PRODUCT REVIEW: Apple MagSafe Charger

 (At Night - Max LL)

Apple has a very storied history of being the champion of 'Different'.  It's difficult to applaud them for that though, as they also insist that different equals better, which it very much does not.  Children have been taught this since grade school but Apple is still hoping that people will grant it an exception because it's so very, very cool.

Up until now, most Apple customers will tell you that they have, with their wallet if not with their words.

MagSafe tech is something that apple (re?)launched around the time the iPhone 12 series came out.  The premise is the use of well-positioned magnets to attach devices to the back of your iPhone, an interesting idea in theory.  Chief among the MagSafe products that Apple touted was their MagSafe Charger, a wireless charging 'puck' that would snap to the back of your phone and charge it.  

It's pretty much just a Qi charger, but different! 

Is different finally also 'better'?

THE SHORT VERSION: 

Nope.  Don't waste your money.

THE LONG VERSION:

All really good products provide a solution for a problem.  MagSafe doesn't, not unless you count the whole, 'It's a pain in the ass to use a Qi charger with my iPhone because the wireless charging sweet spot on the back of all iPhones is so damn weak that you have to be PRECISE with your placement in order to get it to charge properly' problem.

This one problem is something that, credit where it's due, the MagSafe charger solves perfectly.  There's no guessing anymore!  As soon as the magnets latch on, you're good to go!  This solution would be more applaudable except for two really inconvenient facts.  First, it's really not that hard to get Qi charging to work with iPhones.  Yes, it's a little irritating to dial in where you need to place your phone in order for it to work, but once you do, muscle memory will take over and you'll be fine.  Second, Apple has accomplished something really interesting with the MagSafe charger -- possibly with MagSafe tech in general, but that will require more thought -- that I'm not sure I've ever seen before: They've not just created a solution to a problem that doesn't really exist, they've managed to create several other NEW problems in the process.  We'll come back to this bit though.  First, I want to talk about the charger itself.

The MagSafe Charger is basically an over-engineered, over-thought Qi charger.  In this capacity, it works great.  Have something that supports wireless charging?  This has you covered.  Or, it will have you covered once you buy a completely separate power brick.  By default, the MagSafe Charger doesn't come with a power brick which means that, by default, it is useless.

"But Steve," you cry, "Apple is doing this to cut down on waste!  Everyone has power bricks laying around their house!  No one needs another power brick!"

That is an excellent line that is also utter crap.  See, the power line on the MagSafe charger doesn't end in USB-A.  It ends in USB-C.  That takes most of your garden variety power bricks that we all have laying around our houses out of the picture.  Could you buy a converter from C to A? Sure.  That's an extra cost though and it will greatly decrease the efficiency of your charger, resulting in much slower charging speeds. And please don't get me started on Apple and the whole 'excess waste' thing.

"But Steve," you cry again, "I already have several USB C charging bricks at home too!  I even have one that came with my iPhone!"

Better check the wattage on those power bricks, chum.  See, MagSafe Chargers require at least 18 watts in order to charge to their full potential.  If you have a new iPad Pro, you're probably good to go, and you could always use the monster charging brick for any new USB-C powered MacBook.  Or, you could go and buy one from wherever.

For $20.

That makes the MagSafe charger a $60 Qi charger and the only thing it does better than Anker's $10 PowerWave Qi charger is magnets.  Let's talk about those magnets for a moment. 

Yes, the magnets work.  Yes, they do a good job of holding the charger firmly in place so that your device keeps charging.  They only really do this well if your phone isn't in a case though.  Put a case on, even a thin one, and the magnets become noticeably weaker.  No longer can you simply be in the ballpark of your phone to have the charger work.  You pretty much have to be right on top of it in order for the magnets to engage, and once you get to that point, what real good are the magnets even doing?

This would be awkward on its own except for those two problems I was talking about earlier.  Let's talk about those now.

The first problem is the convenience that MagSafe removes.  One of the great things about Qi charging is that you can just set your phone down and it works.  When. you're done, you can just pick your phone up and go on your way.  You can do both of these things with one hand.  This is very much a first-world problem for most people but it starts to become a huge issue when you consider Accessibility.  Qi charging was a huge game-changer for people with only one hand or with motor control or neurological problems that made putting a charging cable in a phone a struggle.  One-handed Qi charging was a life-saver. 

You can't do this with a MagSafe charger.  You can surely put it down with one hand and then wiggle it around until the magnets do their job.  It's a little clumsy but that works.  What about picking it up though?  You pretty much have to use two hands for this.

"But Steve," you cry, much more weakly now, "The whole point of MagSafe-style chargers is that you can do exactly that!  No more unplugging, no more worrying about accidental damage to cords and charging ports!"

And here's the other shoe.  That comment I made above about how Apple has actually -caused- several new problems with this product?  It's time to explore that now.

Apple's previous attempts at magnetic chargers have been very good.  I'm speaking of the charging lines for previous model MacBook Pros here.  The magnets have done a good job of holding the charging cord in place but take relatively little force to pull away from the laptop.  Even an accidental yank isn't a problem for the cord itself because there isn't enough weight on the head of the cord to cause any significant wear.

Unfortunately, no one was thinking about any of this with the MagSafe charger.  See, you very much can just pick your phone up and the MagSafe puck will just drop off of your phone.  The problem with this is two-fold.  First, the MagSafe charging puck is sort of beefy compared to the tip of a MacBook magnetic charging cable.  It's also very much made of mostly metal, including its edges...so when it suddenly drops off of your phone, it smacks into whatever surface it was previously resting on, possibly from over a foot away.  Dings ahoy!

I wish that was the end of it but it's not.  Even through a case like the thin Spiegen number that I use, the magnets on the MagSafe charger still hold pretty strongly once they've attached themselves, which means it does sort of take a good yank to get it loose.  You have to move with intent to get the magnet to break its hold; it won't do it incidentally.  That's a good thing -- ostensibly -- but it means that all of the force that you impart onto the charger when you forget that its being held on by magnets instead of gravity is transferred not to the puck, but to the charging cable coming out of the side of the puck.  This is one of Apple's soft, flexible charging cables that is now famous for how crap its durability is.  Here's an example of what you have in your future:

Image Credit: Apple Support Communities

Anyone with a history of Apple devices has seen this.  The struggle is real, and it will continue to be so because Apple chose to cheap out on the cord and the connector for the MagSafe charger.  More frustrating is that it didn't have to be this way.  Apple has built better cables and they sell them with other peripherals like their AirPods Pro.  Why they didn't use it here is a mystery to me.

In the end, MagSafe feels like a gimmick.  Yes, the charger works.  Yes, the magnets are cool, at least at first.  It's something that you absolutely cannot justify the cost of though, especially if you don't have a highly powered USB-C charging brick laying around for. When you can buy something from Anker for ten bucks AND a really cool, really powerful Anker Nano Power brick with both USB-A and USB-C ports for another $20, it's very hard to stomach the extra $30 just for a magnet and the problems that come with it, especially when it's pretty much been designed to wear out eventually.  And, no, that charging cable sticking out of the MagSafe charger is NOT removable, so when it's done, you are too.

Steer clear of this one, kids.  It's just not worth it.