We asked, you told us: This is your fast charging sweet spot

Almost all modern flagship phones (and many mid-rangers) are equipped with fast charging technology, making two hour charging times a thing of the past for these devices. We’ve even seen some brands offer 120W and 150W charging technologies, promising charging times well under 30 minutes.

There’s definitely a balancing act to be had between battery health and fast charging speeds though, with lower wattages generally resulting in slower degradation. Some people also have a habit of charging their device overnight, which doesn’t necessitate fast charging in the first place. We therefore wanted to know what’s your sweet spot for fast charging wattage, and here are the results of that survey.

What’s your fast charging sweet spot?

Results

We posted the poll on Wednesday, March 30, with over 2,100 votes counted as of writing. The most popular pick? Well, it turns out that 28.78% of polled readers say 65W charging is their sweet spot. This also happens to be the charging wattage of choice for many phones from the likes of OnePlus, OPPO, and realme. Meanwhile, Xiaomi also offers 67W charging on some of its phones.

65W charging is generally fast enough to take a phone from zero to full in well under an hour. For example, the US OnePlus 10 Pro is equipped with a 5,000mAh battery but can be fully charged in 34 minutes.

Meanwhile, 22.64% of respondents said 45W charging is their sweet spot. For what it’s worth, Samsung is one of the few companies offering this charging speed on some phones, although our own testing revealed that Samsung’s execution is barely faster than 25W charging on the S22 Ultra. We do see some brands like vivo offering 44W charging on some phones as well.

Related: A practical guide to picking the right charger

In third place was indeed 25W charging, with 20.92% of surveyed readers saying this was their ideal charging speed. Samsung sticks to this option for many phones and the company’s still able to offer more consistent peak charging speeds than the likes of Google’s 21W/23W charging on the Pixel 6 series.

It also turns out that respondents wanting 80W+ charging only accounted for ~17% of the vote. Charging times with these wattages vary from 35 minutes to just 17 minutes in the case of 150W charging.

Finally, 10.27% of polled readers say they don’t care about fast charging. We’re guessing this is because these readers prefer to charge overnight or because they don’t want to risk unnecessary battery degradation.

Comments

• Joe Black: I don’t care, pretty much anything above 18W is good enough for my phones. On the other hand, I would appreciate faster charging on my kids tablets.
• James: My Xiaomi 10T Pro has 33w charging. That’s perfectly fine. The battery is a beast & can end my day around 50%. So I charge over night. I also have an oppo find x3 lite. That charges from 0 to 100 in 40mins. That’s insane! 64w I think it is.
• Itamar Baum: Even if I won’t always use it, i do want the phone to be able to charge as quickly as possible, for that moment when you need it. for example about to head out and realise that you are on your last few %s. being able to charge it to 80% while putting my shoes on would be awsome, we are getting pretty close to that.
• Walter Kowalski: Only bad thing about my pixel 6 pro is 23 w charging. 90 minutes to fully charge after so many years of smartphone development sad!
• Scott: Ideally I’d love 0-100% charged in 1 minute and we’ll get there someday but until then give all the power as fast as possible. For those that are concerned about battery wear, etc. I ask you this. Even with reduced battery life don’t you replace your phone because of other reasons than negligible battery capacity loss? Surely security updates, improved hardware or software features are top of mind as well as general FOMO increase the need for a new phone before we generally notice the battery being an issue.
• Leif Shantz: I chose 25W even though my phone has a 18W charger. I’m getting the Samsung A53 in the mail today!