Arctic Home Charger 4500 USB Adapter Review

FEATURES AND DESIGN

Lets look at the features we’re receiving. Aside from the obvious four USB charging ports, the LED indicators can give you a “status at a glance” on your devices charging progress. The center indicator is a blue light that most of the time you’ll see in an “always on” state. That’s telling you that it’s receiving power, if its blinking then you’re getting close to the limit of its power capabilities. The center indicator will start to blink once the devices plugged in are at or above 4000 mA of power draw to let you know that you shouldn’t attach any more devices. If the lights off, you may not be getting power but this could also indicate that you’ve exceeded the 4500 mA limit of the device and the safety features have kicked in and stopped providing any power. We’ll talk more about the safety features in a second.

The four individual indicators will fill you in on what’s happening with each specific device. A slow flash tells you that you’re drawing less than 1000 mA, a solid light shows between 1000 and 2000 mA, a fast flash means you’re drawing over 2000 mA, and no light means you’re finished charging (or no device connected).

My first reaction to these indicators was kind of a “so what” attitude.  I’ve used dozens of other chargers and device ports without these indicators and haven’t had this type of information, so why should I need it now?  The real value here is in what it implies, this device is actually communicative and intelligent.  For most of us needing a charge, we’re either going to plug into a computer or we’re going to use some adapter that was included with one of our devices (personally, I don’t bother matching up the device with its original charger, if the plug fits, charge it).  This works, but there’s some subtleties with the USB specifications that make these options less than optimal.  A USB port that can transmit data has specifications limiting the amount of power that can be put on the same line, so you’ll get more power from a charging adapter.  If you use the adapter that came with your device, you’re probably going to be charging just fine, but you could actually do better, and here’s why.  USB specifications actually has a low level communication protocol, which doesn’t look too dissimilar to the OSI or TCP/IP models.  Lets not get into the boring details, but to sum it up USB Power Delivery revision 1 allows for a negotiation between a source and sink (the charger and your devices respectively) for the voltage and current.  You want 1.5 amps, you got it, 2.0, sure, 3 amps, lets back that up a bit….  An additional benefit of these specifications is the safeties it provides in terms of over-voltage protections and the like, but this doesn’t take away from Arctic’s efforts.  In their product description they mention compliance with “USB Power Delivery Profile 1”.  The referenced profile simply gives a “minimum requirement” of 5v at 2a but allows you to exceed those numbers.  This is what Arctic has done by allowing up to 2.9a per channel, and they have also provided the safety measures to go along with this additional power above and beyond the standards.

The design and functionality is a mixed bag. Some things you wouldn’t think you’d care about turn out to be a big deal. The LED indicators on the front for example, are a feature that you wouldn’t expect to pay any attention to. I found myself paying attention to these LED’s more often than I expected. After a while, I caught myself glancing at the lights after plugging in a device instead of waiting on a device to tell me it was charging. I was also noticing when my higher power devices weren’t charging as quickly as they could thanks to the indication given by the blink rate, and found myself juggling cables to shave that extra hour or two off my charging when I could.  As a side note, I found no difference in charging between the black and orange ports. Per Arctics item description, the orange ports are supposed to be USB 3.1 profile 1 compatible, So I presume that the difference is more of a communication issue that you would need a USB 3.1 device to actually see the difference, which I did not access to.

It didn’t take long before I knew which cable provided the fastest charge and the juggling came to a stop, and at this point the indicators were still helpful when you needed to charge another device while all four ports were in use. A quick glance at the charger lets you know what device is fully charged instead of checking each device one at a time. On the negative side though, you may not want to use this adapter in a bedroom as it this charger is bright enough that it could potentially double as a nightlight. The illumination given off can keep you awake or be a distraction in a dark living room while watching movies. This might not be as big of a problem connected to a power strip behind a desk or furniture, but then their benefit would be lost also, so it’s up to personal preference and location options how you’d prefer to use it. Speaking of power strips, this is another downside of the device. While not a significant issue, the plug on this charger is centered and the body is wide enough that on some power strips you could potentially be blocking two plugs on either side of the charger. Since power strip real estate is low in my house, I found myself using a wall outlet most of the time, which placed charging devices inconveniently out of reach. One final issue that I may note with this charger is that it didn’t fit firmly into the plugs. This may be an issue with this specific unit, but I tried multiple outlets in the house, in power strips, and even traveled with this charger and had the same issue on almost every outlet. The loose plug made it easy to wobble out of the socket when plugging in or unplugging from USB ports, or even just from wiggling the USB cables while plugging into the device. This could simply be an issue with the prongs on the plug itself or the weight of the charger. Other than potentially keeping the charger from staying in the outlet properly, I wouldn’t consider the weight to be an issue. While it is noticeably heavier than other chargers, it’s not a significant enough amount to matter when carrying it for travel. If the prongs were collapsible it would be a little better for packing, but the space saved by having a single charger that could do the work of four more than makes up for it.