You may or may not have noticed but your laptop and phone charger are probably smaller than they were just a year or two ago. Thanks to a newer technology called GaN, the power blocks we are forced to carry around have been put on a diet. Now, a company called POWME has set its sights on taking the chargers we have and molding them into one and trimming off all the fat and leaving us the best bits.
The combination charger and hub are smaller than you might expect, at just about the size of a stack of index cards. With a size of 5.4 inches width by 2.8 inches length and by 0.7 tall, the POWME GaN charger is smaller than most of the battery packs that we carry around. Or at least use to when we were allowed to travel, but that’s a story for another day.
On the sides of the POWME, there’s a surprising amount of things going on. Down one side you have two USB 3.1 ports with one have quick-charging capabilities, a 30W USB Type-C for charging your laptop, and an HDMI port that is capable of 4K resolution at 60Hz. There is no mention as to which HDMI spec this is, either 1.4 or 2.0
Along the opposite side, there’s one SD card slot and a Micro SD card slot just above that. Also, there’s another Type-C port for data transferring, power via a battery bank, and most interestingly, power-sharing between laptops. POWME doesn’t say whether the feature has some kind of auto-shutoff after both laptops reach an equal battery charge or if the POWME keeps draining the charged laptop until the lower charged one is full.
Also, maybe I’m just cynical, but I can’t imagine anyone being kind-hearted enough to drain their laptop battery to charge someone else’s without being told to do so. I hope that I’m wrong, honestly. What I can see as a more plausible situation is two laptops charging off the Type-C ports simultaneously. I don’t know if the POWME can handle that, but it seems like a more common scenario.
Not to leave out any of the devices that we care about on a daily basis, or even hourly depending on who you ask, the POWME also has two forms of wireless charging on the top side. Closest to the AC plug is an Apple Watch charger and then further down is a 7-10W QI charger. There’s truly enough connectivity on this one device to replace just about every kind of charger that most of you would carry.
While the POWME has plenty of functionality, that doesn’t mean that it wont match your aesthetic. There are ten different color options for the top including black, silver, green, blue and purple and more. If the solid colors weren’t doing it for you, there are also three rock patterns, including two Agate and a marble pattern.
Although there’s been n official word on pricing or release date, looking back at the recent funding Kickstarter campaign does give us some insight. Backers of the campaign have a tentative delivery time of May this year and the highest pricing for a single unit was $108. That would lead me to think that general availability will be during the summer after the backers have received their units. As for the general public price, it’s really anybody’s guess. I hope that it stays less than $150, but only time will tell.