Xiaomi released a series of important products at its 10th-anniversary event last month. We’ve already reviewed the Mi10 Ultra and the Redmi K30 Ultra – which were the most striking products from the briefing. And today we are going to bring you another anniversary product, the Xiaomi Mi 20W Smart Tracking Wireless Charger Pad.
Wireless chargers have become quite common now but most of them are just basic chargers without any significant highlights. Over the years, new wireless chargers have focused on improving wireless charging efficiency but they haven’t considered much about user experience. Well, in our eyes, the reason why we need a wireless charger is not for faster-charging speeds, but for a smarter and a more convenient charging experience for our devices.
Considering this, we didn’t think there were any exceptional wireless chargers in the market. But that was until Xiaomi released this tracking smart wireless charger and it looks like Xiaomi has found the perfect recipe for designing a charger. Xiaomi claims that this tracking Charger can guarantee charging irrespective of where you place your phone.
But, is it as amazing as they demoed it in the briefing? Let’s find out!
First, let’s check out what we’ve got in the box.
The box continues with Xiaomi’s style – simplistic but nothing surprising. As you open the box, the charging pad is the first thing you see. Although it’s much larger than most other charging pads we’ve seen before, the working platform is still smaller than what we had expected, allowing us to place a maximum of two smartphones.
At first glance, the minimalist appearance didn’t really catch our eyes as we had already seen its conceptual design last year. In the concept stage, there was an information panel in the front to display details like weather and charging state. But Xiaomi took this feature away in this commercial version.
The pad can provide up to 20W charging efficiency as claimed, but Xiaomi generously attached a 45W charger for users to connect with the charging pad. But if you are using the wireless charging pad, it can only provide up to 20W power-input for your Mi phones. And the 20W power can only be activated when you place one of the latest Mi flagships, like the Mi 9 series or the Mi 10 series. Other phones can only charge at 5W.
Besides, in order to get the best efficiency from the charging pad, it also requires a Xiaomi charger that can give out power, upwards of at least 27W. If connected with the other brands’ chargers, the green indicator would flicker to remind users that the pad is not working properly because of a wrong charger.
The first highlight of the Mi 20W Smart Tracking Wireless Charger Pad is its device tracking. Once you place a wireless charging device on the platform, the charging coil with an indicator inside the pad would automatically follow the sensor direction and move to the right place. And then it starts charging the device wirelessly. However, as we mentioned before, the effective detection area is not as large as what we had thought. Your wireless charging device won’t charge if you place the phone around the corners.
Note that there is only a single coil inside, which means that it won’t be able to charge two devices at the same time. But you could still place two devices on the surface to get both of them fully charged, one by one.
We also found that the tracking is driven by two motors inside and they sometimes would get confused during detection and stop tracking. Then you need to reposition your device to restart its detection. And another issue we found was that if you place any device during the process of the coil returning, it would miss the tracking.
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The charging pad also makes a weird noise if you shake it – probably because of the motors inside. It doesn’t come in the way of its functionality. But it sounds a bit cheap, which isn’t expected of a well-designed industrial product.
The tracking charging pad also supports small devices with wireless charging, such as wireless earbuds cases. But it’s not as user friendly as charging a phone wirelessly, because you need to place it much closer to the center. The charging pad won’t be able to track or charge if you place a smaller sized device near its edges.
That said, we still want to appreciate the Xiaomi’s efforts in updating and innovating the wireless charger design. This is still one of the most unique and interesting wireless charging pads available in the market right now. It also creatively solves the problem of wireless charging pads which generally requires users to accurately position their smartphones while charging.
Although technically, the Mi 20W Smart Tracking Wireless Charger Pad doesn’t support the simultaneous charging of multiple devices, we can still use it to sequentially charge two devices without having to replace them. Meanwhile, the charging coil can automatically return to the start point after detecting the full-charged state, which is also crucial for protecting the battery from being over-charged, thereby extending devices’ battery life.
Indeed, the Xiaomi tracking wireless charger technically is able to solve a key charging drawback – just as they showcased in their 10th-anniversary briefing. It basically guarantees wireless charging regardless of where you place your phone. However, we feel there’s still a long way to go in developing the perfect wireless charging pad. It’s still not smart enough to cover enough use case scenarios for users, not to mention it sometimes struggled to deal with some complicated situations.
So that’s our experience with the new Mi 20W Smart Tracking Wireless Charger Pad. It’s an interesting and creative product but it’s not so smart. Hopefully, the second generation model will fix the above-mentioned drawbacks, making it truly smart and efficient.
Mi Smart Wireless Tracking Charger @ $99.99 – GIZTOP
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