Belkin 30W GaN Wall Charger review: Ultra-compact charging
Between various power ratings and charging standards, picking out the best phone charging accessories is no easy task. Fortunately, we’re here to help find the perfect power plug for your gadgets. Today, we’re taking a look at the tiny 30W GaN Wall Charger from Belkin.
Utilizing the latest and greatest in GaN charging technology, Belkin is promising plenty of charging power from one of the industry’s smallest charging plugs. But is it any good? Find out in Android Authority‘s Belkin 30W GaN Wall Charger review.
What you need to know about the Belkin 30W GaN Charger
- Belkin 30W GaN Wall Charger: $30/£35/€40
Belkin’s 30W GaN charger is available exclusively in white and is on sale across North America and European markets. The product comes with a fixed regional plug type, so there are no interchangeable regional plugs here.
Charging standard support comes in the form of USB Power Delivery via a single USB-C port. The Belkin 30W GaN Charger supports charging at 5V 3A, 9V 3A, 15V 2A, and 20V 1.5A, offering compatibility for a wide range of smartphones and other modern gadgets. In theory, it should charge virtually anything you can throw at it.
Read more: USB Power Delivery explained
Sporting Gallium nitride (GaN) transistors onboard, Belkin’s little wall plug offers 30W of power in just under a 40 x 39 x 40mm package protruding from the wall. It’s pretty tiny. GaN is also supposed to be more energy-efficient. So we tested the plug’s charging efficiency, which comes in at an impressive 82-85% for minimal energy wastage.
What’s good?
To call this charger compact is an understatement. The Belkin 30W GaN charger is tiny in size and is ultra-portable. Perfect if you want a small charger to slip into your bag for travel or want to replace an aging power brick.
USB Power Delivery 3.0 support is suitable for fast charging a wide range of devices, including Apple’s iPhone series, Google’s Pixel phones, and tablets like the Microsoft Surface Pro X. 30W is more than enough to cover most smartphones and is suitable for charging up some tablets and a Nintendo Switch too. Charging speeds are reasonable, but not as fast as some of the proprietary standards you’ll find out there. Still, that’s a small price to pay for a charger that will cover all your USB-C gadgets.
What’s not so good?
Belkin claims that its 30W charger will take a MacBook Air to 50% capacity in 70 minutes. However, that’s an ultra-thin laptop with a pretty small battery and even then you’re looking at closer to three hours for a full charge. Larger laptops will take even longer, so this is definitely not a product for laptops with big batteries or even fast-charging tablets.
While Belkin’s support for USB PD 3.0 is good, the charger is not future-proofed with support for the USB Power Delivery Programmable Power Supply (USB PD PPS) protocol. This is required by smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S21 series to charge at full speed. As you can see in the table below, these models charge up at just 15W rather than their 25W maximum rating.
| Belkin 30W GaN Wall Charger Test | Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra | Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max | Microsoft Surface Book X | Honor MagicBook Pro |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| USB Power Test | 14.5W / 25W | 19W / 20W | 26.5W / 60W | 28.2W / 65W |
| Voltage & Current | 8.79V, 1.65A | 8.99V, 2.12A | 20.1V, 1.32A | 20V, 1.41A |
| Charging Standard | USB PD 3.0 | USB PD 3.0 | USB PD 3.0 | USB PD 3.0 |
| Power from wall | 17.7W | 22.8W | 31.1W | 33.4W |
| Energy Efficiency | 81.9%, good. | 83.6%, good. | 85.3%, very good. | 84.4%, good. |
You might think that a 30W charger would have you covered, but the confusing state of USB-C means this is not the case here. As such, those looking for a futureproof charger will want to find one that supports PPS. Other than that though, Belkin’s little GaN charger does everything you need it to.
Belkin 30W GaN Charger review: Should I buy it?
The Belkin 30W GaN Wall Charger aims to provide enough power for most users in an ultra-compact form factor and it does that very well. 30W over USB Power Delivery has you covered for most USB-C smartphones as well as some more powerful portable gadgets with reasonable battery capacities.
Belkin’s value proposition is also reasonably fair at $30, but there’s a small mark-up for the benefit of its cutting-edge GaN technology. Especially as you’ll have to bring your own USB-C cable. The albeit larger Elecjet 45W USB PD PPS offers more power for $25. Or you can snag Samsung’s official 25W USB PPS charger for $20, which is not too much larger than the Belkin.
Overall, the Belkin 30W GaN charger is a solid pick for travelers or those looking to tidy up their bulkier wall plugs. But it’s not the best bargain around, especially for European customers.
from Android Authority https://ift.tt/3qPH9by
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