Here's the sort of product I feel like could use a lot more technical YouTube
videos. It's a USBC charger by UGreen, called the Nexode and it does 140 Watts
across multiple USBC ports. So let me do my small part to help rectify this problem.
This is a quick review of the Ugreen Nexode (I think I said that right) 140
watt power supply which isn't exactly riveting material but it is the sort
of unexciting purchase that most of us will make.
At 119 dollars of my own money, it is not cheap. In this review I'm going
to try powering three laptops with this single power supply, a M1 Pro,
M1 Max and a 2017 MacBook and I'll be using a kilowatt power tester.
Not all power bricks are created equal and anyone who's bought one of those knockoff
magsafe power supplies for the pre-usvc MacBooks knows that these things are prone to die and also
possibly a fire hazard the Ukraine nexode uses gallium nitride power transistor which is also
referred to as Gan without getting too deep into this inexpensive power transistors were often
previously silicon and silicon carbide gallium nitride has its advantages in both conduction
loss and switching loss as well as higher thermal conductivity and can withstand higher temperatures
too the end result isgan power supplies are both more efficient and smaller here is a
visual comparison of a GN power supply against many iterations of the Apple power supplies we
have the 30 watt the 61 watt the 87 Watt and finally we have the heck and big chunky boy as
the kids would say I think with the 140 watt Apple power supply the ugreen power supply is roughly
the same size as the 61 Watt and slightly smaller than the 87 watt but it's thicker across and it's
also heavier than Apple's 140 watt power brick as stupid as this is I really have to give you green
some bonus points for not making this thing white Apple's power supplies end up looking pretty bad
after a few years the ugreen PSU has three ports total two USBC and one USB a the bottom USB C Port
has a maximum power delivery of 140 Watts the middle Port has 100 watts and the unlabeled USB
a listed on their website says 22 Watts although I would put an asterisk next to this and we'll talk
about that in a minute it also comes with one 240 watt compatible USBC cable That's rated for
USB 2.0 transfer speeds I really don't want to get into the mass us that it's USB but this is
not uncommon for a power delivery USBC cable since this device can deliver only 140 watts and yet the
total of all three ports would be 262 Watts this device must adjust its power delivery based on
what ports are being used their marketing website has a nice illustration of what happens if you
happen to plug in one device versus the multiple combinations of two devices and three devices
first let's establish a baseline by running each laptop individually I'll plug each one in test how
much power it draws while running power intensive apps I've discovered recently that NBA 2k23 arcade
edition is a great way to drain your battery surprisingly this game runs pretty well even
on the MacBook 2017 using my kilowatt power meter the MacBook 2017 only draws a mirror 30 Watts tops
the 16 inch MacBook Pro draws in the neighborhood of about 90 watts and so does the M1 Max but just
a bit more despite being a 14-inch laptop this is likely the larger GPU at play when I tested
the USB a port it would only deliver between six to about 10 or 11 Watts maximum I only tried this
with my three laptops and my iPhone with three different cables the USB a port seems capable
of keeping iOS device charged and charging it overnight but that's still not as good as 22.
having two laptops might seem a little excessive but I think it's becoming more common as people
often have a work provided laptop and a personal laptop which is my case with M1 Pro and M1 max
if I'm working in traveling I'll take both that way I can have two displays using something like
universal control I think that's enough about me trying to justify what I'm about to do what which
is plug in both these laptops into this power supply with both the M1 Max and M1 Pro plugged
in at the same time and running geekbench I was able to sip 139 Watts sustained with this power
supply this is exactly what we wanted to see this power supply is delivering pretty much its rated
spec and not more if it went beyond its rated spec that'd be really bad and potentially a fire hazard
both laptops are charging just fine so far so good now for the real test three laptops one power
brick this is where I've had a lesser power supply die on me I had a 100 watt anchor power supply and
I tried to run two laptops and charge my phone this caused two of the four ports to die I had
a moment where I didn't think this was actually going to work because when I plugged in all three
devices only the MacBook 2017 was showing it was charging the other two laptops noted that they
were running off the power supply but not charging then within about a minute all three started
reporting they were charging so I decided to kick it up a notch I ran geekbench 5 on all three at
once now the interesting thing is when I plugged in all the laptops the power supply delivered
less power and for proof here's each computer with the video and screen capture showing that they're
charging looking at the kilowatt power meter it only hit about 130 Watts now this is just a quick
aside about modern laptops especially apples they are capable of trickle charging you can charge a
M1 Max only using a 30 watt power supply is safe to do but not ideal in a pinch it'll certainly
extend your battery life and if you leave it idling it'll charge your battery completely
running three laptops at once were basically trickle charging two of them the 2017 being
the exception since if I remember right it can charge off a 20 watt power supply just fine this
power supply would be inadequate running a bigger third laptop but in this case you could charge
three full-size laptops overnight traveling with three laptops would be pretty absurd but I can see
someone traveling with two laptops and an iPad or just charging their iPhone and this power supply
would cover all three devices at once while using them after about an hour or so the power supply
was warm to the touch but not alarming mainly so and I'm speaking from experience because I pushed
that anchor power supply too hard and it would get quite hot so in closing this power supply
means that I can travel with just one power supply again it's not cheap and it's heavy but its form
factor is well suited for travel the only real criticism I have of this is that the USB a port
does not deliver its advertised 22 Watts when used by itself personally this isn't a deal breaker for
me as it'll keep an iOS device charged while using it and easily charge something overnight but it is
something to be aware of the danger with YouTube is if this power supply for some reason dies in
the future I cannot edit this review the best I can do is update the description and pin a comment
in fact regardless of what happens I promise I'll pin a comment about my thoughts on this power
supply and how it's holding up I am not sponsored by yougreen so I will make a fuss if it does die