Nomad Wireless Charging Hub review

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Wireless charging pads make life more convenient, but with a majority of Americans owning multiple mobile devices, there’s a good chance you still have a tangle of charging cables cluttering up your desk or nightstand. The Nomad Wireless Charging Hub is the perfect solution to your charging cable clutter, with a capable wireless charging pad and enough USB ports to charge all your devices.

Simple yet thoughtful design

At five inches across and nearly one and a half inches thick, the Nomad Wireless Charging Hub is bulky, looking like an oversized hockey puck. While it’s definitely not as attractive as some other wireless chargers like the Grovemade Wireless Charging Pad, it blends in well and it’s unobtrusive.

The hub owes much of its heft to the stainless steel inserts that sit inside the thick polycarbonate shell. A rubber bumper wraps around the diameter of the hub to prevent scuffs and scratches. The bumper is a nice feature, but it reminds us of the RavPower Wireless Charging Pad, specifically as to how much dust it collects.

Steven Winkelman/Digital Trends

The top of the hub is where you’ll find the wireless charging pad. With a 7.5W output, it provides the fastest charging the most recent iPhones can take, though it doesn’t charge phones like the Samsung Galaxy S8 as quickly since it can accept 9W. Although there is a rubber ring around the charging coil to prevent slips, our devices did slip around the pad a little. You just need to be a little careful how you place your phone on the pad.

There are also five small LED lights on the top of the hub that serve as charging indicators for each of the USB ports as well as the wireless charging pad. It’s easy to tell when each device is fully charged as the respective light for each port changes from orange to white. If you’re worried about the lights keeping you awake at night, you’ll be happy to know Nomad hid an ambient light sensor on the front of the hub so the LEDs turn off in a dark room.

Flip the hub over, and you’ll get access to four USB charging ports. The ports are oriented vertically, and the cables neatly come out in one opening at the back. There’s one 3A USB-C port that should provide fast charging for both the iPhone X and iPhone 8, as well as Android devices with Qualcomm Quick Charge technology.

In addition to the USB-C port, the hub has a 2.4A USB-A port for tablets, and two additional 1A USB-A ports for smartphones or smartwatches. In short, the hub can easily handle all of your devices with room to spare.

Charging speed

We tested the wireless charging capabilities with an iPhone X and Samsung Galaxy S8, attempting to see how long it would take for the phones to go from 0 to 50 percent. While the Galaxy S8 has a larger battery than the iPhone X, both devices charged to 50 percent in about an hour and 45 minutes. We didn’t feel any noticeable heat from the phones while on the pad.

With the USB-C port, it took about 43 minutes to charge the Galaxy S8 from 0 to 50 percent. With the 1A USB-A port we got to 50 percent in about 95 minutes. The difference in charging time between the 1A and 2.4A USB-A ports was negligible, about four minutes faster on the latter.

Steven Winkelman/Digital Trends

The Nomad Wireless Charging Hub sells for $80, but you get a lot of bang for your buck. Grovemade’s charging pad is the same price, but it only offers wireless charging. Mophie and Belkin’s wireless chargers go for $60, and they too only offer the capability to wirelessly charge one device. Sure, the Nomad charger doesn’t support 10W wireless charging, but the extra ports adds to the convenience of wireless charging.

If your charging needs are limited to one smartphone, you may be better off purchasing the RavPower Wireless Charging Pad. It offers an output of 10 watts, and is about $40 cheaper. If you’re looking for a charging solution that will help you charge multiple devices and keep your charging cables tidy, the Nomad Wireless Charging Hub is hard to beat.