Smartphones

UGREEN 100W GaN fast charger : test / review

Published on: 11-01-2022 / Modified: 22-07-2022

Even though the battery life of smartphones and tablets has improved a lot in the last few years, at some point you have to charge these devices. You probably have a charger for every device, but you've probably experienced situations where you can't find the charger or you don't have enough outlets to charge everything. For my battery charging speed tests, I used to use a 60W charger from Anker but with the number of phones I sometimes have to test, I needed more charging capacity. So I''m going to test the UGREEN 100W GaN Fast Charger and take the opportunity to share my findings.

Special offer

The UGREEN 100W GaN charger usually costs around $79.99 on Amazon. It will be available for 67$ between 10 and 16 January 2022.
Link: UGREEN 100W GaN on Amazon.com

Unpacking

The box contains the charger and a manual, so there are no cables. In principle you always get cables with your phone or tablet but these cables are often unable to provide the charging speed offered by this charger. I learned this the hard way, I tested cables from high end phones and the most I could get out of them was 33W. I had to buy 2 100W UGREEN cables to test this charger at its full capacity.

Why a 100W charger

I see two reasons for using this kind of product:
1. You need to charge a device quickly (provided it can be charged with 100W)
2. You need to charge several devices at the same time and you want it to go fast

If you only have one device to charge and it doesn't support fast charging, this kind of product is useless.

Charging capacity

The UGREEN 100W GaN fast charger has 4 USB ports that deliver different power and the same power can still change depending on the number of devices connected simultaneously.

As you can see, the charging power depends strongly on the number of devices connected at the same time and the USB ports used. Only the first two can deliver 100W if used alone. The first two ports can be used for faster charging of USB capable laptops such as Mac Books.

The cable used for charging also plays a role in the charging speed. I did a first test with a cheap cable bought on Aliexpress and did not get good results. Fortunately I ordered UGREEN cables a few months ago and got much better performance. You can't tell the quality of a USB cable by looking at it, so you'll have to try your cables and if the performance isn't good, you'll have to buy better cables or you'll never use the full potential of that charger.

Charging performance

I tested this charger on several devices to evaluate the following:
- stability of the charge over the entire duration
- charging speed
- wattage delivered

I don't have any devices that can handle a 100W charge, so I tested by measuring the charge of individual devices or combinations of devices.

Mi Pad 5
This tablet is 33W fast charge compatible and has an 8720 mAh battery.
With my Anker 60W charger, I'm seeing about 18W at the socket whereas with the UGREEN charger I'm at 28W. That's a pretty significant difference.

Realme GT
This phone is compatible with 65W fast charging but I didn't get good results with the UGREEN charger because this phone supports Superdart fast charging in 65W but the UGREEN charger doesn't support this protocol.

Samsung Galaxy S20
This phone supports 25W charging and I got a 24W charge on the UGREEN charger and about 20W on the Anker charger.

Samsung Galaxy S10+
This phone supports 25W charging and I got a 24W charge compared to about 20W on the Anker charger.

On several phones I noticed that the charging doesn't start right away, I felt like the phone would turn on and then turn off for several minutes. I had seen similar comments on Amazon. I asked the manufacturer about this and they said that this behaviour is normal, it is designed to protect the battery. I mainly noticed this problem with phones that were completely empty. Here is an example of the charge measured minute by minute:

Connecting several devices I get the sum of the Watts obtained by the individual measurements and this is one of the strengths of this product which will allow several devices to charge their battery quickly.

However, it is necessary to ensure that the device to be tested is compatible with one of the following protocols:
USB C：PD3.0(PD2.0)/QC4+(QC4.0\QC3.0\QC2.0)/PPS /AFC/APPLE 5V2.4A/BC1.2
USB A：SCP/QC3.0/AFC/FCP/APPLE 5V2.4A/BC1.2

Conclusion/Final review

When I received this charger, I thought this test was going to be quick as I didn't see why I would have to spend time on a charger. In reality this test took me a lot longer than I expected because I didn't have good cables and I didn't have any fast charge compatible phones. These are two important things to understand before buying this kind of product.

The UGREEN charger has 3 USB C to C ports and one USB A to C port. Many phones come with USB A to C cables, there is only one such port on this charger and it is not the most powerful. So you need to have USB C to C cables that are compatible with fast charging.

I compared the performance of this UGREEN charger with my Anker charger and was positively surprised by the performance of the UGREEN charger. I was happy with my Anker charger but until now I had no point of comparison. The UGREEN charger is able to deliver a higher total power but that is normal, we are talking about 60W versus 100W but the UGREEN charger manages to deliver a higher level of Watts. If I test the same device on both chargers, I get a higher wattage on the UGREEN. Where the Anker charger heats up quite quickly when several devices are being charged, I did not experience this problem with the UGREEN charger which has a much more efficient heat dissipation.

The UGREEN charger is therefore more efficient than the Anker charger but before buying it you should check the following
- Do your devices support fast charging with the UGREEN charger protocols? (see previous paragraph)
- do you have USB C to C cables?
- Do you have good quality cables that are compatible with fast charging?
If the answer is positive for these 3 questions, I can only recommend this charger. If you travel regularly, you will only need to take one charger with you.

LAURENT WILLEN
Head of myself on this blog

I share my passions on my blog in my free time since 2006, I prefer that to watching nonsense on TV or on social networks. I work alone, I am undoubtedly one of the last survivors of the world of blogs and personal sites.

My speciality? Digital in all its forms. I have spent the last 25 years working for multinationals where I managed digital teams and generated revenues of over €500 million per year. I have expertise in telecoms, media, aviation, travel and tourism.