When Samsung launched its latest Galaxy S22 devices, it made a fuss about the upgraded charge speed of the Galaxy S22+ and S22 Ultra. Those two come support 45W fast-charging, up from the 25W of the S22 base model and the whole of the S21 range. Turns out, the 45W charging claim was mostly just a marketing ploy.
By which we mean, Samsung’s 45W fast-charging block isn’t actually fast-charging at 45W at all. Tests show that it’s performing a little more effectively than the 25W charge block, but it’s not getting the full 45W. It’s more like 30W, or a little less.
Samsung overcharging for undercharging
The lovely folks over at GSMArena carried out some testing on the two new devices with three different charging bricks: the original 45W and 25W charging bricks from Samsung and a third-party 65W charger.
They measured how much charge accrued after 30 minutes of charging from 0% and how long the devices took to charge from 0% to 100%. The results from both tests bore pretty much the same results.
In the 30-minute charge test, the S22 Ultra with the third-party charger came out on top, managing 65%. That was followed by the S22+ with Samsung’s 45W charger and then the S22+ with the 25W charger, managing 64% and 62% respectively. The S22 Ultra on the 25W and 45W chargers came in last with 61% and 60% respectively. That’s not an especially large difference between Samsung’s two charge blocks.
The ‘time to full charge’ test tells a similar story. The S22 Ultra on the 45W charger managed a time of 59 minutes. The S22+ on the 45W charger took 1h01 to top up. The same phone on the 25W charger took 1h02 to charge. The S22 Ultra on the 65W charger hit full in 1h02 as well. The Ultra, on the 25W charger, took 1h04 to hit 100%. See where this is going yet?
Galaxy S22 Ultra charging with a 45W charger.
Charging speed reaches 40W for a brief moment, then stays at 30W for 20 mins, this is what you’re paying for if you go for a 45W charger.
10mins:28%
20mins:51%
30mins:71%
40mins:87%
59mins: Full pic.twitter.com/vv3ldq8xEz— Golden Reviewer (@Golden_Reviewer) February 23, 2022
Then, on Twitter, YouTuber Golden Reviewer posted the results of a test he conducted. He used Samsung’s 45W charger, tracking how it performed while charging an S22 Ultra from 0% to 100%. The results are in line with GSMArena’s. It took 59 minutes to charge to full but you can see from the graph he plotted that the 45W charger doesn’t ever reach 45W.
It peaks at 40W for approximately 2 minutes then dips to 30W for about 20 minutes before dipping further to 5W for the last bit.
This isn’t the first time Samsung has had issues with 45W fast-charging. The Galaxy Note 10+ experienced issues when it launched with the feature, leading to downgraded 25W wired charging in later devices. The S22 lineup was the return of the 45W, but it seems it’s not nearly as electrifying as it was supposed to be.
So do I need a new charger?
Not really. If you’re upgrading from a smartphone that came out in the last two years that charger should be fine. There is almost zero (0) reason to go to the trouble of buying a new 45W charger. It doesn’t appear to make much of a change from the stock 25W charger.