Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsWorks great... except with MagSafe 3
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 30, 2022
First the (slightly) bad: Just got the charger and was hoping it would be the perfect travel charger and it seems like it would be, unless you plan to use MagSafe 3. For some reason the 65-100W PD port will not work with the MagSafe cable - it does not recognize it as being plugged in at all. Double checked the MagSafe cable in the Apple charger and it still works. Then I got the bright idea of plugging it into the 18W USBC port on the Amazon charger just for kicks - strangely it works there but obviously that's not enough to charge the battery. Then I decided to try USBC only as I also have a USBC power cable for my monitor: that charges the MacBook in either Amazon charger port (and the system identifies it as 100W and 18W respectively)... so I'm not sure why the high power port won't work with MagSafe and I guess I'll need to get another USBC high power cable which is kind of disappointing, I had planned on charging via the monitor on my desk and using this with the MagSafe for around the house and travel (simpler cable solution at the desk and more likely to want the safety of MagSafe anywhere that isn't my desk). Maybe I got a dud but it's certainly strange; my understanding is MagSafe is supposed to work with any USBC charger, and that seems to be the case with the other port.
Ah well, here's the good: 100W 4 port charger! I've seen a bunch of questions as to whether this actually charges at 100W or not - I'm happy to say based on the MacOS System Report, it does! The pictures show 100W when this is the only thing plugged in, then when I plug my iPhone into the 18W port the second picture shows it drops to 65W just as the description would lead you to believe. Since I have the base MacBook Pro 14" this means I can basically charge at full speed with the other 3 ports of the charger powering other devices - and for someone with the higher consumption chips they could power just the laptop at 100W if they had some serious work to do and just use the other ports overnight. One last thing to note - the switch to 65W occurs when another port is drawing power, not simply plugged in; this means you can leave all your cables plugged in and so long as only the high powered port is actually connected to a device you'll get 100W - then plug your phone/whatever else in at night and it'll drop to 65W when you're not using it so it won't be needing as much power to recharge overnight anyway.
All in all, if I hadn't been planning on using the MagSafe 3 cable with it I'd be pretty happy, since I was I'm a bit disappointed but it will certainly still work and is one of the few 4 port high power chargers available.
