OnePlus Warp Charge 30 Wireless Charger review: Great for OnePlus owners, and nobody else

It took until 2020, but OnePlus finally made a phone with wireless charging. And because it's fond of controlling its charging standard in order to provide fantastic charging speeds, that means it has made its first wireless charger, too. The new charger carries the company's "Warp Charge" branding, but it's more than just a name — the speeds back it up, with this wireless charger nearly matching the incredible speeds of its Warp Charge wired chargers.

That's worth getting excited about, particularly if you've been using OnePlus phones for years and watching the rest of the industry add wireless charging while you're stuck plugging in. But now that you have wireless charging in your OnePlus 8 Pro, is it worth buying a Warp Charge branded charger when the world's filled with Qi compatible charging pads? And further, if you don't have a OnePlus phone, should you check out its first offering? I'll cover recommendations for both camps in this review.

OnePlus Warp Charge 30 Wireless Charger What's good

OnePlus's excuse for not including wireless charging in its phones was that it was dramatically slower than its Warp Charge (previously Dash Charge) wired charging. While that was frustrating, I have to give OnePlus credit for eventually fulfilling its promise: its Warp Charge wireless charging is effectively as fast as Warp Charge wired charging, which is quite the achievement considering Warp Charge is one of the fastest charging systems available.

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The "30" in the name refers to the output wattage, which is the same as the best Warp Charge wired charger available. And that leads to great wireless charging times: 0 to 50% in 30 minutes, and 0 to 100% in just over an hour for the OnePlus 8 Pro's big 4510mAh battery.

Here's how the OnePlus Warp Charge 30 Wireless Charger works

OnePlus achieves those crazy speeds in a couple of ways, and it's all very clever. OnePlus utilizes "charge pumps" to safely deliver high voltage, but low amperage, power — which has the benefit of keeping heat levels in check. The design of the charger itself is also very important; it's an angled stand, which allows more airflow, and it has an integrated fan. And like its wired chargers, there's a constant communication between the phone and charger to make sure speeds are maximized while heat is minimized.

Ultimately it's all about managing heat, which is how OnePlus was able to offer excellent fast wired charging all these years. Lower heat means you can continue to charge for the highest rate possible, longer. And it absolutely does what it claims, time and time again. The OnePlus 8 Pro charges incredibly quickly, but also stays surprisingly cool to the touch — it gets no hotter than my Samsung phones charging on Samsung's fast wireless charger (at a slower rate).

The result is, you can drop your OnePlus 8 Pro on the wireless charger and expect to get incredibly fast charging every single time. Even when you're in a hurry and only have 15 minutes of charging to spare, you're going to get a lot of charge. Speeds are highest when starting from single-digit percentages, but even if you're at 50% already you're still going to get a considerable boost from a short time on the stand.

And yes, you can notice the fan noise. But no, you don't have to deal with it all the time. You can set a "Bedtime Mode" on your OnePlus 8 Pro that tells the phone to accept a slower charge, which turns off the fan. It can come on every night on a schedule, so you can keep the charger next to your bed and it won't annoy you (or someone else).

OnePlus Warp Charge 30 Wireless Charger What's bad

The Warp Charge 30 Wireless Charger is a pretty attractive little stand, but it has one fundamental flaw in its design: the cord. Unlike a vast majority of wireless chargers, this one has a cable that's built into the stand — but worse yet, it's also built into the wall plug at the other end. The cable is also rather short, only 40 inches.

As many have pointed out, this is an issue for cable management. The short cord may make it difficult to actually get the charger placed on a nightstand from an outlet behind your bed. That's something you can somewhat address with an extension cord, sure. But if you're trying to route the cable through a small hole in a desk or nightstand, or through a narrow gap in bedroom furniture, it just isn't possible.

I understand that the integrated charger and cable is probably a safety precaution, but ultimately OnePlus manages to handle the same amount of output over a detachable cable (on both ends) for its wired Warp Charge. And we regularly use laptops with upwards of 100W passing over detachable USB-C cables. That makes this built-in cable downright silly, and not something you expect to have to deal with on a premium-priced wireless charger.

Now let's quickly address using the Warp Charge 30 Wireless Charger with non-OnePlus phones. For as rapid as the speeds are on the OnePlus 8 Pro, they're glacial on anything else. Measuring wireless charging power output across phones is a bit of a crapshoot, but the slow speeds are shown in the charge times: a Galaxy S20 Ultra takes nearly 5 hours to recharge, a Pixel 4 XL roughly 4 hours, on the same charger that can fill up a OnePlus 8 Pro in a touch over an hour.

At these speeds, the Warp Charge 30 Wireless Charger is effectively only useful for overnight charging with non-OnePlus phones. And at that point you could buy literally any wireless charger — Anker makes a solid one that's only $12 — and be better off. This is one of the frustrations with wireless charging: just because something is Qi standard compliant doesn't mean it's going to be fast. OnePlus has no reason to make this thing charge any other phones quickly, and it doesn't.

OnePlus Warp Charge 30 Wireless Charger Should you buy it?

The market for the Warp Charge 30 Wireless Charger is inherently limited. Either you have a OnePlus 8 Pro, or you don't. If it wasn't clear up to this point: if you don't have an 8 Pro, you shouldn't buy this wireless charger. There are many wireless charging stands available that are designed to charge non-OnePlus phones much faster, and are less expensive as well. Anker has a basic one for $19, Samsung's fast charging stand comes in at $55, Choetech offers one for $23, and there are countless others.

3 out of 5

But then there are those of you who have a OnePlus 8 Pro, and want to take advantage of its new wireless charging capability. If you're going to buy a wireless charger for your 8 Pro, you should absolutely look at the Warp Charge 30 wireless charger — it's the best wireless charger for the phone. But you should only spend the extra money on it if you expect to regularly need its super-fast charging, perhaps on your desk or in a common area of the home where it's only likely to sit for 15-30 minutes for a quick power-up.

If you're only going to use it for overnight charging, where it's going to sit for hours and hours anyway, the benefit of Warp Charge is completely lost, and your $70 is mostly wasted. You could buy any wireless charging pad for overnight charging, and use the money you saved for another Warp Charge 30 wall charger or a Warp Charge 30 car charger instead.