephone will make a distinction as a ways as how rapid it expenses. you’ll see them at 46 when we get above 80  it will slow down so let’s plug it in here  you’ll see its charging now the meter turns  on and immediately in the bottom right you  can actually see how much power its drawing it  takes a moment and now were up to about 19 to 20  watts right away so this will show us exactly  how much power is being brought through this  charge cable all the way over to the iphone so  now let’s go ahead and try it with the bag safe  so the same thing here will plug magsafe into the  bottom of the meter place the phone lets go back.

To the house screen region the phone at the magsafe Wi-Fi charging adapter it vehicle aligns itself and every so often to urge the meter to point out on you merely got to turn the cable well do it there its turning on and now  its charging the iphone 12 pro now well  take a moment for the wireless charger to actually  negotiate and then get the higher power output so  well give it a minute here you’ll see its  ramping up it went from five watts to seven  then to eight to nine and it will take a little  bit of time to get up to 15 watts and the actual  temperature makes a difference as well. 

If the  phone is too hot it will not hit 15 watts I’ve  placed it or I’ve run a few tests rather and found  that if the phone is really warm it keeps it down  below 10 watts so well give it a minute usually  it takes 30 seconds to 60 seconds to ramp up to  15 watts I’ll give it a moment and I’ll show you  that now it took a minute or so but you’ll see  were at about 15 watts 14 and a half watts so  it’s at its full speed and it will go 15 watts.

  

It’ll bounce back down and then go back above it  but in general we can get 15 watts of charging  out of the 20 watt adapter through this to the  iphone and it will show us that its charging now  as you ramp up to about eighty percent charge  it will slow back down now let’s test out the  18 watt adapter so well do the same thing here  swap over to the 18 watt adapter and plug it in well charge and it will take a moment to connect  and don’t know exactly how accurate this  meter is but it seems to be okay its measuring  all of the throughput of this power it’s pretty  simple and seems to be hitting the 20 watts when  you’re using a 20 watt adapter to lightning but  you’ll see the 18 watt adapter is now at 9 watts  and in testing this I’ve seen it go as high as  13 but it does take some time to actually ramp  up to that speed but so far the 20 watt actually  is pushing out the most amount of power so far.

  

So you’ll see were at 11 watts  takes a little bit more time and I don’t know that well get much more out of  it than that so the 20 watt is a little bit faster  than the 18 watt which you might expect maybe  we have a little bit of loss due to the wireless  charging now let’s try the MacBook charger so if  we swap over to the MacBook charger this is the  96 watt MacBook charger from the 16 inch MacBook  pro so if we plug this in do the same thing here.  

You would expect that this should be able to hit  15 watts no problem but if it doesn’t have the pd  profile for this particular device or to be able  to handle 15 watts it may not work properly but  again let’s give it a minute and see what it  gets up to now what I’ve found in my testing  is you’ll see here were still charging well  get to about 10 watts and then it will stop the  MacBook charger doesn’t seem to want to go over  that so the phone is drawing 10 watts of power  and that’s as high as I’ve ever seen it go with  the MacBook charger so I really don’t see any  reason to use a MacBook charger unless you’re  in a pinch or you don’t have the 20 watt adapter.  

Now let’s try some third-party adapters  as well so we have the power port atom pd1  from anchor lets go ahead and plug this in  again it’s the same sort of setup plug it in  and it will start charging the  phone you’ll see its charging  and even though were over 50 it doesn’t  really bring that down until about 80. that’s  the charge profile it seems so you’ll  see were at about nine watts of power  so it is working okay but I do see this sometimes  drop down to one watt and start charging all  over again so I’m not sure why that happens. 

But  you’ll see its sitting between seven and a half  to ten watts with this this pd1 charger from  anchor let’s try the aki charger as well this is  a 65 watt capable charger so well go ahead and  plug it in I’ve given it sometime before I’ve  never seen it go above about 10 watts with the  anchor charger well plug in the aki charger same  thing here again were getting a similar sort of  charging profile from this charger the aki charger  even though its capable of 65 watts it’s not  pushing out the capable 15 watts that the magsafe  is capable of so I’m seeing this over and over in  different devices so you’ll see here were at 9  watts and it usually hangs around that amount of  power even if you let it sit for quite some time.  

Now if we switch over to the pixel charger this is  the charger that comes with a pixel four or five  so maybe you’re switching to an iphone you have  that usbc charger there we go were charging  and you’ll see what we get this one is a little  bit more surprising I think in my tests usually  it hangs around seven and a half watts even  though its capable of more and again its  bouncing back and forth to nine so were getting  basically the same experience as we did with the  third party chargers but not up to 15 watts  again so you’ll see it takes just a moment  and it usually like I said stays around seven  and a half so were not getting the same power  output as we did with the 20 watt charger  if we move over to the Samsung charger this  is the charger that comes with the note 20 ultra-so you can see the charger here again plug it in plug in the same connector here.

  

We’re charging again and well see  if it ramps up so it takes a moment  and again were getting a similar experience  as we are with all the third-party chargers so  were at 7 watts and then were bouncing back  and forth between 6 and 7 watts with this Samsung  charger even though its capable of more so a lot  of that could be with the power profile that’s  attached to the charger itself but were really  not getting phenomenal charging speeds with any  of them except for the 20 watt apple charger  then finally for those that are curious we  have the 5 watt adapter adapted with usb a to  usbc then to magsafe so well plug it in here. 

