Review: Anker PowerWave Stand 10W Max

#1

Stylish looking stand that will enhance any home or office decor. The PowerWave Stand 10W Max works the instant you place your wireless charging enabled device on top of it, even with a phone case installed. Compatible with the latest iPhones & Samsung phones. Comes with a 4 foot Micro USB cable, User Manual and 18 Month Warranty.

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When the PowerWave Stand is plugged in to my QC 3.0 charger, a blue LED notifies you that it is in charging mode. Placing my Samsung S8 on top of the anti-slip stand instantly starts Fast charging my Qi Wireless enabled phone, as indicated in my phone’s screen. It can even Fast wireless charge through my OtterBox COMMUTER SERIES phone case. I use it overnight or when working at my desk in my home office. With a comfortable viewing angle, great for watching videos or for teleconferencing video chats while working from home. The stand also remains cool in temperature when charging and has a non-slip surface underneath.

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Great for a quick top up or a full charge up. No fumbling with charging cables and very convenient fast wireless designation. Will reduce the wear and tear on the USB-C port on late model Samsung phones (10W) or the Lightning port of the new iPhones (7.5W) that support wireless charging. Works as advertised and works with phone cases. Recommended.

Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TTJ6KSH

3 Likes
#2

Great review and pics @Dez_S :+1:t2:

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#3

Nice review, and the pictures are very well done. I like the black desk look behind everything.

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#4

Thank you :blush:

Thanks. That’s my desk in the home office. I like the minimal look, although my desk is getting crowded :sweat_smile:

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#5

Perfect photos as usual.
Great review!

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#6

Wireless is a net overall increase on wear and tear. It reduces the wear on the USB socket but they are rarely the cause of what makes a phone not reliable. The most common wear is battery aging, and wireless accelerates that due to the higher temperature.

The only advantage of wireless is convenience simply pickup and putdown no wire handling.

Thanks for the review. 15W is currently the fastest IQ standard, to go above this currently is vendor specific but Qi is working to go higher to make a standard which can go into laptops and larger tablets.

https://www.wirelesspowerconsortium.com/qi/

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Certain phones who can charge at 11W and given a 10W charger will take only 5W, so it is critical people research their phone model compatibility, you could end up paying more for a 10W than 5W charger to only get 5W. Anker has it mostly documented.

#7

Thanks :+1:t4:

The advantage is convenience and less wear and tear on the connecting port of the phone and even less wear on the cable. I’ve had Micro USB ports fail on me in the past on an older phone. Never with a USB-C ported phone though, but I’m sure you understood it’s less insert/pulling on a connecting cable.

#8

If you buy a Type C phone today, baring you dropping it, the day your new phone becomes unreliable will be earlier if you make use of fast wireless charging. It is a net accelerator of aging.

Graphene cells will tolerate heat better and so when it comes out in phones I will struggle to say anything bad about wireless. Wireless will always be slower than wired but at 10W for a phone its already plenty fast enough. I see it getting into laptops through 2020/1 so some people in 2021 will be living completely wireless (Wifi, BT, 30W Qi).

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#9

Awesome review and pics! I feel the same way about mine :slight_smile:

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#10

Great review and pics. :slight_smile: I love the sleek look of it. I would definitely get one if I had a phone that uses the wireless charging feature.

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#11

I will say that my 2013 Nexus 7 is still in service because of wireless charging. The micro usb port on it was getting unreliable and not charging well if the weight of the cord pulled at the wrong angle or it got nudged at all. Got a wireless charger 4 years ago, still going strong off that.

The micro USB still works, but has very rarely been used during that time except on road trips.

As you say, USB-C is unlikely to be an issue.

#12

I said fast wireless charging, not all wireless charging. The N7 2013 was 5W but usually took about 2-3W and took double the time to recharge.

The heat is an absolute number, about 10-20% of the Watts as extra heat , so absolute heat is less at 5W than 10W.

We’re agreement but about different things at different times. When it was MicroB yes sockets were getting wobbly but then wireless was much less Wattage, I often wirelessly recharged my N7 because of your reason. But now 10W and 15W when USBC exists means there are now downsides to wireless.

I believe these downsides will disappear through 2020 as the battery technology becomes more thermally tolerant. But right now, today, if you keep using your 10W charger frequently on all current phones then by 2 years from now your phone will hold a lesser charge than if you kept wireless for the odd top-up.

