Good news for iPhone users: you can finally get a MagSafe charger for your car. If like me you're thinking "but I already have a MagSafe charger in my car", you don't: Belkin's Boost Charge Pro Wireless Car Charger with MagSafe is the first official MagSafe charger for the iPhone 14, as well as for iPhones going back to the iPhone 12.
So what's the difference between the Belkin and all the other MagSafe chargers you see online? It's pretty simple. The Belkin one is proper MagSafe; the others are wireless chargers with MagSafe compatibility. That means their magnets will happily lock to your phone, but you don't get the same charging speed as a pure MagSafe charger delivers.
Why MagSafe is magic in cars
MagSafe (or magnets generally) and cars are a brilliant combination: there's no need to faff around with grabby bits or sticky things to get your phone in the right position, and you don't need to then fiddle with a cable to charge it. Simply keep the charger plugged into a USB socket, put your phone on the magnetic circle and you're good to go.
The magnets are strong, too. Where I live we regularly battle potholes big enough to swallow buses, and despite many bone-shaking drives my iPhone has never fallen off.
Is pure MagSafe worth paying $99 for? That depends on how time-pressed you are. A MagSafe-compatible wireless charger is limited by Apple to a max of 7.5W; MagSafe gives you the full 15W. If that's not a huge issue for you, Belkin also offers a cheaper option: the Belkin BoostCharge Magnetic Wireless Car Charger delivers 10W and is currently £24.99 at the usual retailers.
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Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).