This $200 charging station goes for function over form – I couldn't appreciate it more

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I have a charging station on my nightstand that handles the overnight charging of my daily carry. My iPhone, Apple Watch, AirPods, and whatever power bank or other gizmo I’m carrying gets its R&R time on it. But I didn’t have anything equivalent for my desk — until now. 

The Baseus Nomos NH21 245W 6-in-1 USB-C charging station is the perfect desktop charging station as it has enough power and outlets to handle all my devices. 

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Unlike many nightstand charging stations I’ve tested, the Nomos NH21 abandons style for pure function. The unit is a dark blue box that’s bristling with outputs. 

On top there’s a Qi2 swiveling wireless charging pad that can push out a maximum of 15W — perfect for an iPhone. This is flanked by two 80 cm/31.5 inch braided USB-C cables on retractable reels that can handle 100W of power. 

The reels feature precision damping gears for smooth pull-out and effortless one-touch retraction, giving it a very premium feel. If you’re worried that the retractor is going to wear out, don’t! Baseus says it’s been tested to handle 35,000 pulls.  

On the front are two USB-C ports that can handle up to 140W of power — enough to fast-charge a MacBook Pro — and an 18W USB-A on the side for all your legacy bits and bobs. 

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It supports PD 3.1, QC 4, PPS, SCP, and more, so no matter what device you attach, you can be sure that it is charged up as fast and as safely as possible.   

That’s a lot of outlets and power that the unit has to juggle, and to handle this, it features smart power allocation to make sure that the right amount is delivered to the appropriate device as fast as possible. 

A lot of charging stations I’ve tested take a few seconds to figure out what power to send where after a new device is attached (or one that was charging is detached), but the Nomos NH21 handles this almost instantly.

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There’s also a display, because us geeks love displays! It’s a three-inch color LCD digital screen that can display real-time data at a glance, showing total output, individual port power, and overall performance with a press of the button on the side of the unit. It’s clear and bright, and perfect for at-a-glance checks to see if things are charging OK. 

I’ve tested plenty of charging stations with less power output than the Nomos NH21 using fans to keep cool. Not this one. The engineers at Baseus built it around GaN (gallium nitride) transistors so it runs cooler than older silicon technology. 

It also moves the power supply — a huge 252W unit — to the outside of the device to limit the amount of heat the charger itself has to deal with. All of this means that it can use passive cooling to keep the unit at a reasonable temperature. 

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The result? A design that works really well. I pushed this charging station to its limit and kept it there for over a day — not the sort of use case a typical user will ever have — and did not have any heating problems.

The Nomos NH21 does have the ability to throttle output if things get hot, and there is a balanced mode that keeps the output below 100W, but I didn’t see the need for either of these. It ran cool, and thanks to no fan, silent, the whole time. 

That power supply that the Nomos NH21 needs is huge, so you need a convenient AC outlet nearby, and it has a proprietary 4-pin connector on the end, so if you lose it or break it, it’s game over for the unit. So take care of that power supply!

ZDNET’s buying advice

$200 is a lot to pay for a charging station, but this is no ordinary unit. The Baseus Nomos NH21 can handle anything you throw at it, from a pair of earbuds to a laptop, and it’s more than happy to run with six devices attached all pulling power at once. 

The dual retractable USB-C cables are a nice touch, and not only help to declutter my desk, but also means I don’t have to go hunting for a cable when something needs charging because someone (me, it’s always me) has moved it somewhere. The display is also a nice touch for me, but I know not everyone will appreciate it.