UGREEN Nexode Pro 160W 4-Port GaN USB-C Fast Charger
design
There’s generally not much to say about the design of a wall charger, after all they spend most of their life tucked behind the sofa or on the floor beside the bed so you don’t want them to stand out. It’s no surprise then that the Ugreen Nexode Pro 160W Charger is essentially a grey box. It’s a nice grey box though, the matte gunmetal plastic shell looks and feels grown up with a premium finish that could almost pass for metal.
It’s an impressively compact little unit charger, not much bigger than the 35W dual USB-C brick that comes with a MacBook Air – the Ugreen Nexode Pro’s 7cm x 7cm block offers three USB-C ports and a single USB-A port that come needly aligned with plenty of room to breathe. Even in the likely rare situation of having every port occupied at the same time, I didn’t feel as though accessing the middle plugs was difficult or restricted.
check latest prices
The only downside to the design of the Ugreen Nexode Pro 160W is just how exposed the UK three pin plug feels. Rather than being neatly integrated into the overall body it’s bolted to the outside like an afterthought with no option to retract the pins and reduce the overall footprint. While that’s not a major issue for static home or office situations, it could prove more of a problem when travelling as it’s exposed to bumps and knocks. A detachable plug would not only have proved more portable, but would have opened the door to being swappable for other country plugs too to make the Ugreen Nexode Pro 160W the ultimate travel companion.
performance
With a three figure price tag the Ugreen Nexode Pro 160W has some pretty big performance shoes to fill. Thankfully though in every situation I placed it in I was impressed by how well it this USB charger was up to the task.
There’s a lot on offer with the Ugreen Nexode Pro 160W Charger, both in terms of raw power and flexibility. Those attributes combine to make a charger that’s likely to be beyond the needs of a majority of people. So often you see the Pro moniker slapped onto products, but in the case of the Nexode Pro it feels entirely appropriate.
The four ports are capable of delivering 160W of total power across them at the same time, which when you consider that an iPhone 15 Pro maxes out at around 25W – is a lot of juice to go around. The Ugreen Nexode Pro 160W was able to simultaneously charge my M2 MacBook Air, iPad Pro and iPhone 15 Pro at their respective full powers; which as someone who often travels for work is a quality of life game changer. Finding a single power outlet in a cafe or airport and not having to prioritise charging up one device over another is blissful.
check latest prices
It’s in this way that I think the Ugreen Nexode Pro 160W Charger delivers its ultimate value. It’s less about how fast it can charge a single device (though it can unleash up to 140W, if you were wondering) it’s the way it can quickly charge multiple devices at the same time without breaking a sweat. It’ll also keep its cool while it does it too, I was genuinely impressed that the Nexode Pro was never truly hot to touch under load, it gets warm of course, but nothing alarming.
In what was a first for me, the Ugreen Nexode Pro is a USB Charger with a learning curve and an instruction manual. Each of the four ports is rated for different levels of performance and each is best suited to a different kind of device. The back of the charger does offer some basic reminders but you’ll want to think of it as a top down order of importance.
summed up
The Ugreen Nexode Pro 160W is a beast of a USB charger, there’s no other way to put it. To deliver such consistently strong power across multiple ports from such a compact device is truly remarkable and has the potential to be a game changer for travellers and workers on the go.
You’ll pay a premium for this experience though so there’s a question of whether these quality of life gains offset the high price of entry. A couple of design choices also mean while it’s wonderfully suited to travelling from a usage perspective, the exposed and rigid pins might be a point of failure. These are subjective issues though, from an objective standpoint you’ll struggle to find a better USB charger.
