Introduction

Ugreen was founded in 2012 and has made its mark in the tech community by offering consumer electronic devices and accessories at reasonable prices. Indeed, I am using several Ugreen cables at home and a few more at work too! The company has since added chargers and power strips to its portfolio, which makes sense, although it was funny that our first review of a Ugreen product came in the form of a TWS set of wireless earphones that didn’t quite hit the mark. Ugreen then inquired as to whether I could talk about its new GaN wall charger, and so here we are with round two to see whether the company’s forte holds up to expectations.

GaN, or Gallium Nitride, chargers are quickly gaining popularity owing to more efficient charging in terms of lower heat generation and associated lost power. This in turn allows for these chargers to be smaller in size compared to more standard silicon-based charging devices or even go with higher capacity chargers in the same footprint. In a world where Type-C charging is increasingly becoming common for phones and laptops alike, having the ability to use a single, compact charger is certainly an attractive option. There are two types of such chargers on the market in the form of desk chargers that connect to the AC mains via a cable and plug similar to the Kovol Sprint 120W we previously saw, or the wall chargers that directly plug into the AC mains, as is the case with this recently released Ugreen Nexode 140W unit. We’ll take a quick look at the latter today, and thanks again to Ugreen for providing a sample to TechPowerUp!

Packaging and Accessories

The Ugreen Nexode 140W wall charger ships in a thick cardboard box with a fancier design than what most customers would really care for. On the front is the company logo and product name along with a render of the charger and salient marketing features. This also immediately confirms the charger model inside based on your region, such as with the UK version I have here, so I am impressed that Ugreen went this far when it could have just used a generic render across the board. The product specifications are shown on the back along with contact information for the company. Ugreen is also targeting macOS users, with plenty of marketing photos and references to the MacBook. We see the use of two seals on the side to help keep the contents in place on their way to you.

Opening the box reveals the charger right away inside a hard plastic clamshell layer, molded to fit it well. Here too the UK version gets its own specific plastic layer as evident with the larger opening on the side to accommodate the larger UK wall plug. There’s a clear plastic cover over the charger body you can slide off, and then lift off the entire layer to gain access to the multi-language user manual going through the product overview and power distribution. Ugreen also provides an excellent USB Type-C to Type-C cable here that’s long enough at 1.5 m to work with the charger on the wall and your device on a nearby desk. It comes with a thick, durable sleeving, has low profile connector housings, and is the recommended cable to be used with the charger.

Closer Examination and Testing

The Ugreen Nexode 140W wall charger is a dense unit, to say the least. It measures in at 7.6 x 7.6 x 3.5 cm making it easily one of the smallest such 120-150 W chargers on the market, owing to the GaN charging architecture used. Ugreen says this is ~22% smaller (by volume) than the Apple charger, although it’s heavier at 300 g to where this is quite a solid-feeling brick. The chassis is metal to help with heat dissipation and is cool to the touch when not in use. It also gets a gray-blue color with Ugreen on one side and 140W on the other. I like that the various power outputs courtesy the programmable power supply feature here, are clearly listed on the device to eliminate confusion. Note that the 2-prong US version has prongs that can be folded down to make it easier to travel with.

The primary side of interest contains the three USB ports here in the form of a USB Type-A port capable of delivering 22.5 W max. Then we get to the two USB Type-C, or simply USB-C, ports that come clearly marked as to which is the more capable of the two in terms of power output. The charger as a whole can theoretically put out 140 W out of one of these, and this is also the max output when multiple ports are in use too. These USB Type-C ports support PD 3.1 charging and you can read more about this newer charging advancement here. The provided cable works quite well, and you only need one of these higher-end cables anyway, given most decent Type-C cables can work with 65 W going through them if charging two devices together where you would use the provided cable on the more power consuming output.

Indeed, 65 W is the max that you need to be concerned with when using your own cable here, as seen in the power distribution chart above. As such, Ugreen allows you to use this charger with 2-3 devices simultaneously. My own laptop maxes out at 65 W over Type-C charging and I take along a RAVPower 90 W GaN desktop charger when traveling. It allows me to charge the laptop and my phone simultaneously but I do notice it getting fairly warm doing so. This Nexode 140W fares better in that situation simply due to the lower percentage of max capacity in use, although I should mention that, when pushed to 130 W or higher with all three ports in use, this charger also gets quite warm. It suggests that Ugreen still has optimization potential for heat dissipation, and perhaps this charger was pushed to a smaller form factor more so than necessary. On the other hand, this is a wall charger so it’s unlikely you will ever notice the unit getting warm in the first place.

There are also minor heat-related losses here to where I never got 140 W out of the unit and instead was maxing out closer to 135 W even in the colder UK ambient. I’d still take a GaN charger, as I already do, for daily use, given these newer chargers are rated for even higher temperature thresholds and are somewhat overbuilt with onboard sensors—Ugreen mentions this very charger provides up to 800 thermal readings per second to the charging controller itself. Combine that with the faster charging speeds out of the smaller unit and it’s easy to see why GaN, with its more efficient charging over silicon, is my preference. For those curious, this works because GaN is a wider bandgap (~3.4 eV) semiconductor compared to silicon (~1.1 eV) meaning GaN can withstand higher operating voltages and temperatures given the lower energy loss from electrons transitioning from one band to another.

The Ugreen Nexode 140W GaN wall charger is a recent release that sells for $119.99 from the Ugreen web store as well as the Ugreen Amazon shop, with prices in other regions mostly being equivalent, such as the£117.5 (inc. VAT) in the UK. Ugreen also wanted to mention there will be holiday sales for the product going as low as $89.99 for those interested. These are high prices certainly, and Ugreen originally had the Nexode 140W slated to sell for even higher before market research suggested otherwise. The $102 sale price for the US model with the folding plugs is almost a no-brainer for me, especially given the excellent cable included in the box. The going price in other regions is a tougher sale compared to silicon-based chargers, especially 1st-party chargers from the likes of Apple, that its customers seem to not deviate away from, so Ugreen has to rely on marketing ventures to get the word out.