What I'm using: Aukey Quick Charge 3.0 car charger

Quick chargers help your phone charge quickly. Here's a quick look at one.

I tend to not overthink charging. There's been so much ink spilled over AUKEY USB C cables that are out of spec and whether my phone is going to melt or irradiate my brain ... or worse.

I don't worry about such things. I just want to plug in and charge and trust the companies that are making the products I use. And to that end, I've been rocking the Aukey's dual-port car charger with Quick Charge 3.0 for a few months now. And as I've said before, this sort of product has changed the way I look at my phones.

So this is your basic plug-looking car charger. It sticks out from my outlet a little more than others I've used, but not so much that I can't get a cup in the cupholder when not in use. It's done up in glossy plastic, which becomes a bit of a dust magnet over time. (As you can see in these pictures. Let me never be accused of not showing you the real deal.)


A quick 20-minute charge on the way home means I don't have to worry about making it through the day.

But other than that? It's charging like a champ. This charger has two USB-A ports, as you can see. One orange, one green. And so that you don't have to worry about remembering which color does what, there's the Qualcomm Quick Charge logo beneath the orange port, showing that, indeed, it's the one with QC3.0. If you want to charge via QC3.0, this is the one to use. The other port sports Aukey's AiPower tech that "gives all your USB powered devices exactly what they need with up to 2.4A per Ai USB Port." You can use both at once if that's how you roll.

I get in my car. And I charge. If it's been a rough day for my phone, I'll forego hooking into Android Auto and use this instead. On my 15- to 20-minute commute, I can get upwards of 30 percentage points back (sometimes more, depending on the capacity of the phone I'm using) on the drive home. That's a game-changer. That's the difference between worrying about charging my phone after I'm home, instead of looking after the people I went there to hang out with.

And it's that simple. And inexpensive.