I have a very niche confession to make: I hate packing charging cables when I travel. Yes, I know, that isn’t exactly the most pressing problem that the world is facing right now. But that doesn’t mean it’s not an annoying chore every time I head away from home.
All of the devices I take with me are USB-C. My MacBook has been for years, as has my Apple Watch’s charging puck. And thanks to the magic of the European Union, my iPhone now comes with a USB-C charging port too. You’d think that would make my cable packing simple: just grab a few USB-C ones and off I go.
And sure, my devices all use the same connector, but that’s not the issue. The problem is that if I want to charge several things at once, I need to take several cables. I don’t find myself needing to juice everything up at once very often — in fact, most of the time I only need to charge one thing — but I have to take several cables with me anyway, every time I travel, just in case everything needs powering up at the same time. That means I’m often packing far more cables than I need.
Accessory maker Nomad, though, might have just put forth a solution to this conundrum. The company has just released the Universal Cable for Apple Watch, which is a USB-C to USB-C cable with an interesting wrinkle.
You see, at one end of the cable is a built-in Apple Watch charger. That means I can connect one end to a power adapter, hook up the other to my iPhone or MacBook, and still charge my Apple Watch at the same time. In other words, it could cut the number of cables I have to pack in half.
Flexibility is key
The clever thing about Nomad’s charger is its flexibility. I can use it to power up just one device if that’s all I need, but I can also juice up two at once as well. Before, I’d need to take several cables with me regardless of how many devices needed charging at any one time. Now, it doesn’t matter how many are running on empty.
And thanks to a recent change from Apple, AirPods cases are compatible with the Apple Watch charging puck, so my partner can revive her earphones too. It’s one cable that provides a ton of options.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect to me is that it is capable of delivering up to 100W of juice. That’s enough for even the 16-inch MacBook Pro, as long as you bring a beefy power adapter with you. So, I don’t need to leave just my iPhone cable at home — I can drop my MacBook one too.
An eye-watering price
That said, I don’t see this as the perfect solution to my travel annoyances. I’m a forgetful person and have a bad habit of putting things down and forgetting where they are. If all my cables are condensed down into a single product, and I then lose that cable, all of my devices will go without power.
But the main stumbling block is the price: at $100, this is a big investment to make in a charging cable, putting its cost above most other cables on the market. It’s a luxury item, no doubt about it. That makes the risk of losing it even more worrisome.
Still, I think it’s a fascinating idea and one that could make travel a whole lot more convenient for me. Now I just need to decide if that convenience is worth the $100 asking price.
