I Have Enough USB-C Chargers. Somehow I Still Keep Buying Better Ones.

I don't need another USB-C charger.

I know this.

There are chargers beside my bed. Chargers near the sofa. Chargers on my desk. Chargers inside bags. I'm fairly certain there's at least one hiding in a drawer that I haven't opened for months.

And yet, show me a smaller 100W GaN charger with three USB-C ports and suddenly I'm interested.

This makes absolutely no sense.

Welcome to being a gadget geek.

USB-C Was Supposed to Solve This

I remember when charging gadgets was considerably more annoying.

Different phones had different connectors. Cameras had their own chargers. Laptops came with massive power bricks. Buy a new device and there was a good chance you'd add another cable and charger to the collection.

USB-C was supposed to bring order to all of this.

And to be fair, it mostly has.

My phone can use USB-C. My tablet uses it. My Nintendo Switch uses it. Cameras increasingly use it. Power banks use it. Even laptops that once required proprietary power bricks can now often charge over USB-C.

One good charger can potentially power half the gadgets I travel with.

Brilliant.

So why do I own so many chargers?

Because Chargers Became Gadgets

That's my theory.

The humble charger used to be something you didn't think about. It came in the box, you plugged it into the wall, and that was basically the end of the relationship.

Now I actually compare them.

How many watts?

How many ports?

USB-C only, or does it still have USB-A?

Does it support USB Power Delivery?

PPS?

How does it divide power when three devices are connected?

And perhaps the most dangerous phrase for people like me:

GaN charger.

Gallium nitride helped manufacturers make powerful chargers significantly smaller.

Suddenly a charger capable of powering a laptop doesn't necessarily need to look like a brick.

That's when chargers stopped being boring.

65W Was Enough. Then I Wanted 100W.

This is how it happens.

You buy a compact 30W charger for your phone.

Then you realise 65W would also charge your laptop.

Excellent.

One charger instead of two.

Then you discover a 100W charger with multiple ports.

Now you can charge the laptop, phone and power bank together.

Obviously that's better.

Then somebody releases an even smaller one.

Or one with better power distribution.

Or a tiny display showing exactly how much power your devices are drawing.

Do I need to know that my laptop is currently pulling 63 watts?

No.

Do I want to know?

Apparently yes.

The Best Charger Is the One That Makes Me Carry Less

These days, that's really how I judge them.

I'm less impressed by enormous wattage numbers than I am by whether one charger can replace three others in my bag.

For travelling, that's genuinely useful.

A good multi-port USB-C charger means I can potentially leave the phone charger, tablet charger and laptop power brick at home.

Add a couple of decent USB-C cables and suddenly the entire charging setup becomes much simpler.

That's the part of modern charging technology I genuinely appreciate.

The irony, of course, is that I've bought several chargers while searching for the perfect charger that means I won't need several chargers.

Nobody said being a gadget geek had to be financially logical.

USB-C Still Isn't Quite as Simple as It Looks

There's also a reason I hesitate when someone says, "USB-C is USB-C."

The connector might look identical.

The capabilities aren't.

Different cables can support different charging speeds. Devices negotiate different power levels. Some chargers divide their available power differently depending on which ports you're using.

Plug the wrong cable into the right charger and you might wonder why your expensive new gadget isn't charging as quickly as expected.

The universal connector solved one problem.

Behind that connector, things can still get surprisingly geeky.

And perhaps that's why I keep finding chargers interesting.

MY TAKE

I already own enough USB-C chargers to survive a minor electrical emergency.

I don't need another one.

But I also know exactly what's going to happen.

Someone will release a charger that's smaller than mine, delivers more power, handles multiple devices better and somehow weighs 30 grams less.

I'll look at the charger I already own.

I'll look at the new one.

Then I'll say the sentence every gadget enthusiast has used at some point:

"This one is actually better."

And that's probably how another USB-C charger ends up in my drawer.

We Were Mapping Wi-Fi Networks in 2005. Look How Far Wireless Has Come.

Back in October 2005, I posted something on Gadget Geek about wireless network discovery, mapping and analysis.

That sentence alone makes me realise how long this blog has been around.

At the time, Wi-Fi still felt a little bit like magic. You could open a laptop, scan the air around you and suddenly discover wireless networks that you couldn't physically see.

Finding them, identifying the access points and mapping where they were located was genuinely interesting.

I wrote about it here:

Wireless Network Discovery, Mapping and Analysis - Gadget Geek, 2005

Twenty years later, we are still doing essentially the same thing.

Except Wi-Fi itself has changed enormously.

From Finding Wi-Fi to Understanding Wi-Fi

In the mid-2000s, simply discovering nearby wireless networks could be interesting.

Today, that's the easy part.

Modern wireless analysis can tell us far more about what's happening around us: devices, access points, channels, congestion, interference, authentication, network topology and even whether an unknown device suddenly appeared on the network.

And the spectrum itself has expanded.

We have moved from the Wi-Fi world many of us remember around 2.4 GHz into 5 GHz, 6 GHz and now Wi-Fi 7.

Modern professional wireless tools can analyse all three bands, identify connected devices, map network topology and look for things such as unknown clients or access points using open authentication.

The tools became considerably more sophisticated.

But the basic question hasn't really changed:

What's out there?

The Gadget Has Changed Too

This might be the part I find more interesting.

Think about what you needed for serious Wi-Fi exploration around 2005.

Usually a laptop.

A compatible wireless adapter.

The right drivers.

Some software.

Sometimes a GPS receiver if you wanted to map what you discovered.

Today, a smartphone in your pocket already contains more networking capability than many of the machines we were carrying around back then.

And Wi-Fi itself has become almost invisible.

We don't get excited when a café has Wi-Fi anymore.

We get annoyed when it doesn't.

That's probably the biggest indication of how successful the technology became.

Some Technology Becomes Boring Because It Won

People normally talk about technology becoming obsolete.

But there's another possibility.

Technology becomes so successful that we stop noticing it.

Wi-Fi is one of those technologies.

Twenty years ago I was writing about discovering wireless networks.

Today I walk into my house and probably have dozens of devices quietly communicating over one without thinking about it.

Phones. TVs. Cameras. Consoles. Tablets. Smart home devices. Laptops.

Wi-Fi went from being the gadget...

...to becoming the invisible infrastructure behind practically every gadget.

FROM THE GADGET GEEK ARCHIVE

This article was inspired by something I originally posted on Gadget Geek in October 2005:

Wireless Network Discovery, Mapping and Analysis

I'm going to revisit more posts from the old Gadget Geek archive occasionally. Some will look hilariously outdated.

Others might remind us that technology changes much faster than the ideas behind it.

MY TAKE

The fun thing about maintaining a technology blog for this long is being able to look back at what we once considered interesting or cutting-edge.

The 2005 post isn't something I want to rewrite or hide.

I want to keep it exactly where it is.

Because twenty years later, it tells a much better story.