The smartphone “charging wars” are predominantly fought on the wired front where some companies already passed the 100W thresh hold giving you a full 0-100% charge in around or even under 20 minutes. But every now and then the battle is carried over on the wireless front where makers are also reaching speeds that were unthinkable a couple of years ago.
One such device is the vivo X80 Pro which we reviewed not too long ago and which supports 50W wireless charging. The only catch is that you need a specialized wireless charging stand. We recently received one such charger at our office – vivo’s 50W Wireless Flash Charger and are now ready to report on what it enables.
In order to achieve blazing fast charging times, vivo X80 Pro has a dual-cell battery with two charge pumps – an industry-standard approach used on most new flagship phones nowadays. With its combined battery cell capacity of 4,700mAh, X80 Pro managed an unimpressive 79 hours in our proprietary battery endurance test. X80 Pro ships with a bundled 80W FlashCharge adapter (20V / 4A) and corresponding USB-C cable. In our wired charging test, we reached peak charging power of 65-66W at 17V and 4A resulting in a full charge of 39 minutes.
vivo claims the 50W Wireless Flash Charger can charge up the X80 Pro to 50% in 23 minutes while a full charge should take 50 minutes or just 11 more minutes than the 80W wired FlashCharge solution. The company obviously confirms the actual charging power is “dynamically adjusted” and is “subject to actual use” – meaning you should not expect 50W power blasting the phone at all times.
The majority of devices that support Qi-wireless charging can charge at up to 15W speeds. You’ll need to use a vivo or iOOO charger that supports 66W (or higher) FlashCharge and a compatible USB cable to reach the 50W wireless charging speeds.
The charging pad brings a white and silver look with a glossy surface on the charging cradle area and a frosted finish on the back all made from plastic. There’s also a frosted transparent bit upfront that holds the device you’re charging. Vivo is bringing a special nighttime charging mode on its supported phones where the fan will limit itself to 27Db so that your sleep is not disturbed. It won’t be nearly as fast, but that doesn’t really matter if you are overnighting your phone anyway.