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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Plugable’s 140W USB-C charger is available now for $50 from multiple retailers.
- It’s some 14% smaller than Apple’s counterpart and less than half the price.
- I wish it had adapters for different outlets found worldwide, because it would be a great travel charger.
more buying choices
One question I get all the time from MacBook users is “what can I replace Apple’s charger with?” I assume they’ve either lost the original charger (been there, done that, and felt the sting in my wallet) or they need a spare so they can keep one at home and another at the office.
Also: The best GaN chargers you can buy
Apple’s 140W MacBook Pro charger retails for $99, which isn’t bad considering it’s from Apple. But you can get better for cheaper. Plugable, a company that has a very good reputation when it comes to charging equipment and hubs, has one of the best value chargers I’ve tested–>.
The Plugable 140W EPR USB-C GaN charger is the perfect replacement charger for the MacBook owner. As the name suggests, it carries a powerful 140W of power, utilizes a USB-C port, and that’s about as simple as it gets. It’s got one port, and a light to tell you it’s on.
The Plugable 140W charger is 14% smaller than Apple’s corresponding charger.
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNET
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The EPR stands for Extended Power Range, a name that indicates that this charger is just as happy pushing 140W to a MacBook as it is sending 5W to a set of earbuds thanks to the Power Delivery 3.1 protocol negotiating the correct port for whatever device is attached. Remember that in order to get the full 140W, however, you need a compatible cable<!–>.
The Plugable 140W EPR USB-C GaN charger has some impressive specs.
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNET
The charger also incorporates all the usual safety features such as over-voltage protection, over-current protection, even short-circuit protection.
Also: My search for the best MacBook charging station is over. This one can power it all
This charger can handle international power voltages (100 – 240V) and frequencies (50/60Hz) so it’s happy to be used worldwide. The only downside is that Plugable hasn’t offered adapters to allow this to be used in different sockets. With that small addition, it would be a fantastic travel charger.
ZDNET’s buying advice
The Plugable 140W EPR USB-C GaN charger<!–> is a great unit, and it’s made all the better by the fact that you can pick up this high-quality, high-power output charger for only $50. At that price you can’t go wrong having two or more for your MacBook, Windows laptop, or any other bit of tech you need to power up.
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