The TYLT Vu Solo Qi Wireless Charger (via Amazon or direct from TYLT) is a great wireless charging pad for your Qi compatible phone that reduces your need to fiddle around trying to find just the right spot to get your phone charging. Full disclosure on this one, the fine folks at TYLT provided this free of charge for review purposes. It goes without saying that a free product won’t influence my actual opinion, and in this case I’ve actually reviewed one of their other chargers and compared their products to other similar ones in the past.
Inside the box you will find two main components for your new TYLT Vu Solo Qi Wireless Charger. There is a USB with a flat cable with a sliding alignment ledge (the flat part behind the plug in the picture above) and then there is the silicon charging pad itself. The TYLT Vu Solo Qi Wireless Charger comes with multiple color choices for the silicon charging pad which include blue, grey, green, and red.
The bottom of the TYLT Vu Solo charger has a micro suction anti-slip grip. Although a quick glance at the picture above may lead you to believe there are standard sticky strips on the underside of the charger, thats actually not the case. I’ve removed one of the strips in the picture above to reveal the micro suction strip which is a material that lets you re-position the charging pad multiple times while still remaining sticky. This micro suction anti-slip grip is important because without it, there is a good chance the charger would move on you, making it much harder to line up the phone precisely to start charging. On the photo above you can also see there is a clear lens on the left side (opposite where the USB cable is plugged in) which houses a green led light that indicates when your phone is charging.
The real star of the show when it comes to the TYLT Vu Solo Qi Wireless Charger is that little stub you see touching the left side of the phone in the picture above. This adjustment ledge slides up and down the flat USB cable so that you can create a stopper that aligns your specific devices charging hot spot to the perfect place on the charging pad. The adjustment ledge is easy enough to slide by hand, but not so easy to move that it slides around as soon as the phone or the unit moves. It pretty much stays in place and gives you the perfect “once and done” placement to start charging your phone. The other great thing about this charger is that it eliminates the need to open the little USB port cover on my Samsung Galaxy S5 that tends to break off after too much usage. I’ve had to replace it twice before starting to use wireless chargers, so this will definitely end that inconvenience for S5 users.
The overall design, quality, and performance of the TYLT Vu Solo Qi Wireless Charger are outstanding. I’ve been using their TYLT Vu wireless charger for almost a year now with no complaints and the Solo charging pad seems to be on par so far. Two things to be aware of with any wireless charger at this point though is that it will generate a little more heat than just using a cable to charge your phone directly, and the overall charging speed is going to be a little slower than with a standard wired charger too. Regardless of that, the convenience of wireless charging is a big win that cancels out those two issues in my mind. Grab yourself a TYLT Vu Solo Qi Wireless Charger (via Amazon or direct from TYLT) or check out the TYLT Vu wireless charging stand which is also another great option. Thanks again to the folks from TYLT for sharing this review sample with us.
These wireless chargers work by inductive coupling (like a transformer) right? So why aren’t there chargers with multiple coils in multiple locations with a smart charger chip that senses which coil or coils is/are coupling strongest and routes charging current to those specific coil(s)? That way you get good charger/phone charge coupling no matter which way you set the phone down (as long as the charging coil in your phone is on the charger surface of-course). Yes this solution is a bit more complex and hence costly to implement – but not by much. Maybe there’s a Patent on this idea and Apple, or some Patent Trolls are sitting on it? Or maybe I just don;t understand how this technology works? Hmmm…