What's the current opinion of magnetic charging cables?

July 17, 2024 5:23 AM

Yay or nay? I'm thinking of getting a set of magnetic charging cables. They have quiet mixed reviews but I can't figure out if they've evolve over time. Do they suck or are they great? Assume I would put a little dongle in each device and then have some cables about and if I ever really and truly needed to charge super fast I would pull them out. But also, I could use my power banks more because with magnetic cables I would have to worry less about the cable breaking off in my phone in my purse as I have done so many times.
posted by If only I had a penguin... to Technology (7 answers total)

I thought they were a great option too but didn't like them. Too slow to charge.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:31 AM on July 17 [1 favorite]

The one we tried was too easily disconnected, so if you were sitting on the couch and rearranged, it would disconnect your charger. Super annoying.
posted by advicepig at 6:52 AM on July 17 [2 favorites]

I tried them about a year ago and was disappointed. Much too slow to charge, and too easy to disconnect. I definitely do not think the connection would hold while being jostled around in a purse if you were, say, walking around.

That said I'll likely try one again at some point to see if the tech has gotten any better. But as of a year ago it wasn't at the point of being usable.
posted by Stacey at 7:07 AM on July 17

I had some and liked them at first (mostly because I could have one cable in each charging location and use that one cable for micro usb, USB C, or iPhone devices). I especially liked the cable with a fully swivelling connector end, so that the charging cable doesn't have to stick straight down from the phone and make it hard to prop the phone up on something.

But those cables are painfully slow, especially with new phones that have big batteries. And the cables I had slowly started to die whenever the ends would magnetically snap themselves to some metal surface that was in the way. I guess it was destroying them somehow.

In the end I got a very very fast wireless charger for my phone, and that covers most of the use cases. It doesn't matter as much that you can't easily use the phone while it's on charge, because the charger is SO FAST.
posted by quacks like a duck at 8:00 AM on July 17

I use them because of clumsy, and I charge pretty regularly so the slowness doesn't bother me. It irritates my husband so he won't use them.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:20 AM on July 17

I've used them for years. They are very useful for devices you tend to forget to charge. as this makes them extremely convenient to do so. A phone... is not one of them. I usually put them on a Qi wireless charge stand myself.
posted by kschang at 8:21 AM on July 17 [1 favorite]

I use one on my laptop and it works reasonably well there. I think it helps that I still have a couple unencumbered USB-C ports on it, so I don't need to unplug the dongle pretty much at all. Haven't used one on my phone, though, mostly 'cause I use it in enough situations that I can't be sure I'd have a magnetic cable around. I have an extremely short right-angle USB cable for charging my phone off my power bank which keeps everything lower profile and contained.
posted by Aleyn at 11:09 AM on July 17