When I travel, I like to take just a single charger – but I have a lot of electronics that need to be topped up: two smartphones, a watch, a work laptop and a PC gaming handheld, not to mention accessories like in-ear headphones and wireless mice. I normally take a chunky four-port USB charger, but that means it has to be accompanied by at least four cables for the various items. Recently, I’ve moved over to a wireless charging station by Acefast that minimises the number of cables I need to pack, without sacrificing charging speed for my most powerful items.
This is the Acefast Z9 GaN Desktop Wireless Charging Station, which combines integrated wireless charging for phones, the Apple Watch and AirPods with a built-in USB-C cable and two further charging ports, one each of USB-A and USB-C. For shorter trips, that means the only cable I need to pack is the wall adapter for the Acefast dock itself, and for longer trips, I only need to add a single USB-C cable to meet my five-device requirements.
What I like about the charging station is that it looks a whole lot neater than a typical wall brick, with the Qi magnetic charger tilting up to 65 degrees to keep your phone’s screen in your field of view, a watch holder popping out from one side, and the integrated USB-C cable retracting into the body of the device when it’s not in use. The 1.2 metre cable is also easier to plug into hotel power outlets, which frequently lack space around them (or don’t grip the charger very tightly), making my old heavy plug-in brick very annoying to use.
The whole device feels solid and well-made, with the moving parts inspiring some measure of confidence as you pop them out or adjust their angle. The base’s weight makes it feel quite stable, even with a large smartphone like the iPhone 16 Pro Max attached, and I quite like leaving the iPhone there when I’m at home so it turns into a digital clock, showing upcoming appointments or the weather while perched on top of a speaker on my desk.
The charging speeds here aren’t the fastest I’ve ever tested, but perfectly sufficient. The integrated cable can deliver 60W, the USB-C port 65W and the USB-A port 18W, with an 80W maximum for the entire machine at once.
Overall, there’s little here to complain about. I’d like to pick up on some small annoyances, but honestly the cube has worked flawlessly for months and I’ve not come up with anything worth mentioning to its detriment. I guess I would appreciate it if the station was sold in the UK and therefore came with a UK plug, but as it uses a standard figure-of-eight connector, there are a wide variety of cable lengths and plug styles available. Similarly, faster charging for the Apple Watch in particular would be great, but it’s sufficient for topping up while I’m in the shower or brushing my teeth each day, so it wouldn’t make a huge amount of difference and might not be worth the extra build-of-materials cost.
For the current asking price of $57, this is a brilliant charging station for the money – I just wish it was available in the UK!