8.2
Score

In a sea of tech products, we see so many of those same design language going on: some call it simple while others call it mundane. But when you see it so often, it eventually becomes mundane. That’s where SHARGE is doing things differently in the tech peripheral space – and I am happy to report in this SHARGE Retro 67 GaN Charger Review, they have hit another homerun in our books.

SHARGE Retro 67 GaN Charger Review

The Macintosh Homage Design

We love a good nostalgia from the early days, and this SHARGE Retro 67 GaN Charger pays respect to one of the best computers to exist back in the day – the Macintosh 128K. Of course, they can’t use the “Apple” insignia on the charger due to IP reasons, but they did use a rectangular emblem with the three colours Apple logos featured.

From every angle of the SHARGE Retro 67 GaN Charger, I must say, it’s the most detailed mini charger you can get – the floppy disk drive, ventilation slots on the sides and even the “I/O” on the read of the “Macintosh” – it’s a great miniature baked with a GaN charger – one I love to the bits.

A Neat Display disguised as Matrix FX

The display on the charger does work, but not in the way you think of course. It’s the display to indicate the charging speed output to your device. Now what’s interesting is how the display has this “Matrix FX” – the moment you connect, you see the Matrix animation and after you connect a device to charge, then it starts indicating the Wattage number.

If you are charging one device, it works the best, as it only shows a singular Wattage output for one device. When you connect more devices to charge, it then shows the maximum output, depending on how many ports are being used. Functional, especially for us when we review devices to see the Wattage changes at every stage or devices we have not charged in a long time to see if the charger is indicative of any charging.

Specification-wise Solid Support

Before SHARGE, they were known as SHARGEEK and their goal was to make the ultimate tech product that is compliant with safety standards, charging speeds across all the books and maintain a good quality. I am happy to report that, the same level of QC we witnessed with the SHARGE Starship Seer is present here.

The SHARGE Retro 67 GaN Charger houses 3x USB-C ports. While the charger is rated at 67W maximum, the full potential of that is limited to single-port charging. If you use two ports, it will split into 45W and 20W. If you use all three USB-C ports, then the speeds will split to 45W + 15W + 15W.

This is how a multi-port charger would behave, and that’s alright. What’s more amazing are the supported Protocols: it supports Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0, Huawei’s SCP and FCP, Samsung’s AFC, Apple 2.4 and most importantly, PPS, which is integrated into the PD 3.0 protocol this charger has. With PPS, it helps with efficient charging, scales accordingly to maintain your battery health.

It does miss out on those more “Manufacturer” exclusive charging speeds like OPPO/OnePlus SuperVOOC, Xiaomi Super and HyperCharge and Vivo’s own charging protocol as well. But these devices will use Quick Charge protocol instead which isn’t a problem. Now, don’t confuse GaN with a protocol because it isn’t, which we will explain later.

Experience

Let’s address what is a GaN Charger: stands for Galium Nitride, is a semiconductor which provides a special kind of improvement over the traditional chargers. Because of this new semiconductor, the dimensions of a GaN chargers are extremely small, switches charging speeds very fast, less intense on energy, offers higher thermal conductivity and most importantly, they are way more compact compared to your traditional block chargers.

Because of that, the SHARGE Retro 67 GaN Charger becomes a “very easy to bring around anywhere” type of charger, be it while you’re going on a long or a short distance trip. But you have to remember, it’s small because it uses the US prongs by default, which is a problem in countries where users don’t use those.

But fret not, you could pick up a travel adapter kit with it – which connects to those US Prongs to make it more adaptable in countries that uses different prongs. SHARGE didn’t provide us one, so we proceeded to purchase one from Shopee for RM 18-25.

Charging devices with the SHARGE Retro 67 GaN Charger has been a good experience because, for starters, the obvious wattage indicator can help a general consumer understand how the charging protocol works, and when it plateaus, you can see the wattage drop. When it’s at a 100% full charge, you will notice how the low-wattage output manages the health of the battery life. Now, we use this charger with a plethora of devices:

  • ROG Zephyrus G14, which has a USB4 port with PD 3.0, used 63-64W to charge up.
  • iPhone 16 used about 25-27W to charge up to the 80% plateau, and then we noticed the speed drops to 10w-11w to maintain thermals while it still charges the device with no issues.
  • Xiaomi 14 used the QC 3.0 protocol to charge, which is expected and used 23- 24W. While it isn’t the fastest, as Xiaomi’s own HyperCharge is still blazing fast, it’s still better than nothing.
  • Samsung Galaxy A56 uses the AFC protocol, and you can see the Adaptive Fast Charging icon pop-up. So, Samsung users, you can consider this charger over the basic Samsung charger the brand sells in-store.

In terms of heat, we have noticed slight warmth when you touch the charger, which is normal because when you use a fast-charging protocol, the energy lost will get converted into heat, but it doesn’t get scathingly hot like traditional chargers do, which is a normal thing. Now, do take note, that you will require a good quality USB-C cable that supports 100W/5A to take advantage of the speeds – in our case, we used the ASUS USB-C 100W cable, ROG USB4 Thunderbolt cable, and Orico 100W/5A which is the cheapest among the three cables we have tried.

Conclusion

With good safety protocol, amazing charging speeds, all packed into this cute and beautiful Macintosh Charger made by SHARGE, I am a fan of this one. While other brands in the market do higher capacity GaN Chargers with good safety protocol standards, it is hard to come by something this cool. And for every geek out there, for RM 294 (on their official website), it’s a worthy investment to keep your tech products safe as well.

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