I really love this little USB-C laptop wall charger

It’s okay to be Real Mad at Apple for dropping MagSafe power connectors on the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros. I get it. But somehow I have become The Verge’s resident USB Type-C reporter, and I suspect it’s because I love the little thing, despite its many problems. I love it because of its potential to replace all the different kinds of plugs that are out there. I love it because I can use the same cable to charge my phone (a Pixel XL), my laptop (a MacBook), and many of the random devices I end up reviewing. 

I also love USB-C because it’s a standard. That means I can charge my laptop from a little spare USB battery pack I keep in my bag. It also means that if I don’t really like Apple’s power brick, I’m free to find and use a better one. I have found a better one.

It’s Finsix’s Dart charger. It can provide up to 65W of power — more than enough to charge both a normal MacBook and a phone at the same time. It also is thin and tall instead of squarish, which means when I plug it into a power strip it doesn’t cover up the plugs next to it. The cable that comes with it has a female USB-A port on the side for charging a spare device, which means I don’t have to carry around an extra dongle or an extra wall wart to charge my phone. I mean, I even like that it comes with a velcro cable organizer that’s big enough to hold the whole cable in place. 

All of these are the good parts! But there are also bad parts: that USB port on the cable doesn’t work for data, so I can’t use it as a USB dongle. The cable also has an amber power indicator that doesn’t really do anything except tell you that it’s plugged in — I wish it would turn green when it’s done charging stuff. I also don’t love that the connector on the Dart itself is proprietary. It should be USB-C, just like the other end. If the cable ever frays or fails, I’ll have to buy a replacement from Finsix for 35 bucks — and they’re backordered. Since it’s 65W, it probably won’t do a great job powering a 15-inch MacBook Pro as fast as the stock 87W charger, but it should be fine for a 13-inch Pro, which comes with a 61W charger. The prongs don’t fold in, if you care about that.

The Finsix Dart is backordered ‘till March, but you can preorder it for $99.

The article was published on : theverge