Quick Take: OnePlus Warp Charge 30 Wireless Charger

OnePlus announced its OnePlus Warp Charge 30 Wireless Charger alongside the OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro on Tuesday, and the firm was nice enough to send me a review unit to evaluate. As you may know, OnePlus didn’t support wireless charging prior to this generation of devices. And as you may expect, there are some quirks you need to be aware of. So in lieu of a traditional review, I think I’ll just provide an informational overview of what you need to know about this new peripheral.

First, and most importantly, this $69.99 peripheral only works with the OnePlus 8 Pro. The OnePlus 8, like previous OnePlus handsets, does not support wireless charging.

Second, if you own or plan to buy a OnePlus 8 Pro and already own a wireless charger, you may not need to buy the Warp Charge 30 Wireless Charger: The OnePlus 8 Pro works normally with any Qi-compatible charger. But what you do get with the official OnePlus part is dramatically faster wireless charging: It can charge your OnePlus 8 Pro to 50 percent capacity in under 30 minutes, making it the fastest wireless charger in the world.

That’s by design, and OnePlus says that’s why it waited to adopt wireless charging: It wanted its wireless charging experience to be as fast, compared to the competition, as its wired charging solutions are compared to their competition.

OnePlus appears to have achieved this. But where the firm’s Warp Charge 30 wired power adapter magically does its thing without generating any heat at all, the Warp Charge 30 Wireless Charger generates a ton of heat; as its name suggests, it outputs 30-watts, about 3 times the normal amount for a wireless charger. For this reason, it has an integrated fan in its back that keeps the phone cool during long charging sessions.

There’s built-in overheating, overcurrent and overvoltage protection, but I’m not sure how this kind of thing might impact battery longevity—that is, the usable lifetime of the battery. I have to think that it could have a negative effect over time. That is, the battery of a OnePlus 8 Pro that is charged largely wirelessly will likely die more quickly than one that is charged with a wire.

The Warp Charge 30 Wireless Charger supports a Bedtime Mode if you want to use your phone as a smart alarm clock: This is automatically enabled from 11 pm to 7 am by default, dimming the display, but can configure this feature as needed. In a smart move, the charger switches to more typical 10-watt charging so that the fan won’t kick in. This is slower, but you’re sleeping, so it makes sense.

Finally, the Warp Charge 30 Wireless Charger will work with any Qi-compatible handset, though only a OnePlus 8 Pro will get the crazy-fast charging speeds. I tested it with the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G, and it worked fine. I don’t think anyone would or should buy this peripheral for non-OnePlus devices, but it may make sense if you have two or more handsets that support wireless charging.

Let me know if you have any questions.