MagSafe’s advertised 15W charge speed on iPhone 12 is not stable, works with just 20W Apple charger

When Apple announced it will be removing the charging adapter and Earpods from the retail box, many opposed the decision. Some brands made fun of it as well. Some of you might have even thought of buying the MagSafe wireless charger as it has 15W charging speed and is convenient as it sticks to the back of the new iPhones or support Q1 charging for others. But there’s a catch in that as well. As it turns out, Apple’s MagSafe chargers don’t come with a charging adapter as well. In the box you just get the cable and the puck. And adding to that frustration is a new piece of information stating that you can achieve 15W fast charging in MagSafe only if you use a 20W adapter.

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This was discovered by one of the YouTuber’s called Zollotech. In the video we see the Youtuber testing MagSafe charger with two adapters – Apple’s 20W adapter and 18W adapter. However, when he measured the energy throughput with an inline digital meter, it revealed that the much-advertised 15W peak charging is only if you are using a 20W adapter. 

With 18W adapter, the speed drops down to 13W. It was also mentioned that third-party or old chargers don’t fare well. It was mentioned that Apple’s 96W MacBook Pro USB Type-C adapter supplied just 10W power to MagSafe.

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This means that third-party devices might need to adopt a MagSafe-compatible power delivery (PD) profile for delivering fast and stable energy.

What’s more is that MagSafe throttles the speed when the temperature rises. This means you won’t get 15W stable energy even with a 20W adapter all the time. Rising heat level results in low charging speed in order to protect the components inside.