This 100W magnetic cable includes a built-in power meter [Review]

Chargeasap Connect Pro is a charging and data cable with a built-in power meter and swappable magnetic connectors. It’s ready to power up a broad variety of devices at up to 100W, and iPhone at up to 27W.

The high-quality cable is 4.75 feet long, and it comes with three magnetic connectors. And with the meter, you always know how much current is flowing.

I tested it with my Apple devices, and a bunch of others, too. Here’s how it performed.

Chargeasap Connect Pro review

If you don’t like to know how much power is going to your mobile devices, then you aren’t as much of a geek as I am. I like seeing how quickly my iPhone, Mac or iPad is charging up. And I can with this cable with a power meter built into it.

Plus, the swappable magnetic connectors make moving the cable between my devices easy. That’s because I can leave a connector tip in my device and magnets make reattaching the cable easier than plugging in a standard USB-C or Lightning connector.

Or the cable is ready to be used as a travel accessory. The range of connector tips means one cable can juice up a wide array of devices.

Table of contents:

• High-quality charging cable
• Swappable connectors: Good and bad
• Built-in power meter
• Chargeasap Connect Pro real-world testing
• Chargeasap Connect Pro final thoughts
• Pricing

High-quality magnetic charging cable

The Chargeasap Connect Pro cable is 57 inches. That’s long enough that it can stretch from a wall charger behind my desk to a computer on the desk.

The cable is covered in braided nylon so it’s rugged and resists tangling. That makes it a vast improvement over the cables Apple bundles with iPhones.

A rubberized cord wrap helps lasso the cable. This is especially useful when traveling.

Swappable magnetic connectors: Good and bad

A USB-C connector is permanently attached to one end of the cable. The other end has a magnetized socket for a variety swappable connectors.

Chargeasap’s latest comes with one or two magnetic connector tips, depending on which version you buy. The selection likely to useful for Apple users: USB-C, Lightning and micro-USB. That means it’s ready to handle MacBooks, iPads, iPhones, AirPods, and many older devices.

The magnets are strong. I can hang my iPhone 15 Plus from this cable and the USB-C connector won’t detach. What’s really surprising is that I can do the same trick with my 13-inch iPad Pro.

I already mentioned one of the best aspects of Chargeasap Connect Pro: I can leave the connector tip in my device and detach the cable at the magnetized socket. This makes connecting and disconnecting very easy. It’s also the way to go because removing the tiny tip from the ports in devices is not easy. For me, it requires inserting my thumbnail behind the tip and pushing outward.

Of course, if you’re intending to leave tips in several devices that have the same type of port, you’ll need multiple connectors. Connect Pro is such a new product that replacement tips are’t available yet but Chargeasap sells tips for its previous cables for about $8 each.

A downside of a removable connector is that it’s an additional point of failure. The magnetized socket is strong, but the tip comes off easily with sideways pressure. So at one point during my week of testing, I plugged the cable into my iPhone to juice it up then accidentally bumped the cable — when I came back a couple of hours later, my iPhone hadn’t charged at all. It only happened once, but that’s once too often.

A green LED on the cable tip lights to show power is flowing. That helps somewhat with preventing users from not noticing bad connections to the removable tips.

Another potential problem is that you need to keep track of the swappable connectors. They’re small, and because they’re magnetized they have a habit of attaching themselves to any nearby metal object. Also, it’s easy to leave one in a device and forget about it. I lost one for half a day before I remembered it was in an external battery I’d tested.

Built-in power meter

My favorite feature of Chargeasap Connect Pro is the power meter. It’s so simple to use — plug in the cable then look at the meter’s LCD to see how much current is flowing in watts.

While this feature isn’t exactly necessary, there are uses for it. The meter makes it easy to see that there’s something wrong with a wall charger. Like, if it’s supposed to be putting out 100W but you’re seeing 2W.

And if you’re traveling (in an airport, perhaps) and have the option to use two different chargers, you can correctly pick the one that puts out more juice.

The rate at which your Apple devices charge slows as the battery level approached 100%. If you’d can see your device is charging at less than 5W, you might as well disconnect it.

Chargeasap Connect Pro real-world testing

I used this charging and data cable with swappable magnetic tips for a week or so to keep my iPad and iPhone ready to use.

My iPhone 15 Plus charged at up to 25W, which is the maximum possible for this handset. Some older iPhones with Lightning support 27W charging, but I don’t have one to test.

My iPad charges at 35W through the Chargeasap Connect Pro. That’s as fast as the tablet can go.

I don’t have a device that draws 100W, the full amount the cable supports. The highest I’m able to go is 63W. But still, every device I tested reached its maximum wattage.

Just to be sure, I checked the performance of the built-in power meter with a USB-C power meter of my own. The two meters agreed, so Chargeasap’s cable isn’t exaggerating its performance.

As for data, Connect Pro uses USB 2.0, which means a maximum data transfer speed of 480 Mbps. That’s … fine. It’s not going to win any speed awards, but is quite usable.

To test this feature, I connected my iPad to a Kingston external SSD and transferred a 1GB test file. It took 25 seconds. That’s quick enough for consumers but few digital pros can accept that data transfer rate.

Chargeasap Connect Pro final thoughts

A magnetic charging cable with built-in power meter is brilliant. It’s my favorite feature of Connect Pro. But if you buy one to use around your home or office, I suggest also getting a connector tip for each the devices you’ll use it with. Swapping the cable between these is quick and easy, while removing the small connector tip from your device each time is definitely not.

Because one cable can be used with a whole range of devices, this makes a good travel accessory.

★★★★☆

When I review some third-party accessories, I say “Apple should steal this idea!” Not this time. Swappable tips have advantages, but so many of drawbacks, too.

Pricing

Chargeasap Connect Pro is currently on Kickstarter. Unlike many crowd-funded projects, this cable is already fully funded so the accessory is certainly going into production.

The product won’t ship until October, but you’ll be rewarded for your patience with a significant price cut. Buy Connect Pro now with your choice of a single magnetic connector tip and it’s only $19. Or get two cables and two tips of your choice for $38. Both options are 68% off the regular cost.

Buy it from: Kickstarter

The campaign goes on until Saturday, August 24, 2024.

Like the idea of a cable you can use with a bunch of devices no matter what type of port they have, but don’t want hassle with removable tips? Read my review of inCharge X and inCharge X Max.

Chargeasap provided Cult of Mac with a review unit for this article. See our reviews policy, and check out more in-depth reviews of Apple-related items.