It’s always a funny quirk when you complain about something in a review, and then a company reaches out with something that helps solve that complaint. ZeroLemon has been solving a number of my problems of late.
Replacing the battery in my Note 4. Adding some run time in the field on my Pixel 4.
And now helping me charge my Pixelbook Go.
It’s just funny that I completely misunderstood what it was I thought I was going to review.
I got an email from ZeroLemon PR, talking about this 90W charger. I’d just recently finished a review on a portable battery laptop charger, so I thought it would be fun to see something similar from ZeroLemon.
That’s not what this is.
The 90W 4-Port charger is a desktop power outlet charger, not a portable battery.
I pretty much need everyone to have a chuckle at my expense when I pulled it out of the box and couldn’t understand how ZeroLemon was able to cram a laptop grade battery into such a small shell.
Not my finest moment.
Instead, I’m excited to have an alternative solution for charging up our laptops and phones, and only tying up one AC outlet.
Four ports on tap, two USB-A and two USB-C, and each port is clearly marked for power specs. Top to bottom, from most powerful to least.
All four can be used at the same time. With so much juice traveling through the top USB-C ports, there’s also active cooling by way of a small fan on the rear of the casing.
Complying with the USB Power Delivery spec, there’s pretty broad compatibility for laptops, tablets, the Nintendo Switch, and phones. I have a lot of chargers around the GadgetLab, but none have really played well with my Pixelbook Go. This charger did the trick.
It’s also a nice consideration adding a detachable cable to this unit. I don’t like large charge adapters that stick out like lumps on my wall. My Google charger can be difficult to place, and often blocks the second outlet on a wall. The ZeroLemon is a little more flexible where you might want to use it.
I do have a few concerns.
The casing is lightweight. Shaving weight is good for travel, but the ZeroLemon borders on feeling a little too “inexpensive”. I’d prefer a more weighted base. ZeroLemon shows the product standing upright, but the cable connected on the rear is heavy enough to tip the unit sideways depending on the angle. That’s before you connect cables to the front. I pretty much instantly gave up on using it upright and just laid it flat, but it’s easy to drag around on a desk.
The other concern, the active fan isn’t loud, but it activates as soon as you connect the USB-C ports. You’ll want to make sure you have some good airflow around the charger, and that you occasionally check that fan isn’t getting clogged up.
I do not like the pitch of the sound generated by that tiny fan, but so long as I stayed more than arm’s length away from the charger, it was nearly inaudible.
It’s funny how one product can solve a handful of lifestyle issues.
We used to run a small power strip under the dining room table. Now we just use this charger. I’m honestly a bit shocked how long it took me to find a charger that would play nice with my Pixelbook, and now we have multiple ports ready without needing a strip full of power bricks.
Seeing as how some phone manufacturers are likely going to be removing the charge bricks from their packaging, it’s on consumers to find solid alternatives that are rated to meet the specs of increasingly powerful gadgets.
The ZeroLemon 4-Port Charger gets a thumbs up from me.