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I really love this little USB-C laptop wall charger

I really love this little USB-C laptop wall charger

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It’s the little things

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Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

It’s okay to be Real Mad at Apple for dropping MagSafe power connectors on the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros. I get it. But somehow I have become The Verge’s resident USB Type-C reporter, and I suspect it’s because I love the little thing, despite its many problems. I love it because of its potential to replace all the different kinds of plugs that are out there. I love it because I can use the same cable to charge my phone (a Pixel XL), my laptop (a MacBook), and many of the random devices I end up reviewing.

I also love USB-C because it’s a standard. That means I can charge my laptop from a little spare USB battery pack I keep in my bag. It also means that if I don’t really like Apple’s power brick, I’m free to find and use a better one. I have found a better one.

It’s Finsix’s Dart charger. It can provide up to 65W of power — more than enough to charge both a normal MacBook and a phone at the same time. It also is thin and tall instead of squarish, which means when I plug it into a power strip it doesn’t cover up the plugs next to it. The cable that comes with it has a female USB-A port on the side for charging a spare device, which means I don’t have to carry around an extra dongle or an extra wall wart to charge my phone. I mean, I even like that it comes with a velcro cable organizer that’s big enough to hold the whole cable in place.

1/5

Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

All of these are the good parts! But there are also bad parts: that USB port on the cable doesn’t work for data, so I can’t use it as a USB dongle. The cable also has an amber power indicator that doesn’t really do anything except tell you that it’s plugged in — I wish it would turn green when it’s done charging stuff. I also don’t love that the connector on the Dart itself is proprietary. It should be USB-C, just like the other end. If the cable ever frays or fails, I’ll have to buy a replacement from Finsix for 35 bucks — and they’re backordered. Since it’s 65W, it probably won’t do a great job powering a 15-inch MacBook Pro as fast as the stock 87W charger, but it should be fine for a 13-inch Pro, which comes with a 61W charger. The prongs don’t fold in, if you care about that.

Anyway, point is: <3 you little dude. You weigh less and take up less space in my bag. You keep me from having to carry around another little thing. You make the pain of losing out on MagSafe a little easier. You are the thing Apple should have put in the bag with the MacBook and MacBook Pro in the first place.

The Finsix Dart is backordered ‘till March, but you can preorder it for $99.