Rapid Review: Choetech Wireless Charger Car Mount

With wireless charging now a standard issue feature on many smartphones, it makes sense to find an in-car solution. The Choetech T530-S Wireless Charger Car Mount lets you dock your smartphone and have it charge using a Qi-compatible charging pad. And while that sounds good, my experience wasn’t great.

What Is It?

The T530-S Wireless Charger Car Mount uses a bracket system to mount on the air vents in your car. A micro-USB to USB cable connects it to a power source – most cars have a USB-A port these days and cigar-lighter adapters are easy to come by – and delivers juice to your phone through the charging plate.

The smartphone sits in the cradle easily and it cam accomodate pretty much any sized smartphone on the market as the base and sides are adjustable.

What’s Good?

The T530-S can accomodate most smartphones – it could hold a number of different devices I tried easily. And the mechanism for attaching the mount to the air vents was very secure.

Choetech says the T530-S supports fast charging for the Samsung S9, S9+ , Note 8, S8, S8+, S7, S7 Edge, S6 Edge+ and Note 5 but I wasn’t able to test that.

What’s Bad?

While my phone was secure in the cradle’s mechanism I found it very hard to get the phone to stay in a suitable position. I have a simpler car mount that sits on the vent (a Belkin unit) that, while not delivering a charge, holds my phone securely in both portrait and landscape mode. But the T530-S, because it holds the phone further from the vent kept falling forward as the weight was far from the mount.

And, while the charge is delivered wirelessly, it still needs a USB cable to deliver electricity.

Should You Buy It

At $40 via Amazon the Choetech T530-S Wireless Charger Car Mount does what it saws on the box.

But I found the hassles with getting it to sit in a comfortable position outweighed the benefits of a cheaper mount given I still I needed to run a cable to it to deliver power.

When Qi charging becomes a standard feature in cars – it’s already appearing in some models – the need for accessories like this will diminish. And, for now, I think there are easier solutions around.