Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsGood option for night stands as you can turn off indicator lights.
Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2024
I’ve had to return several chargers because they had charging indicator lights that were crazy bright and lit up my bedroom like we’re landing planes in there (we aren’t). My wants are pretty simple in a nightstand charger: great MagSafe charging, ability to charge my iPhone and Apple Watch, and low-to-no lights, preferably dimmable or better yet - the ability to turn them off entirely. I feel like I’m a bit of a charging station snob at this point, but a lot of us out here are looking for the same kind of multi-device charging that we can keep on our nightstands and not have to black tape the ever loving &5:@ over the lights on, amirite?
This charger comes the closest to what I’m looking for, but it’s definitely not perfect. Let me explain:
PROS:
There’s actually a button on this that allows you to turn all lights off. YAY!
It (theoretically) charges multiple devices. HURRAY! I don’t have ear pods, so I can’t speak to its ability for that purpose. However, it charges my Apple Watch SE flawlessly - my watch snaps strongly in place and seems to stay there with some admirable tenacity. I love that.
It’s foldable and packable, so finding a place to tuck it into a travel bag is NBD.
It reduces clutter on my nightstand and frees up outlet space from all those chargers.
As I’m typing, these are on sale for what I consider to be their fair market price. If I needed additional chargers and these were back up to their MSRP, I’d suck it up and wait until these were on sale again. As I said earlier, this charger isn’t a 10/10 (I’ll explain), but at the sale price, I can compromise a little.
CONS: The magnets for MagSafe phone charging leave a lot to be desired. Mind you, I have a quality MagSafe phone case that works with all of my other MagSafe chargers: my phone snaps in place and stays put until I almost have to pry it off. However, with this charger, my phone and the charger have a very “meh” relationship. I have to move my phone around to find the sweet spot, watch it for several minutes to insure that it actually stays on that spot, and then check it once in a while to make certain that it’s still charging. That’s 100% not ideal. I’ve even taken my phone out of its case so that it can charge naked - and experienced only a negligible improvement. This is even more problematic when attempting to charge in landscape orientation (because I’m using this mainly on my nightstand and the screensaver on my phone acts like a clock, but only in landscape), so that leaves a lot to be desired. A couple of days ago, despite numerous checks to make sure everything on the temperamental phone charger part were perfect, I woke up to a phone that hadn’t charged. It was an enormous and inconvenient pain.
I am not going to return these, because as luck would have it, I broke my phone case, and decided to try a more expensive case with very strong magnets to see if that will help this charger compensate for its shortcomings. If it’s still a huge PITA after that, I’ll both return the chargers and update my review (I’ll also update if the stronger magnets in my new case make a difference, but I urge the manufacturer to upgrade this on their charger since this is a struggle even with a phone that’s not in any kind of case. No one wants to have to remove their phone from a case every time they want to charge it!)
Overall, there are more pros than cons here, especially with the ability to turn off the lights. I’m hopeful that the phone charging part sorts itself out.