THE WORLD SMALLEST USB USB-C LAPTOB CHARGER

Imagine: You’ll soon have one power cord for every device (laptop, desktop, phone, tablet) from every manufacturer. A genuine universal power cord.

There’s no upside-down way to insert a USB-C connector, and there’s no wrong end on the cord. The wattage auto-adjusts to whatever you’re charging. And the same cable carries not just power, but also video, audio, and data! It’s just crazy brilliant.

USB-C is already on laptops from Apple (AAPL), HP (HPQ), Razer, Google (GOOG, GOOGL), Microsoft (MSFT), Dell, Asus, Lenovo and others. And it’s already the charging jack on phones from Microsoft, Motorola (MSI), Samsung, LG, Huawei, OnePlus, LeEco, and many others. Rumor is that the iPhone 8 and Galaxy 8 phones will both use USB-C as well.

As I’ve written, the switch to USB-C currently involves adapters and replacement cables. But in the long term, it means we’ll no longer have drawers like these:

The power-adapter drawer: Soon to be extinct.It also means that we can carry just one charger for all our stuff. Since I’ve been learning to love the new 13-inch MacBook Pro, this is a big deal: Finding a smaller, nicer charger to replace the big white plastic 3-prong Apple one would make a huge difference to my bag’s travel weight. And so I found this:Meet the Dart-C.The Dart-C, billed as the world’s smallest laptop charger. And it really is tiny.Yet somehow, it provides 65 watts—plenty for laptops like the 12- and 13-inch MacBooks, the Lenovo ThinkPad 13, ASUS ZenBook 3, Dell XPS 13, and so on. Really honking laptops, like the 15-inch MacBook Pro, expect more wattage (85). This charger will work on those machines—just not as fast. How do I love this thing? Let us count the ways. It has a standard USB jack embedded in the cable. That means that you can simultaneously charge your phone, tablet, camera, or whatever—with no slowdown in charging your primary gadget.It has an indicator light that lets you know if you’re plugged into a working outlet. (Apple’s chargers no longer have a status light.)

The Dart-C can charge a second device simultaneously.

• It comes in a choice of cool metallic colors.

Choose your weapon.

• It has a six-foot cord.
• It has a two-prong plug, not three, so it fits into older outlets like the ones at my parents’ house.

I keep one laptop charger my laptop bag, and one plugged in by the couch. So I’ve been through the mill, trying to find just the right charging cord to be my spare.

Since USB-C means that I’m no longer locked into Apple’s proprietary chargers, I’ve experimented with a Dell ($27, 30 watts) and a Udoli ($35, 45 watts), shown below. I knew both would take longer to charge than my MacBook Pro’s original charger (61 watts), but that didn’t really matter for hotel-room purposes; they’d have overnight to charge.