The best fast chargers for 2024 Buying Guide

Getting a power adapter with your new smartphone is a thing of the past. That means getting the right fast charger for your new iPhone or Android device that supports USB-C charging is crucial — especially if you want to use it with more than just your phone. So to help sort out the confusion, I gathered 14 different chargers from a range of brands and tested each one with five different devices to find out which one is the best fast charger.

How we tested

The methodology for my fast charging experiment is intended to be as straightforward as possible. I drained each device to 10 percent battery, plugged in a power brick and then recorded the amount of charge added every 10 minutes for an hour. Each adapter was plugged directly into a standard 120-volt outlet (without the use of a power strip or any extension cords), and when possible I used the cable that either came included with the battery charger or one made by the same manufacturer as the device. If that wasn’t an option, I used certified 100-watt USB-C cables made by Anker, Apple and others.

Because the charging rate for devices varies depending on how much juice you have, I wanted to measure how well each adapter was able to match each gadget’s optimal charging speed. Generally, charging is slower between zero and 20 percent before speeds ramp up until the battery hits 80 percent, at which point things slow down again to protect and preserve the health and longevity of the power cell. For charging stations with multiple ports, I always selected the port with the highest power output while also not having multiple devices connected.

As for the devices themselves, I selected an Apple iPhone 13, a Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, a Nintendo Switch (a launch model from 2017), a 2021 Dell XPS 13 and a 16-inch M1 Max MacBook Pro. This assortment was chosen to cover a wide range of power draws from 20 watts (iPhone 13) all the way up to 140 watts (M1 Max MBP). Also, every system was tested while idle (i.e. no additional apps or games running) in order to ensure consistent results.

One important thing to note is that while the USB Implementers Forum has approved support for USB Power Delivery (USB-PD) charging at up to 240 watts, adapters that actually support that power output don’t exist yet. Additionally, while there are a handful of cables that can handle more than 100 watts of juice, they are somewhat rare or hard to get.

Chargers we tested

With so many different chargers of varying power outputs to test, I broke things down into three categories. There are the 30-watt and under chargers, which are primarily designed for smartphones and other small mobile devices. Then we move up to 45 to 65-watt chargers (give or take a watt or two) that can handle things like phones along with a number of thin and light laptops. Finally, we have chargers that output 100 watts or more, which are good for pretty much anything besides the biggest and most power-hungry gaming laptops. Many of these higher wattage adapters also feature multiple ports, so can you top up additional devices at full speed. However, because not every power brick supports multi-device charging, I didn’t include that as a testing metric.