Phone brands have this obsession with pushing charging speeds further to shorten a user’s waiting time to charge up their phones. From the time that we’re content with 18w charging, brands are now offering insanely fast charging speeds on their high-end phones, with some pushing the current limits of USB-PD charging, which is at 240w. With some even going for as high as 300w, we check out the fastest phone charging speeds each brand has to offer for their devices in 2023.
While we will focus on their fastest commercial charging speeds, we will also include their prototype versions and other variations (ie. if they offer different charging speeds for global units).
Samsung: 45w wired
Despite having arguably the best flagship phones in the market, Samsung has remained to be conservative when it comes to charging speeds, only offering 45w at most for their Galaxy S23 Ultra. While we wished Samsung considers going beyond that, we think that they are being cautious especially after the whole Galaxy Note 7 fiasco.
TECNO: 45w wired
Just like Samsung, TECNO is relatively conservative with fast charging, only offering 45w as its fastest option. To be fair with the relatively young brand, TECNO’s focus is more on making groundbreaking camera tech more accessible to consumers. Make no mistake: 45w is fairly fast, and we think most consumers are fine with it.
ASUS: 65w wired
Despite having one of the best gaming phone lines in the market, ASUS does not offer wired charging beyond 65w. We think it’s just fine, especially since 65w charging on a phone these days is deemed to be the sweet spot between speedy charging speeds and keeping thermals sane–and that a number of laptops do charge at the same rate too.
OPPO: 80w wired
Despite demonstrating the potential of 240w charging last year (which eventually debuted with realme–more on that later), the fastest charging speed OPPO currently offers on a wired connection is 80w on their flagship phones. That might change soon, as the upcoming Find X6 Pro will come with 100w charging, matching what our next two entries have to offer.
Huawei: 100w wired
Despite being one of the first brands to go beyond 18w charging, Huawei has toned down its push for faster charging speeds as it has been consistently using 100w wired charging for its flagship devices. Huawei is still in the trend, as a number of flagships do cap off wired charging speeds at around the 100w range.
HONOR: 100w wired
Just like Huawei, HONOR has yet to offer any phone that has wired charging speeds that go beyond 100w. It’s a fairly fast charging speed for a flagship device, as 100w charging bricks can also be used to top up the batteries of several laptops that also support USB-PD.
Xiaomi: 120w wired
While no longer the fastest in the market, Xiaomi’s 120w wired charging is the most common fast charging solution in the market, with a number of Xiaomi (and Redmi) devices utilizing the brand’s 120w charger. It’s also the most accessible, as you can buy the 120w charging brick kit at their store.
Like vivo, Xiaomi does have phones with charging speeds beyond 120w through sub-brand Redmi, though its availability is limited.
vivo: 120w wired
While the X80 Pro comes with 80w charging, the X90 Pro does offer 120w charging–though it remains to be seen if vivo has any plans of making the X90 series available in the Philippines. Beyond 120w, vivo does offer phones with much faster charging speeds through their sub-brand iQOO–but they don’t have an official presence in the country yet.
OnePlus: 150w wired
While the OnePlus 11 comes with 100w wired charging, the brand did offer a faster 150w solution with last year’s OnePlus 10T. Like realme and OPPO, OnePlus makes use of the SuperVOOC charging protocol, which means that you have to use the specified charging brick and cable to take advantage of maximum charging speeds. Should you try to use a USB-PD charger, OnePlus devices (along with OPPO, realme, and any device using SuperVOOC) will only charge at 18w.
Red Magic: 165w wired (Global: 65w wired)
It’s a strange affair with Nubia gaming brand Red Magic: while it does have a 165w charging solution, it’s exclusive to China with the Red Magic 8 Pro+. Global versions of the Red Magic 8 Pro (including the official version in the Philippines) settle for 65w instead of 80w with the China version. It’s not that big of a deal, as 65w charging is sufficiently fast for topping up the Red Magic 8 Pro’s huge 6000mAh battery.
Infinix: 180w wired
Considering they are a relatively young brand, Infinix made a statement last year when they made their 180w Thunder Charge solution available to consumers with the ZERO ULTRA. The mid-range phone definitely made people talk about Infinix, as the ZERO ULTRA was also one of the first phones to have a 200-megapixel camera.
Infinix is said to be working on an even more insane 260w solution–and we can’t wait to know more details about that. We’re curious to know what’s their approach in going beyond current USB-PD charging speeds.
iQOO: 210w wired
While vivo’s fastest charging option is 120w, sub-brand iQOO does have a 210w solution with the iQOO 11–though its availability is limited to a few countries. We don’t know if iQOO will consider the Philippines, but given that they have a presence in Malaysia, it is still possible that we get our hands on their products eventually.
Redmi: 210w wired
Redmi phones officially sold in the Philippines cap off with 120w charging, but they do offer one with 210w charging in China with the Redmi Note 12 Explorer edition. We don’t know if Redmi will offer a similar phone outside of China, but they are already working on a 300w charging solution–even if current USB-PD standards cap off at 240w.
Redmi didn’t give full details about its 300w solution, so we’re curious about how they managed to go beyond current USB-PD standards.
realme: 240w wired
As of this writing, realme has the fastest wired charging on a phone that’s available to consumers with the GT3. While we’re still waiting if it will be made available in the Philippines, we tried its 240w wired charging solution (which is based on OPPO’s SuperVOOC protocol) and we’re blown at the fact that you only need a minute to charge the GT3’s battery from flat to a little over 20%.
It remains to be seen if realme will make 240w charging available to more phones, but it’s nice to see the brand make cutting-edge technology accessible to consumers.
That’s the current landscape for the fastest phone charging speeds this 2023. Do note that we are just in the first half of 2023, so this list might get updated by the latter half.
