I turned on the ‘1,000W’ portable charger after it failed me in a few minutes – the cause was obvious (and gooey)

Follow ZDNET: Add us as a favorite resource on Google.

Highlights taken by ZDNET

• Things that seem “too good to be true” invariably are just that.
• This specimen burned dangerously shortly before death.
• No official charger comes close to delivering on the 1,000W promise.

Being a tech reviewer for a living means I get offered some really interesting stuff. Not as interesting as in Bugatti supercars or jeweled Fabergé eggs, but interesting as in “this thing could easily be a fire hazard — want to take a look?”

Also: Best GaN chargers of 2026: Expert tested

Honestly, I tend to say yes. And I’m glad I did the latter pitch, because it was really interesting.

Meet the “lovely” charger.

In this case, the interesting thing was the charger that claimed to deliver an incredible 1,000W through its ten ports – four 140W USB-C ports, four 100W USB-C ports, and two 20W USB-A ports.

The person who bought this charger told me that he plugged it in, used it to charge his phone for “a few minutes,” got worried when it “got a little hot,” and unplugged it.

The unit was suspiciously light and plasticky, especially considering its built-in power. Compare this with Ugreen’s Nexode 500W chargerweighing a hair under 5 lb.

There was also a slight whiff of melting plastic, which made me think that this had been heating up a bit.

Also: This $4 router reboot timer is a cheap internet fix I didn’t know I needed — and it works reliably.

Color suspicious, but I felt the only way this charger could put out 1,000W would be if it was on fire.

Turns out I wasn’t far off.

How long would it take? Answer: Minutes

Talk is cheap. It was time to test the charger.

So I plugged it in, turned it on, and started using it. After a few minutes of using it, I noticed a few things:

• No matter what I tried, I couldn’t coax the charger to deliver more than 60W from any of the ports.
• As for maximum output, I was able to approach 250W.
• The power output was very uneven and noisy, very variable. The more ports I used, the worse it got.
• The unit got very hot to the touch very quickly, even under light loads.
• But… before I could pull out the thermal camera to check how hot it was, there was a pop and a wonderful smell of “Magic Smoke.” The charger was sent to Silicon Heaven within minutes.

Time to diagnose

Time to take it apart and look inside. For an electrical outlet, this unit was very easy to take apart.

And even disconnected and broken, it could deliver zaps! If the charge discharges while this is connected to the outlet, it can easily kill.

After getting inside, the unit was full of the gray goo I had seen on the disappointing charger I had taken apart. This is a thermal paste that is used to try to dissipate the heat generated by the parts.

It won’t really work because it’s sealed in a plastic box that doesn’t have a working heatsink. It is the best token action. Worse, it creates a mass that will slowly heat up and hold the temperature because it has no way to dissipate it.

Next to this goo was a bank of capacitors — the black cylinders in the picture — that caused the failure. They were very hot, three of them showing signs of fainting.

Well, no problem!

I also noticed that two components — the bridge rectifiers used to convert the AC mains to DC — are positioned at an angle to make contact with the metal heatsink. It’s not really an efficient way to cool parts.

An important point

Another “too good to be true” device bites the dust. It’s not the first I’ve encountered, and it won’t be the last.

The moral of the story here is that manufacturers use sales in a large number – in this case 1,000W and a lot of ports – to wash products of poor quality.

This might be a decent product if it was built to deliver 100W, but it’s far from competitive at that end of the market. A “1,000W” silkscreen outside, throw in a few reviews that sound scripted and fake, and suddenly it’s interesting and fun… until it blows up.

Also: My 7th priority laptop-bag now, after decades of working remotely

I know of no 1,000W charger. In fact, the 500W Ugreen Nexode The most powerful charger I have tested is official. And the price is also official — $250.

But it’s designed to deliver on what it promises and is packed with safety features, including “tip-over protection,” which cuts off output when the unit tips and prevents it from falling on its side, when it can’t dissipate heat effectively. Now that’s attention to safety that I like to see in a product that carries this much power.

But if you want 1,000W of output, you’ll have to buy two and connect them together.