Tuesday, April 16, 2024

Consolidate your charging gear with these slick 100W PD chargers

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Once upon a time, high-powered laptop chargers were bulky, expensive, and proprietary. Now with Power Delivery, you can now find 100W chargers that will charge even the most powerful laptops quickly and will charge even lower-powered devices as alongside your laptop with ease. The scene is shifting on 100W chargers pretty quickly these days as gallium nitride (GaN) starts making its way into this class of charger, but right now, we have a clear winner in the Anker PowerPort Atom PD 4.

Best by a mile

Anker PowerPort Atom PD 4

Staff pick

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This desk-friendly charging station can charge at up to 20V/5A for one device or intelligently breaks it up to charge 2-4 devices at once. The form factor and split of two USB-C and 2 USB-A make it great for charging a wide variety of devices in a variety of situations.

$100 at Amazon

Runner-up

Satechi 108W Pro USB-C PD Desktop Charger

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Satechi breaks up its ports’ power in a more concrete manner: one port does 90W, one does 18W, and the two USB-A ports share 12W. The set split ensures that charging your phone doesn’t take any power away from charging your laptop.

$80 at Amazon

Sleek but sturdy

Zendure SuperPort 4

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This shiny hub has a total energy output of 136W, meaning you can charge a laptop at 100W, a phone at 18W, and two USB-A devices, too! It’s also available in black and has a much smaller profile on the desk than most charging stations in this bracket.

$130 at Zendure

Extra USB-As

Nekteck 111W USB-C Wall Charger Station

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This charger only has one 87W USB-C port — MacBook speed, of course — but it sports four USB-A ports that share 24W between two pairs of two. If you have a lot of smaller devices like headphones, smartwatches, and power banks, this is a nice affordable option.

$45 at Amazon

QuickCharge compatible

Better Line 100W Wall Charger

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This charger has one 100W USB-C port and two standard USB-A ports, but it also packs a QC 3.0 port, which is great for charging older phones that don’t support Power Delivery charging. If you’ve got an older phone that doesn’t support PD, Qualcomm QuickCharge is what you’ll want.

$54 at Amazon

Super-powered

Dell 130W Type-C 3-Prong AC Adapter

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At 130W, this charger is probably overkill for your current laptop unless it’s one of Dell’s most power-hungry models. Since 130W is above the spec limit for Power Delivery at the moment, some devices might not play nice with this charger.

$80 at Dell

Apple’s own

Apple 96W USB-C Power Adapter

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Apple’s charger brick might get pretty warm at times, but sometimes the official chargers are the easiest to trust. This is also one of the few 96W chargers that’s an actual wall plug instead of having a figure-eight cord from the brick to the wall.

$79 at Best Buy

Go international

J-GoTech 100W USB-C Laptop PD Charger

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This wall-hugging brick of a 100W USB-C charger not only comes with a single USB-A port — perfect for charging a laptop and phone during a weekend trip — but it comes with adapters for the U.K., EU, and Australia for the frequent traveler.

$90 at Amazon

What to look for in a 100W Charger: Power Delivery

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There are a lot of 100W multi-port chargers out there, but if it doesn’t have Power Delivery, just turn around and walk away. Just walk away! Without a Power Delivery USB-C port that can offer 87W or more — preferably 20V/5A 100W charging if your devices support it — then it’s only useful for charging a bunch of smaller devices, not for charging a laptop while you’re editing or gaming.

When you come across 100W charging stations with multiple USB-C ports, then another thing we have to pay attention to is how power gets divvied up between the various ports. It’s important to see how power is given to USB-A devices, too, but when multiple USB-C devices are detected, how the charger decides which device gets what wattage is important for a number of reasons, and it’s a big part of why the Anker PowerPort Atom PD 4 gets the win on this list.

Most 100W PD chargers like the Zendure SuperPort 4 either only have one USB-C port or if they have two, the first port is 87W-100W and the second port is capped at 18W. This configuration is great if you’re always charging a phone and a laptop, but if you’re in a family that might need to charge two Chromebooks or needs to charge a laptop and a 26,000mAh power bank the night before your family vacation, you need something more. Anker can intelligently distribute power based on what’s plugged in, but more importantly you can plug in two laptops and get up to 50W of power to each of them.

50W is over top speed on every Chromebook available at the moment, and it’s enough that it should charge up most Windows and Mac laptops when you’re not burning through battery with hardcore gaming or video rendering. If you’re looking for a 100W charger that you can use for you and your husband, or for the whole family to use in the living room, that makes the Anker the only real choice.

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