The best fast chargers, car chargers, wireless charging pads and charging cables for any kind of iPhone.
The best iPhone chargers offer convenience and speed. As Apple devices get more powerful, they require bigger and better batteries which typically mean regular recharging so you want the solution to be convenient. It’s also worth considering if you prefer a wired or wireless charger. Wired can be faster depending on the power of the charger but wireless is often more convenient. Until relatively recently, every iPhone came with a 5W charger but those don’t support fast charging. Instead, you’ll need an 18W charger or better, and it should have a USB-C connector rather than the more familiar USB-A. For the best wireless chargers, iPhones use slightly different wireless charging to Android devices so it’s vital that you look for PD (Power Delivery) as a feature if fast charging matters to you as that’s the one iPhones use. Without it, fast charging won’t actually be very fast. You’ll also need to check that your iPhone supports wireless charging with older devices only able to be charged via a cable. Once you’ve thought about these things, keep on reading and follow our advice on what to look for when tracking down the best iPhone chargers. We’ve got our picks of the best too. Wireless isn’t always as fast, but it’s more convenient. Most wireless iPhone chargers deliver 5W or 7.5W and work through most iPhone cases. Most standalone charging pads expect you to provide the actual charger brick, and can’t deliver more power than you put into them – so even if an iPhone wireless charging pad can deliver 7.5W, it can’t do that if you’re plugging it into a charger that only gives it 5W. Don’t just look at the price. Look at what you want to do now, and what you might want to do next year. For example, an 18W charger will fast charge your iPhone, but it’s not powerful enough to run a MacBook Pro. A more powerful one may be a better option for your future tech arsenal. It’s also wise to go for USB-C even if you don’t need it right now. That’s where everything is heading, so USB-C is future-proofed and backwards compatible. Just remember that we mean USB-C plugging into the charger, and Lightning on the other end of the cable to plug into the iPhone. Below are our favorite iPhone charging blocks, iPhone charging cables and wireless iPhone charging pads. We’ve chosen them on three key criteria: quality, usefulness and value for money. Whether you’re a road warrior or a box set binger, these chargers, cables and pads are the best ways to keep your iPhone powered up. In a charging block Power and ports matter here. For fast charging (iPhone 8 onwards) you’ll need 18W or more and USB-C, not the older, more common USB-A. In a charging cable Durability is key. Nylon braiding reduces tangling; look for reinforcements where the cable meets the connector, as that’s where cables tend to fray. In a wireless charger Many wireless chargers deliver 5W, which is fine for overnight charging, but 7.5W charges faster. The charger that Apple recommends for your iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro, iPhone 12 Pro Max, and iPhone 12 Mini, is also the one you’ll wish came bundled with your not exactly cheap purchase. It’s a fast charger so it’s a worthwhile investment compared to simply using the charging cable, but you’ll begrudge the fact you need to pay the extra. Still, if you’re going to do so, at least you get a quality product. It has that clean minimalist design that works so well for Apple devices, and it’s as simple to use it as it comes. Obviously, don’t expect it to come with a spare charging cable. That would be far too much like good value. Apple recommends this charger for the iPad Pro and iPhone 8 or later, all of which support fast charging; despite this, Apple didn’t provide a fast charger with the iPhone 8,8 Plus, X, XS, XR or the non-Pro i Phone 11, so this is a purchase you’re going to make while pulling a pretty sour face. But if you’re a heavy iPhone user, it’s a worthwhile investment. The difference between the 18W charger and the ancient 5W one is dramatic: with the former you can get about 50% charge from flat in half an hour, but the latter takes about six years. Does the Apple charger come with a cable? Ha ha no. If you can’t bear giving more money to Apple for the charger that should have come with your phone, be careful what you buy instead: some chargers advertised as fast chargers are only fast for Android devices, not Apple ones. This one, though, is a 42W fast charger that works with all iPhones and fast charges iPhone 8s onwards. It’s half the price of the Apple one and has one high-speed USB-C for fast charging and a second USB-A for other devices. Cables aren’t included. We’ve used many Anker chargers for many years now and we’ve found them to be utterly reliable. If you want to charge your laptop as well as your iPhone, this is the iPhone charger for you. It comes in two flavors, a single-port one and one with a second USB-A port; while they both have the same usual selling price, at the time of writing the single-port one is being heavily discounted on Amazon.
