MagGo: An Ultra-Low-Cost Portable Charger for 60$+$60, Compatible with Apple’s MagSafe Tech

Why fuss with cables when you have MagSafe? These portable chargers can stick to the back of your iPhone and recharge it wirelessly, and you don’t need to carry an extra cable.

A 622 from Anker. MagGo Portable Charger for $60: This slim 5,000-mAh power bank will charge your iPhone just once (and will barely recharge an iPhone 14 Pro Max to full), but it’s compact and comes with a built-in kickstand to prop up the iPhone in landscape or portrait orientation. You can use the USB-C port at the bottom to recharge the portable charger or your iPhone if you need to do the job faster. The screen is a bit wobbly when used on the kickstand.

I know what you’re thinking, that Amazon has thousands of MagSafe car chargers, and they’re nowhere close to $100. What makes this one special?” The answer is that this one is compatible with MagSafe. They used a ring of magnets to hold your phone and standard Qi charging that can’t pump as much power into your phone is not allowed by Apple. Some suspicious listings say they can do 15W charging, but it looks like they mean that the coil in it is technically able to fast wireless charging for phones that aren’t iPhones. One that has the official approval of the iPhone maker is finally here, but it seems quite difficult to recommend.

The Belkin’s extremely wordy name basically spells out exactly how it works: you clip it onto your car vent, and it holds your iPhone up so you can see whatever maps or music controls are on it (in theory, anyways — a lot of car vents struggle to stay in place under the weight of a phone and mount). It’ll also provide 15W of charging power, more than iPhones can pull from standard Qi chargers.

As I said before, this is a pretty obvious use for Apple’s MagSafe tech. That’s why it was so surprising when Belkin basically announced this exact thing the day after the iPhone 12 introduced MagSafe — except it cost $40 and it bafflingly left off the ability to actually charge your phone. You know, the main thing you’d want it to do if you were trying to use a power-hungry navigation app.

The mount can also swivel your phone from portrait to landscape, for however you like to see your directions. For the most part it, seems like a perfectly competent accessory —except that, again, it costs $99.95.

MagSafe accessories do not come cheap but I believe most people would want to consider other less expensive options. Spigen makes a version of this that can hold a MagSafe puck. Even if you splurge for a fancy $20 dual USB-C 12V adapter (because it doesn’t come with one), you’d still be saving a decent chunk of change. Spigen uses black while Belkin uses white, which will make it stand out against most dashboards.