The world of accessories that revolves around smartphones is truly endless, with the most disparate products trying to reinforce the productivity of the devices. Many of these do, like Choetech's USB-C dock, which in addition to having HDMI and VGA outputs, also wirelessly charges your smartphone.
Upon opening the package, the peripheral looks like a classic circular Qi pad, where you can lay your smartphone for wireless charging. Indeed this is one of its features, but not the only one. And in fact, the sock has a VGA and HDMI input on the back, as well as a microUSB input.
The dock has an integrated USB-C cable, which can be connected to compatible peripherals, such as the latest Apple Macbooks. If you connect the USB-C to an external device, the peripheral will work as a traditional charging pad, being able to recharge the device that rests on it.
Actually, as already mentioned, this is only one of the functions of this dock. In fact, if you connect the device to a USB-C smartphone enabled for desktop mode, you can then connect the dock to the TV via HDMI or VGA cable, to project the smartphone's desktop mode on the TV. Similarly, it will also be possible to connect notebooks to the TV, always with the same mechanism. The dock thus acts as a tool to transfer the video signal of the smartphone or notebook to the TV in the living room. As for the output characteristics, the HDMI port supports 4K and 2K resolutions at 30Hz, while the VGA port reaches 1080P resolution at 60Hz. Actually the VGA output seems dated and difficult to use, but who knows if users still have some monitors without HDMI. In terms of compatibility, the manufacturer provides a partial list of devices with compatible USB-C. The list ranges from Macbook Pro 2018, 2017, 2016 to Macbooks from 2015 to 2017, to iMac, ChromeBook Pixel, Dell XPS 13, latest Samsung smartphones and more. The list is absolutely illustrative and not exhaustive: for the record, during our tests we connected an Honor View 20 to the TV without any problem, enabling the mode
Reload tests
The charging offered by the Choetech dock is wireless only. By turning on the device via MicroUSB cable, you will be able to recharge your smartphone only wirelessly, not even connecting it via USB-C cable. The integrated USB-C cable, then, is only used to power the peripheral and allow the passage of the video signal by connecting the station to a peripheral via HDMI.
Similarly, when the USB-C is connected to a Macbook, it will be possible to recharge the smartphone only via the Qi charging plate. In short, there is no way to recharge one smartphone wirelessly, and the other via cable. As for the charging speed, we were able to recharge the devices at the speed of 1.1 A, therefore taking advantage not of a full-blown fast recharge, but still obtaining a sufficient recharge speed. Conclusions
The Choetech USB-C dock with wireless charging could have an edge over many other Qi pads: not only does it offer wireless charging, but it turns out to be a real dock for connecting devices to the TV, via HDMI or VGA cable. It is the ideal solution for anyone with a smartphone with support for Qi charging and desktop mode: with a single accessory you will be able to take advantage of these two features of your terminal.
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Retail price It costs 32.99 euros and can be purchased on Amazon directly at this address.