GaN wall chargers, where ten never say which plug and none names a safety mark

Twenty GaN USB-C wall chargers, and the first thing to say is about my own search. Every one of the twenty says GaN, because that is what I asked the gateway for. A page that presented twenty out of twenty as a finding would be describing its own query. GaN is real, gallium nitride runs cooler and smaller than the older silicon parts at the same output, but on a shelf where every listing says it, it separates nothing.

The cheap phone extras guide could set the charger question aside with one line: nothing on it plugged into the mains. This page is that question. A wall charger is the one phone accessory that sits in a socket overnight, and the two things a UK buyer most needs to know about it are the two things these titles say least about.

Which plug is in the box

Ten of the twenty titles never state a plug region at all.

Of the ten that do, nine say EU, eight say US, three say UK, and one is sold for the UK and nowhere else. On a cable or a case this would be trivia. On a charger the plug is the product: a two-pin plug moulded onto the body means an adapter under it every time it is used, and a lightweight travel adapter carrying a 65W brick out of a wall socket is not an arrangement anyone should live with.

So the first act on every listing here is to open the variant list and find the UK option. Three titles say it is there. For the other seventeen the title does not know, and the picks below are the ones where it does.

What 240W means, and what it does not

240W is the top of the USB Power Delivery 3.1 standard. It is 48 volts at 5 amps, delivered on one port, into a laptop that asks for it, through a cable built and marked for it. No phone made asks for it and no phone cable on the cable guide could carry it. A charger with five ports and 240W on the title is describing a total across the ports at best. A charger with two ports and 240W on the title is describing a number.

120W is a different kind of claim. It is Xiaomi’s own fast-charging figure, reached over Xiaomi’s own handshake with Xiaomi’s own phones, and it is real in that one pairing. Plug anything else into a 120W charger and it delivers whatever its PD figure is, which is the number that matters and the number none of the six 120W titles states.

65W, on seven titles, is the figure that makes sense. It charges any phone at the fastest rate the phone will accept and runs a USB-C laptop at a working pace, and it is what the rest of this page is measured against.

Ports, and the split nobody prints

Ten titles state a port count: six say two, three say four or five, one says eight. Not one says how the watts divide when more than one port is in use.

That is the number a buyer actually needs. A 65W charger with two ports is usually 65W to one port on its own, and something like 45W and 20W once the second cable goes in. That is fine and it is normal. But a title that says 65W and two ports, and stops there, is promising 65W to each of them by saying nothing, and the promise is one it cannot keep.

PD, PPS, and which phone you own

Fourteen titles say PD, which is the open standard nearly every current phone charges over, and where a title says it the headline number at least belongs to a system your phone can negotiate with. Seven also say Quick Charge, the older Qualcomm scheme, which does no harm.

One title says PPS. PPS is the extension to PD that a Samsung needs in order to reach its own Super Fast figures; without it a Galaxy takes a slower, ordinary PD rate from a charger whatever its wattage. So the single PPS listing here is the only one on the page that is a true answer for a Samsung, and it is a 33W one, which is Samsung’s 25W tier rather than its 45W tier. The 45W dual-port charger further down does not say PPS, and so for a Galaxy it is a 25W charger with a bigger number on it.

Not one title names a safety mark

No CE. No UKCA. No BS 1363. No mention of a fuse.

This page cannot say that any of these chargers lacks a mark, and does not. It can say that on twenty listings for a device that will sit in a wall socket while the house sleeps, not one seller thought the mark worth a word of the title. A UK plug carries a fuse by design, which is one more reason to want the UK plug and not an adapter. Look for the marks moulded into the casing in the listing photographs before paying, and if they are not in the photographs, buy something whose are.

One listing, two names

Titles 1 and 19 on this shelf are the same text word for word, 120W, two ports, US/EU plug, and one of them wears the Lenovo name at the front while the other says “New”. Lenovo does make chargers. A marketplace listing that shares its every word with an unbranded one is a name and not a maker, and it is not picked.

What I would buy

The one sold for the UK alone, because on a mains charger the plug is the first thing to settle, and read its 120W as Xiaomi’s number: for any other phone it is a 65W-class charger.

If it is going in a bag, the 55W that offers EU, US, UK and AU plugs in one listing, and treat it as a two-device charger rather than a laptop one.

If the numbers on this page have made you suspicious, the one with the display, because it is the only charger here whose claim you can check.

If you own a Samsung, the one that says PPS, and accept 33W, because it is the only listing on the page that names the thing a Galaxy needs.

I have not handled any of these. The titles are the whole of the evidence, and every price in the table carries the date I read it.