Customers who bought Apple's MagSafe chargers found that it does provide up to 15W charging power but only when paired with a 20W power adapter.
When Apple unveiled the iPhone 12 family during its "Hi, Speed" event on October 13 this year, it also introduced the proprietary and magnetically-attached wireless power charger MagSafe. Company officials touted the MagSafe 15W charger as Apple's answer to fast wireless charging capability flaunted by its competitors. Many Apple fans immediately were drawn to the magnetic charger and ordered them. Some of them, however, became frustrated upon finding out that the MagSafe charger did deliver on its promise of 15W charging power but only when paired with Apple's 20W adapter.
The MagSafe charger attaches to the magnetic ring found at the back of the new iPhones and as company officials said can provide up to 15W of charging power. This is twice the speed of the 7.5W Qi-based wireless charging capability. Apple offers the MagSafe charger at $39, although the price does not include a power adapter. As it turns out, Apple also sells a 20W power adapter, which seems to be the only accessory that can provide full 15W power to the MagSafe charger at the moment.
While some third-party power adapter may work with the MagSafe charger, those did not help MagSafe Chargers to hit its hyped charging power of 15W. YouTuber and Zollotech founder Aaron Zollo, using a multimeter to monitor actual power output, tried various first and third-party power adapters with the MagSafe chargers and iPhone 12 Pro. He found that the MagSafe charger did deliver 15W charging power but only when used with Apple's 20W power adapters. Apart from this particular charger, no other charging accessories were able to reach the same speeds.
Older power adapters from Apple are capable of delivering 18W charging power and are safe to use with MagSafe chargers, though you should not expect it to reach more than 13W. The old power adapters are now replaced by its 20W version, which can be used on the MagSafe Charger to recharge iPhone 12 Pro batteries up to 15W. When an Apple 96W MacBook power adapter and other third-party adapters capable of more than 20W charging power were used, they did not go above 10W when used with MagSafe chargers. This is why Zollo concluded that MagSafe chargers do deliver 15W charging power but only when paired with Apple's 20W power adapters.
According to Zollo, using Apple's 20W power adapter, the actual output of his MagSafe charger is at 15W. When he used an older 18W power adapter, the MagSafe charger output became 13W. Using Apple's 96W power adapter for MacBook Pro, Zollo found that the output of the MagSafe charger was further reduced to 10W and the result fluctuated from 7.5W to 10W when he used an Anker 30W PowerPort Atom PD 1. The actual output was even lower when Zollo used other third-party power adapters like Aukey, Pixel chargers, and Note 20 Ultra Charger, with outputs ranging from 6W to 9W.
MagSafe 15W fast charging restricted to Apple 20W adapter - AppleInsider https://t.co/QbGIrjeHGj — Tech & Gaming (@FookNews) October 27, 2020
As for the verdict, Zollo said that MagSafe chargers do reach 15W charging power only when paired with Apple's 20W power adapter but beyond that, it is unable to exceed 13W. He also found that when using a MagSafe charger with an Android smartphone, its maximum output is only 1.5W, which is slow enough to render it nearly useless.
