The perfect ‘daily’ charger to travel with you.
I like to travel light these days. Ever since I was confined to my home for work (due to COVID-19 stay-at-home orders), I found there were a lot of things I didn’t need to carry with me. Therefore, when I returned to work, I opted to have a lighter laptop bag as my daily carry-all. One of the things that always tended to weigh me down was my laptop charger. I have a MacBook Pro so it has a sizeable power brick that comes with it. When I learned that AUKEY had a 100W PD Wall Charger available I jumped at the chance to use it as a traveling power adapter.
DETAILS
The Omnia 100W PD Charger from AUKEY (AKA – 100W PD Wall Charger) provides up to 100W of “super” output power. This high level of power delivery enables full-speed charging for MacBook Pros including the latest 16-inch MacBook Pro. It’s designed for travel and has a compact form factor with foldable plugs. It has broad compatibility and is able to charge Apple and Android devices at full speed. The power adapter is powered by the OmniaChip, the next-gen GaN IC developed by AUKEY. Because it is a high-capacity power adapter it will charge devices “faster than fast” and has a reported charging time of 1.5hrs for an iPhone 11 Pro, 1.7hrs for an iPad Pro 10.5”, and 1.9hrs for a 16-inch MacBook Pro. The power adapter can also power a Nintendo Switch.
SPECS
- Model: PA-B5
- Input: 100-240V~2.5A 50/60Hz
- USB-C Out (Max 100W): 5V/3A, 9V/3A, 12V/3A,
- 15V/3A, 20V/5A
- Dimensions: 57 x 57 x 32mm
USER EXPERIENCE
The power adapter comes in a pretty traditional AUKEY product box. It’s plain and features an illustration of the product on the front. One thing I’ve noticed about AUKEY products is that the name that is printed on the box is usually different than what is featured on their website. For example, this power adapter is listed as “100W PD Wall Charger” on the box and the “OMNIA 100W PD Charger” on AUKEY’s website. For this reason, I always refer to the model number of AUKEY products rather than the name.
The power adapter is lightweight and very compact. This is the main reason I have added the adapter to my ‘go bag’ for work. It provides the amount of power I need to charge my laptop — a 13-inch 2016 MacBook Pro with Touchbar — which requires a 61W power adapter. Since my laptop only requires the 61W charger from Apple, I have compared the sizes and costs between the 61W and 96W Apple wall chargers to the AUKEY 100W charger in the chart below. You will notice that the AUKEY charger beats both on size and cost.
| Apple 96W Wall Adapter | 4.88″ x 4.88″ x 1.22″ inches | $79 |
| Apple 61W Wall Adapter | 2.9″ x 2.9″ x 1.1″ inches | $69 |
| AUKEY 100W Wall Adapter | 2.2″ x 2.2″ x 1.3″ inches | $55 |
When it comes to testing the power adapter, I plugged my MacBook Pro into it using a USB-C cable (not included with charger) and let it sit and charge until it reached 100%. When I started charging the laptop it only had a charge of 36% on the battery. When I plugged it in, it immediately recognized the charger as compatible and a ‘time until full’ amount was shown in my menu bar within a couple of minutes of connecting the laptop to the charger. I kept pretty close tabs on the charging process and noticed that after 41 minutes, the laptop had gained 43% battery life. Then after one hour, it had gained 54%. Throughout testing, the charging rate has been an average of 0.9% per minute, which is exceptionally fast in my opinion. It took my laptop 80 minutes to reach a full battery.
CONCLUSION
I believe the AUKEY 100W PD Wall Charger is a really nice option to charge high-power items like laptops. I love how compact it is and that it is quite a bit smaller than the original wall charger for my MacBook Pro. I did notice that the charger gets a little warm after charging for a long time, but it’s not ‘hot’ to the touch. It certainly doesn’t get as warm as my Apple charger does. I think the AUKEY 100W PD Wall Charger is a good replacement/stand-in for the original factory chargers that come with Apple laptops and it’s perfect for traveling from place-to-place on a daily basis.
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