Know the Difference Between Wall Chargers and USB Chargers

Another short, sharp tip for this evening.

It seems these days that we have a constant merry-go-round of gadgets needing to be recharged be it mobile phones, tablet devices, portable music devices, wireless console controllers or even USB batteries. Sometimes, we just need to charge something quickly without knowing which option is necessarily best.

USB charging can be attractive as computers usually have at least one or two USB ports available and some desktop computers even have ten or even more ports. However, many USB ports are limited to 5V delivered at up to 500mA (that’s milliamps if you’re wondering).

The bottom line is if you have devices that can accept a higher amperage (which is essentially the rate at which energy flows through a circuit) such as an iPad you may be spending more time recharging over USB than you would with a wall charger. The iPad can accept up to 2000mA or 2A which means you could be recharging the device up to four times faster using a wall charger over a standard USB port. With the battery in the iPad as large as it is though, that’s still a while to fully recharge the battery (in the ballpark of a few hours).

So when it comes time to recharge your gadgets you might want to check the little writing on the wall charger as if it can provide more than 500mA then you might be better off using it if you are in a hurry.