Product Review: W-18 Thunder Plus Fast Charging Wireless Charger

UPDATED 3/30/20 – Sometime along the way, Apple has updated the iPhone firmware. Now I can again charge my iPhone8 with this charger without any problems. 

UPDATED 10/15/19 – Sadly since I updated to iOS 13 this charger no longer works flawlessly with my iPhone 8. The device does charge my iPhone, but the iPhone beeps every 30 seconds or so and seems to reset the charging process. I tried to find the charger on the “official” Qi Consortium Certified device list, but it was not there. It looks like I will have to buy a replacement if I want Qi charging at my bedside at night.

IMG_0553

Product Reviews – After I purchased an iPhone 8 last fall, I saw these Qi chargers for sale in one of the Malls in Singapore. We purchased a pair of these as my wife also has an iPhone 8.

So far they have worked well for us. I should have placed a ruler in the photo to give a feel of the size of the charging pad. It is 4″ square and about 1/4″ thick. Power is supplied to the charging pad by a USB Micro connector from any 5V 2A source. As you can see from the photo, the charging pad is lit by a green LED when not in use.

IMG_0255

When you place your device on the charging pad the LED changes to a slowly pulsating deep blue.

Pros

  • The convenience of just laying your device on the pad to charge
  • Supports iOS 7.5W charging
  • lightweight, easy to transport

Cons

  • Works, but with the constant beeping I would opt for a Qi Certified charger
  • pulsating blue light while charging might be a little distracting when at your bedside at night for some

This is a product that I would not recommend.

2 thoughts on “Product Review: W-18 Thunder Plus Fast Charging Wireless Charger”

  1. How do you use it. I have one of these bit am not sure how to use it. It doesn’t even state on the box.

    Like

  2. Mine so weird, just bought 2 days ago. When I put on the charger it turned blue. Then within 10-20 sec it turned green and keep dimming (not charging anymore). Anyone can tell me do I missed a step? Cause I didn’t found any guide book in the box.

    Like

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.