In this review article, we are going to have a quick look at the RAVPower Wireless Charging Pad (RP-PC083) that we recently received to see what it is like and see how it works for a device that is relatively inexpensive to purchase and will hopefully make charging a smartphone device a breeze. Towards the end of the article, we will skim over a little about what Qi wireless charging is and how it works.
We obtained the RAVPower Wireless Charging Pad (RP-PC083) directly from Amazon while we were trying out the Amazon Prime membership trial programme. As with anything you purchase while being a member of the Amazon Prime programme, it was delivered the next day and the best part of this was that RAVPower Wireless Charger was on offer at a low price of only £8.99 so we thought that for this price we wanted to try it with one of our smartphones that employs this technology and see if it was any good at charging our beloved Apple iPhone 8.
RAVPower Wireless Charging Pad (RP-PC083), what do you get in the box?
Within the very striking teal coloured RAVPower branded box you are presented with the RAVPower Wireless Charging Pad itself, a USB to micro USB cable, which measures approximately 1.20 metres (47″) in length and a fairly simplistic multi-language instruction guide booklet.
That’s it, so if you are expecting a USB power adaptor to be shipped in the box with the device as well then you may be disappointed with what you get but as with most modern homes there were plenty of USB power adaptors knocking about for us to connect to and power this device and if you haven’t got one spare and readily available then it may be worth searching out one while you are buying this on Amazon as there are plenty on there. Also if you have a quick scan of the instructions it does mention that this device offers Fast Charging when paired with a Qualcomm Quick Charge 2.0 / 3.0 adaptor so it might be a blessing in disguise that they don’t ship a power adaptor with this device.
For only £9!! Surely the RAVPower Wireless charger must be cheaply made?
Though we haven’t got a raft of other horizontal pad type chargers to compare this to, we do feel that the RAVPower Wireless Charging Pad that we have in front of us is a well-made device for the £9 price we paid.
Material wise, it has a rubberised anti-slip grooved textured material on the top of the device where you place your Qi Wireless enabled smartphone to stop it slipping around which is a great touch and it also has a rubberised anti-slip pad at the bottom to help stop the actual device moving around which again we find an added plus, especially when you place the device on smooth surfaces. The only thing that we did notice with the material used on the top of the pad was that it did attract a lot of lint and dust which can be a bit of a pain to remove.
The circular edge of the wireless charging device is made up of a satin black plastic and this is where you will find the Micro USB that powers the device, the indicator LED and nothing else.
Size-wise we found the device not too obtrusive at all (being only 3.7 inches in diameter and 0.6 inches deep) and with it being made up of all black materials we found the device blend nicely into its environment. This is great if you are placing this device in an area like the bedroom and the like.
Finally, the charging pad is lightweight and only weighs in at 80g which didn’t detract from the overall feeling of the device.
How easy was the RAVPower Wireless Charger to set up?
Setting up the device is very, very simple. You just connect the supplied USB cable to the device and the USB Power adaptor, plug it in and that’s it!
The built-in LED indicator light will then give you a simple idea of what is going on by three very easy lighting options which are as follows – solid red LED light means the wireless charger is connected to the power and is on (though after a few seconds of the device not doing anything this light does turn itself off), the LED is a solid green colour means that the wireless charger is charging the device and if it is flashing red then the device you are trying to charge is not recognised and incompatible with the wireless charger Qi standard. It is as simple as that really.
What’s the RAVPower Qi Wireless Charger like to use and is it any good?
To use the device simply connect the charging pad to a USB power adaptor via the supplied USB to micro USB charging cable, plug it in and you are ready to go. Then as long as you are looking to charge a compatible Qi-standard wireless charging device then the RAVPower Wireless Charging Pad (RP-PC083) is so easy to use.
All you have to do is place your smartphone, like an iPhone 8, 8 Plus, X, more recent Samsung Galaxy smartphone amongst others on top of the wireless charging pad with the back of the smartphone facing the charging pad and that’s it. Your smartphone will indicate that it is charging and the LED light will glow green and it’s charging. Can’t be any more simple than that.
Is it any good at charging? At this moment in time, the only device we had to hand that was compatible with the RAVPower wireless charging pad was Tony’s iPhone 8 so we cannot say what it is like with other Qi-compatible charging devices but overall it worked very well. It seemed to charge Tony’s iPhone 8 quite swiftly and was up from 55% to 100% in what seemed like no time and if you read what is stated on Amazon we would fully believe that it would quick charge an iPhone 8 in 3.2 hours given the right conditions.
The other thing we liked about using this device was that you didn’t have to be totally exact with where we placed the iPhone 8 or even in which direction we placed it. As long as the centre of the back of the iPhone 8 was near the centre of the wireless charging pad it seemed to charge no problem.
As well as its charging prowess it is also nice to know that built into the RAVPower Wireless Charging Pad (RP-PC083) you have safety features such as short circuit, overload, overheat, and overcharge protection and it also employs stable charging to keep the heat generated from charging as low as possible and the power output consistent which doesn’t affect the overall condition of your smartphone’s battery. In practice, we found that the heat generated by the wireless charging was ok and we weren’t worried about it at all.
Finally when using the device to charge our iPhone the green LED that illuminates is quite dim so if it was in a bedroom situation then it wouldn’t keep you up a night illuminating the room which we liked very much as we would imagine that this is where you would normally find this device is located.
Overall what did we think of the Wireless Qi Charger from RAVPower?
For the £9 that we had spent on the RAVPower Wireless Charging Pad (RP-PC083), we think it is a great device for the money. I am sure that there are other devices that are out there that are better than this but as it was a purchase and not a company sending it in via a sponsorship deal, it was the only one we had in front of us to use.
We liked the overall design of it and the non-slip materials used for the top and bottom of the device was a definite benefit. It wirelessly charged our iPhone 8 no problem and we didn’t have to be precise in placing the iPhone on the charging pad. The heat generated by the charging process was ok and didn’t worry us at all. Overall we think it is a great device for its ease of use and if you are in the market for one and you are on a budget then we would have no hesitation in recommending the RAVPower Wireless Charging Pad (RP-PC083) to you.
What is the Qi Wireless Charging Standard?
If you have gotten one of the more recent flagship smartphones that have been released in later 2017 and early 2018 then you may have heard of the feature that a fair amount of them will benefit from and that is the Qi standard of Wireless Charging. Now the Qi standard of wireless charging, in our humble opinion, became more mainstream and more pronounced through Apple’s, late to the table, adoption of it in the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and the iPhone X.
Bearing in mind the above paragraph, it might surprise you to know that the Qi standard has been around since 2008 and it feels that it is only now that the standard is becoming the norm as a standard for wireless charging. We are not saying that it is because of Apple that the standard is out there as it has been adopted by smartphone manufacturers since 2012 like Nokia in the Lumina 920 and was built into the Nexus 4 a year after that and the Nexus 5 following that. So as you can understand it isn’t a new technology but nowadays we feel that it is a technology that is becoming more popular due to its ease of use, convenience and is now being introduced to highly popular smartphones.
To answer the subheadline’s question Qi wireless charging in its simplest form is a standard in which low power is being transferred from the charging point, or base station, through to the device in which requires the power through the process of electromagnetic induction. When you place your smartphone device on the wireless charger it is using its electromagnetic coils built into the charging device to transfer the energy from the charger through to the electromagnetic coils that are built into the receiving device to convert that electromagnetic energy into power to charge the phone. We have tried our best to simplify the explanation but if you have a few minutes you can have a quick look at the Wikipedia page describing in more detail how this happens and the standard as a whole, by CLICKING HERE.
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