USB-C is great, and so is fast charging. Do you know what is not though? A big and bulky charger. With charging speeds going north, smartphone and laptop chargers have predictably increased in size. Nobody really wants to carry around a big, honking charging brick that can sometimes be as large as a smartphone. Enter Gallium Nitride chargers.
Popularly referred to as GaN chargers, Aukey introduced a portfolio of these charging products earlier this year. I’ve been testing out the company’s 100W PD GaN charger with my Macbook Pro and a range of smartphones over the last few weeks. Here’s the Android Authority review of the Aukey Omnia 100W PD GaN charger.
Aukey 100W PD GaN charger: What is it?
Credit: Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority
The Aukey Omnia 100W PD GaN charger is, well, a gallium nitride charger. The real upsell here is the small form-factor. It clocks in at 50% smaller than the charger included with the Macbook Pro — that’s a huge advantage.
I’ve got the matte white variant of the charger here with me, but you can also buy it in black if that’s what you prefer.
Credit: Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority
Picking up the Aukey Omnia 100W PD GaN charger for the first, the size might catch you offguard. It is rare to see a 100W charger that can be slipped into a shirt pocket or even skinny jeans, but that’s exactly what you are getting here.
Foldable prongs make the Aukey Omnia 100W PD GaN charger an even more portable solution.
This further aided by the foldable plugs that make it much easier to transport. While not many of us are stepping out of our homes during the pandemic, if you carry around your charger every day for work, the sheer portability of the Aukey Omnia 100W PD GaN charger alone makes it worth the investment.
My only gripe? The charger ships with a single USB-C port. Considering my laptop’s charging speeds top-off at 60W, I’d have liked the option to charge up my phone alongside the laptop. Additionally, there’s no USB-C cable in the box.
How does it perform?
Credit: Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority
The Aukey Omnia 100W is, as the name suggests, a 100W charger for any USB-C enabled device. Aukey claims that it includes an Aukey OmniaChip inside for smarter charging, which sounds like another name for the Gallium Nitride integrated charging circuit.
Being a USB-PD charger, it adheres to most power delivery profiles and will scale to the maximum supported by your device. In the case of my 13″ Macbook Pro, it got detected as a full-fat 100W charger, though charging speeds were obviously capped at the maximum supported 60W. With a nominal workload, I was able to charge my laptop from scratch to 100 in just about 2 hours. This is on par with Apple’s official 61W charger.
Meanwhile, my OnePlus 7T Pro switched over to the 18W USB PD power profile when plugged into the charger. Finally, I had no issues all using the charger with my Nintendo Switch either.
Should you buy it?
Aukey Omnia 100W PD GaN charger
The Aukey Omnia 100W PD gallium nitride charger is an immensely portable replacement for the Macbook Pro’s charging brick. The Aukey Omnia runs cool and can easily charge anything you throw at it at the maximum supported power delivery speed.
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The decision to buy the Aukey Omnia 100W PD GaN charger rests on how much you value portability. It’s tiny in comparison to a regular 100W charger, it packs enough power to charge any device you own at full speeds, and at $31 (~Rs. 2,200) it isn’t very pricey either. That makes it a win in my books.
If you are looking for a replacement for your Macbook charger, or just need a more portable alternative to carry around, the Aukey Omnia 100W PD GaN charger should scale well all the way to a 16″ Macbook Pro.