And you’ll see its only going to give us about  half a watt it sits at about half a watt so I wouldn’t recommend charging with it just  going to sort of flash here and not work properly  you get the same experience with the Samsung  usb a charger as well so well switch back to  the 20 watt adapter since we know it works best  well plug that in plug it in again plug it into  our meter now other than with iphone 12 let’s see  what it charges an iphone 8 plus and 11 pro max at  since those are not the same mag safe devices  but they do have qi wireless charging so lets  go ahead and well take the 11 pro max place the  charger on the back you’ll see in the upper right.

  

Its charging and let’s see what the meter does so  were getting close to about five watts now many  people think this charge is at about seven and a  half so well see if we reach that well give it  a minute or so and see if we ramp up above five  watts and after we’ve waited for a little bit of  time you’ll see were still at 5 watts so you’re  not really going to be charging the iphone 11 pro  max very fast with this but you will get what  you would with the 5 watt charger then again I have an iphone 8 plus and the iphone 8 plus is at  eight percent charge so it’s pretty low on charge  and were already at about five watts of charging.  

So you definitely can charge an iphone 8 plus with  it but were not getting very fast speeds so I did  hit six watts there for a second but don’t expect  fast speeds with this charger on anything but the  12 it seems at least in these tests so you’ll see  apple does say it can hit seven and a half and  maybe if we leave it for a little bit it will  but you’ll see the wattage going  up and down were hitting six  and it’s going back and forth so between  five and seven watts with this charger at  least from what this meter says now let’s swap  over to a pixel 4 xl which this is a wireless  compatible phone put the magsafe in the back and  since they all use coils it should charge okay.

 

you’ll see here in the upper right it’s at  65 and its charging you’ve got the little  charge symbol but were at one and a half watts  so it’s not charging very fast and lets move  this around maybe a little bit on the back maybe  we can get a little bit better connection here  if we slide it up that seems to be about a watt  and a half in the best place so it’s not the best  with third-party devices so if you were thinking  of getting one of these for an android phone well  so far it doesn’t seem to be doing that well  now many want to know how fast can we charge  with a third-party case so let’s try a third-party  case and then we’ll try a magsafe case as well  so this is a third-party case and it will  adhere just like that magnetically it aligns.  

Its charging well give it a minute to ramp up  and let’s see what kind of speed we can hit so  it looks like we’re going to get the full charge  power out of this using a third-party case were  At 16 watts which became certainly better than while it became adhered at once to the lower back so sixteen watts or so  15 16 watts at least from this test now let’s  try a magsafe case so well take this case off  you can see this one is by case cue so ill link  that below if you want to see that so here’s our  magsafe case you can see that by the ring inside  for the magnets well just put it in place here  and we’ve got our magsafe  adapter on the back its  charging now and let’s see what we ramp up to now  the interesting thing with the magsafe case is  I’m getting about 13 and a half watts now that  may be because it’s getting a little bit warm I  can actually feel some heat in the top of the case  so why don’t I let it cool down for a moment and  well see what it’s like and see if we can get any  faster speeds I’ve let it run for about a minute  and were bouncing around 13 watts or 13 and a  half watts as far as the power. 

So let me cool this  down and then we’ll see what it charges at now I gave the phone a couple minutes to cool down so  it’s not hot to the touch anymore and I put the  connector back on the back so let’s see what we  ramp up to now that its cooled down and see if  it makes a difference so now that the phone is  cooled down with the case you’ll see that its  charging at 15 watts were getting full power but  apple seems to be very aggressive in reducing that  power based on the actual temperature so the  charging curve you’ll see we’ve actually hit  16 watts so it’s very dependent on temperature  so in conclusion what I would say is at this  point we know that the 20 watt adapter seems to  be the best experience for the fastest charging  that’s why I suspect they switch from the 18  watt to the 20 although I haven’t confirmed this  but that makes sense so that we can have the  extra power for wireless charging with massage  and also in conclusion I would say that if  you want the best experience for the longest.

  

Fastest charge I would remove the case and  then put the charger on there that way it can  dissipate the heat more easily now maybe  you’re getting about the same experience with  a case but if it does start to warm up the power  will go down slightly until it can cool down and  it really depends on your ambient environment  here it’s about 70 degrees Fahrenheit so that’s  the temperature I’m testing this in and then also  the chargers that I’ve used for testing so far  the other day I charged from seven percent to  100 using the MacBook charger thinking I would  get the best experience and it took over about  three hours and 20 minutes or so to charge it.

It’s much faster using the 20 watt adapter because  it can keep the power up to 15 watts with its pd  profile so keep that in mind if you are going  to charge fast charging I would pick up the 20  watt adapter from apple this seems to be the only  one that I’m getting a full 15 watt charge from  at least in this meters testing experience so  definitely you get the 20 watt if you have it  this comes with the latest ipad air it also  comes with the 2020 ipad so make sure you have  the 20 watt I think it’s about 20 dollars and  ill link it in the description of course you  can use any of the others I mentioned but you  just won’t get the fastest speed it seems like  and again you can use it with older devices as  well and it will work but just not as fast so.

  

You will need a massage capable device to get  that full speed now let me know what you think  of massage are you using it with an iphone  12 or will you be if you’re picking up one  of the other models as well or you’re waiting  for yours let me know in the comments below  if you’d like to get your hands on the wallpaper.