The best charger for Pixel 9 Pro XL

Extravagant charging requirements are nothing new. Whether OnePlus and OPPO use SuperVOOC to charge their devices, and only their devices, at blazing speeds or Apple sticking with its proprietary Lightning port until it was essentially forced to switch to USB-C, it seems like everyone has a trick under the sleeve. . Google and Samsung also do it, although we are used to looking for a PD PPS USB Charger when we test a Galaxy device or a Pixel right now. Or at least that’s what I thought.

Then, Google launched its Pixel 9 Pro XLwith speeds up to 37W with its new 45W USB-C power charger. At first, I didn’t think much of it – Google has touted its internal charging speeds before, but we’ve always been able to match them with the chargers we already had. This time, however, there are no dice. No matter which USB PD PPS charger I tested, they all maxed out at 27W when paired with Google’s top-end Pixel. So, I bit the bullet, grabbed the shiny new charger and here we are.

At least I like the look of Google’s 45W USB-C power charger. I mean, that’s no surprise: I already have an apartment full of Google-designed smart home products, so why wouldn’t a charger fit? After all, Google already uses white bubble-shaped chargers at the end of its Nest Mini and Nest Hub Max cables, so adding another one to the mix makes my setup look a little more in sync.

It probably helps that I like Google’s other designs as well. I still carry the Pixel Buds Pro (in a round white case) when I travel and have been on board with the updated Pixel design since day one. Add in the fact that Google’s chosen size and shape for its 45W charger stands out from my collection of black rectangular chargers, and it’s easy to see how this one is a winner. The unique shape also has another benefit: I always know which charger to grab when my Pixel 9 Pro XL is running out of power. After all, that’s the only phone that needs This charger reaches its maximum wired charging speed.

And yet, for everything I love about Google’s simple, cheesy design, other parts drive me crazy. It’s a little too tall for my sockets, which means I have to use it on the bottom socket or flip it over to use it on the top. At least when I do the latter on a shared outlet with my Nest Mini, the two chargers look like an exclamation point, which is fun.

The charger also sticks out a little too much for my liking, measuring about two inches long despite only having a small USB-C port on the bottom edge. Of course, it would be worse if the port was on the side, forcing the cable to stick out even further, but the charger itself is already large enough. Maybe if Google added a second port, even if it meant splitting the total charging power, I’d be a little more open to the size. Oh, and the tips don’t fold, you just carry the charger and keep it safe from anything that might scratch your backpack.

I have to give kudos to Google for using at least 47% recycled plastic in its polycarbonate shell and eliminating plastic from its packaging; It’s a nice touch, considering I had to buy another plastic charger.

Of course, the performance of a charger is much more important than its appearance. After all, that’s what made me buy a new charger for a specific phone in the first place. At least on that front, the 45W USB-C power charger does its job and does it well. After struggling with my Pixel 9 Pro XL and several higher speed devices USB PD PPS chargers, I plugged it into this internal option and it hit the 37W speeds I was looking for.

Before I can convey that sense of relief, I should probably explain some of the hiccups and glitches I had when trying to charge my Pixel 9 Pro XL. First, I picked up a Motorola TurboPower 68W charger, which I’ve used on almost every device, including the Pixel 8 Pro, with no issues, and found that it wouldn’t budge on 9V/3A charging, giving me a 27 W output. . It immediately struck me as odd, as I knew the same charger would fill Samsung’s Galaxy S24 Ultra at its maximum speed of 45W (9v/5A), so it stands to reason that it should handle a lower speed of 37W, right? ? Mistaken.

I then switched to an even more powerful charger, a 100W Baseus brick which, due to its size and weight, is primarily used to hold phones for glamor shots. This time, I thought, I would have to reach maximum speed. I was wrong once again. Despite its higher capacity, the Baseus charger had the same 9V/3A rating it had just abandoned, operating at only three-quarters of its potential. Checking another USB-C cable with an amperage rating of 5A didn’t help either – it was 3A or the highway.

At this point, I sounded the alarm to my colleague Rob Triggs and pointed out how confused I was that I couldn’t charge my Pixel 9 Pro XL at full speeds. We settled on the fact that it would need Google’s fancy 45W charger, thinking there must be something it could do that other chargers didn’t, and the rest is history. After all that, the new charger saved me two minutes of time spent charging the Pixel 8 Pro, as seen below. However, it is faster for quick reloading.

There’s a lot more to charging a phone than raw speed, as Rob delves into part of our breakdown of Google’s confusing upload settings. But it turns out that secret power was the 45W charger’s willingness to send 18 volts (instead of 9-11V) to the Pixel 9 Pro XL, giving it the speed it had been waiting almost a week for. Maybe that’s the best thing I could have asked of Google’s new in-house accessory: it did what I needed. I guess that’s all you need from a charger, but it doesn’t feel very good when you have to spend $30 on a new charger on top of a phone that already costs $1,100.

The good thing is that, although you need Google’s 45W charger (or one of very few others) to fill the Pixel 9 Pro XL at maximum speeds, now that you have it you can also use it for the rest of your devices. After all, it’s still a 45W PD PPS USB charger, so you can plug right in and help your friends, whether they have Pixels, Samsung Galaxy devices, or Motorola’s Razr Plus or Edge Plus. Just don’t expect much if you have a OnePlus 12 or another phone with proprietary charging.

With my charging headache resolved, I think I owe at least a little thanks to Google for clearly stating which charging standards the 45W charger supports and the specific voltage and amperage of each. While looking for other alternatives to this charger, I asked several colleagues for advice, which mostly left us looking at the same chargers and trying to figure out the differences. At least with this one, I knew I was ready for USB PD 3.1 PPS from the start; Take notes, everyone else.

I must admit that I have never been so attracted to a charger before. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever felt anything about a charger before. Sure, I have my favorites: I carried that 68W TurboPower charger for over a year, relying on it with everything from my camera to my laptop to whatever phone I was testing, but it didn’t crush me to leave the house without it for long. . a weekend I always knew I would find another charger and probably hit most of the speeds I wanted.

However, with Google’s 45W charger, I’d probably kick myself a little if I left it behind. Not because it completely revolutionizes the charging of your phone (it doesn’t) but because Google decided to give its best pixel ever Charging requirements so specific that they make it almost impossible to exceed 30W otherwise. And honestly, I don’t love that feeling. I don’t like going through my backpack looking for a specific charger, no matter how much I love that phone. Whether it’s OnePlus, Samsung or now Google, it feels like an extra hurdle to overcome. And yet, I know I shouldn’t take my frustration out on the charger, or at least think of a wireless charger instead.

After all, Google’s 45W charger does pretty much everything I need. It looks good, offers solid speeds for more than just the Pixel 9 Pro XL, and tells you what charging standards it supports before you buy it. Yes, it sticks out too much from the wall and yes, I might have preferred the folding prongs, but at the end of the day, it’s a charger. It gets my phone back to 100% with no issues, and that should be enough.

In another world, it probably would be. I probably couldn’t be happier with such a simple and straightforward option, especially when other chargers that meet the voltage requirements for the Pixel 9 Pro XL are typically twice the price. However, in this world it seems like another reminder that we will probably never have a convenient charging solution that works on all devices. At least not if it means Google, Samsung, or anyone else can squeeze a few more bucks out of me.