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Aug 18, 2023

Ugreen’s 300W GaN charger features four high

By Jon Porter, a reporter with five years of experience covering consumer tech releases, EU tech policy, online platforms, and mechanical keyboards.

Ugreen is teasing a new 300W GaN charger with enough ports to charge a suitcase-worth of gadgetry. The $269 device has four USB-C ports and one USB-A port, and spokesperson Roger Wan says it will go on sale in mid-August. The most powerful port is able to deliver as much as 140W via the PowerDelivery 3.1 spec, enough to fast charge a modern 16-inch MacBook Pro when used with Apple’s MagSafe 3 to USB-C cable, even with four other devices being charged concurrently.

With every USB connection in use, the charger can provide 140W via its first USB-C port, 65W from its second, 45W from its third, 20W from its fourth, and 22.5W from its USB-A port, according to Ugreen’s table below. But if you’ve got fewer devices plugged in then some of these ports can provide more power. The second and third USB-C ports can apparently go up to 100W, while the fourth can provide 45W of power.

My big question is how hot the charger is going to get when its providing power to that many devices. Ugreen advertises that its new 300W charger has a thermal monitoring system built in that takes a temperature reading every half a second to prevent overheating. But when we reviewed its Nexode 140W charger recently we found it got “uncomfortably” hot, even if it was technically under Ugreen’s thermal limit.

Ugreen’s new $269 charger is clearly an expensive accessory, but it’s great to see a compact option for people who need to provide a lot of power to a lot of different devices simultaneously. Last year we were excited to see 140W-compatible chargers with three ports, and now Ugreen is offering a compact charger with five. It’s not hard to see this being the only accessory you need for a holiday or work trip, even if you’re carrying around a power-hungry laptop, phone, games console, camera, and wireless headphones.

In the future, however, we should be prepared for laptops to draw even more power over a single USB-C cable. The latest power standard supports as much as 240W and we’ve already seen cables and laptops that can handle that much wattage. Now, we just need power adapters that are up to the task.

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