If Anker is reading this, their problem is if they recommended slower, shun faster, as most people do not understand all the downsides, they’ll punish Anker if they didn’t embrace the faster charging. But if Anker did add, say, a thermal regulator, so it sensed the temperature and dialled down its Wattage when phone got hot, to extend the life of the phone, then that should become a patented advantage, but to not get punished it would have to be a configurable setting and then how do you tell the base to do it…

#13

Awesome review. And nice pictures :clap:

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#14

Fast charging in general shortens battery life due to heat buildup. I would assume wireless fast charging is similar to that - maybe slightly worsened due to losses being greater, but possibly slightly less bad because wireless fast charging is still significantly slower than regular fast charging.

#15

Wired charging is about 90% efficient. Wireless is about 75% efficient.

So say a 30W wired charger , is releasing 3W as heat. That same level of heat would come from 12W of wireless.

It is solvable but at expense of sound or weight and all options raise the manufacturing cost.

So if you know your thermodynamics, radiant heat loss is proportional to temperature difference (hotter things dump heat out faster, more so in colder rooms) so you can get rid of heat by simply letting things get hotter. That’s mostly what has been happening in 2019-20 products.

Or you add a fan. This is showing up in 2020 products, there’s one in the Anker stand, and one in the OnePlus 30W charger.

Or you add a hunk of metal and use thermal conductivity, which adds weight. I think low power barely audible fans and a hunk of metal is how 2020/1 will progress.

Laptops have fans in them already, so I see wireless 30W to laptops an inevitable, 30W is enough to roughly keep a laptop about the same level of charge when used, or recharge when not used. 60W wired to be recharging an actively used laptop.

As Anker is releasing products with hunks of metal in them and with fans, I’d expect they are their labs right now trying to find the quietest fans and designing the thinnest conducting heatpipes on bases right now. The technology already exists within phones to dump heat from flagship chipsets, the technology just directed to wireless, but at a cost.

This reviewed unit is as lightweight as it is and no fan, because it only 10W and dumping about 2-3W as heat, once 30W non-proprietary wireless devices come out, expect the wireless technology to steal ideas from phones and laptops.

#16

Thanks. I’ve owned several wireless chargers at 10W. They work well for me when I don’t need a very fast charge and/or when I use the phone on a stand when viewing videos or video conferencing.

I keep one on my desk and one in my bedroom.

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#17

To go back to your original point:

Wireless is a net overall increase on wear and tear. It reduces the wear on the USB socket but they are rarely the cause of what makes a phone not reliable. The most common wear is battery aging, and wireless accelerates that due to the higher temperature.

If charging at the same rate from both paths, I agree with you. In practice, I disagree because wired charges so much faster than wireless that it causes more heating of the battery.

My Galaxy S9 charges at 2+A wired. Wireless from my recently tested Anker Power Wave II never got above 1.1A. That factor of 2 in current flowing into the battery heats it up faster than the slower and less efficient wireless charging.

If minimizing battery wear and tear is the goal, turn off fast charging completely. But for the majority of people who won’t do that, wireless is effectively doing that for them.

#18

How did you measure the Wattage into the phone? Ampere?

The inefficiency is roughly a factor of 2-3, so for the same-temperature you’d have to push 2-3 ratio of energy. If the ratio is less then wireless has to result in hotter.

That’s just physics.

So wireless does not have to make for faster phone aging, so long as its slower than wired.

I also think the faster wired charging is going to be a problem, the flagships are solving it via adding manufacturing cost of add hunks of metal and a heatpump, you see it in the teardown videos. They also use thermal throttling so if you were to use a phone while it is being charged, you’d see a slower app performance wireless vs wired.

Some people are measuring this, such as this one on a different set of products than this thread review.

In this one, they hold the Wattage the same, not less and so you see the thermal difference. The phones are off in both so you’re not seeing the cascade problem of also a chipset throttle down.

So break the heat into it’s parts:

  • wired charge, the AC-DC is external, same as wireless
  • wired DC-DC in the phone is the same as wireless
  • wired loses 10% of energy in the cable, wireless is more like 25%. The wired heat is in the cable, external to phone, wireless this is more within the phone itself, eddy currents from induction. This is the main difference
  • heat from Lithium recharging. This efficiency is worse when the battery is hotter, so the wireless eddy current inefficiency heat caused inside the phone is worsening the battery recharging efficiency. This is where the killer problem exists, you solve it via making the wireless 2-3 times slower than wired for same-temperature.

What I’m flagging up is I’m seeing some wireless charging not that half to third of wired and so the phone battery will age faster. It’s the “fast” part of fast charge, so live fast die young!

#19

Great pics and great review!

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#20

great review… I am still waiting on my to be delivered. Very nice pics

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