Kanex Premium Mouse Pad with Wireless Charging REVIEW | Mac Sources
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Kanex Premium Mouse Pad with Wireless Charging
6.7
A unique concept in need of some improvements.
I love modern conveniences. I also like to reduce cable clutter. So, when I found the Premium Mouse Pad with Wireless Charging from Kanex, I thought it was a great way to kill two birds with one stone. The slimmest wireless charging mouse pad is designed for comfort above all else. It’s a rather simple design — as one would expect from a mouse pad. There is a generous area for the mouse to live in and a fairly standard size charging pad for your phone. The mouse pad features an ultra-slim design and the charging area can accommodate Apple AirPods or mobile phones that are Qi-compatible.
The mouse pad is considered a ‘smart hub’ that eliminates the need for users to carry multiple adapters. The mouse pad plugs into any USB-A compatible computer, hub, or charging port to provide power to the wireless charging pad. There are four colors available for the mouse pad — midnight blue, rose beige, latte cream, and smoke grey.
Technical Specifications
- Size: W 205mmxL 305mmxH 5mm
- Weight: 250g
- Power Input: 5V/1.5A
- Power Output: 5W (5V/1A)
- Frequency: 110 ~ 205KHz
USER EXPERIENCE
I do love to make things simple and when there is a product that can complete the job of two devices, I take an interest. The Premium Mouse Pad with Wireless Charging piqued my interest enough to give it a try. I actually do still use a standard wireless mouse. So, having a mouse pad at my workstation is quite useful. As a mouse pad, this product does a great job. It is wrapped with a leather-like material. Kanex does not state on their product page what it is, but on the box, they do say that the mouse pad is made with “premium materials.” So far I’ve been impressed with how well the mouse pad holds up with regular use. I haven’t noticed any discoloration or staining from where my hand rests and the mouse moved across the surface smoothly.
I do have a couple of small complaints about this product when it comes to the charger.
- The charging cable uses Micro USB instead of USB-C. To me, Micro USB has become ‘outdated’ as technology and I would much rather use USB-C for charging devices.
- The Micro USB charging cable was wrapped up with a piece of paper with the following printed on it: For best result, connect to 5V 2A adapter. Kanex does not provide an adapter with the mouse pad — only the charging cable. For them to make a suggestion like this, I feel that the proper adapter should be included.
- The charger was not powerful enough to charge the phone through a case unless it’s connected to a power adapter. The case I currently have on my phone is the WALLET SLAYER VOL. 2 from Smartish. This case has been proven to allow wireless charging while on a phone — even with cards in the wallet sleeve. So, there is no reason why the case would be preventing the charging. I believe the charging coil inside the mouse pad just isn’t powerful enough to charge through cases without the boost from a power adapter.
- The charging cable that came with the mouse pad was white. I don’t expect that there would be a matching color to the midnight blue but think the white is too big of a contrast and would have preferred a darker cable color to match the color scheme.
After making my observations about the charging portion of the device, I did complete a charging test. First, I charged my iPhone 11 Pro on the charging pad of the mouse pad by plugging into a USB-A port on my computer’s dock. I was bitterly disappointed at how inefficient the charging was. After 18 minutes of direct charging, the phone only gained 4% battery. That’s only 0.22% per minute as a charging rate, which is abysmal. I do want to note that for the first half of the test I was streaming music through Pandora and the phone only gained 1% during that time. In that respect, the last half of the testing period had a charging rate of 0.33% per minute.
Based on the suggestion from the piece of paper that had been wrapped around the charging cable, I pulled out a charging adapter that featured 5V/3A as its output power. I ended up having an average of 0.36% per minute as a charging rate. At one point it did get as high as 0.375% per minute. I never noticed any heat problems from the cable or the charging pad.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Even though it seems as though I was really getting down on the Premium Mouse Pad with Wireless Charging, I actually found it to be a rather unique product. I simply felt that the mouse pad had a lot of potential and that it was almost as if someone rushed putting it together. With just a few tweaks, this good product could be great. I really love the concept and hope that Kanex comes out with a 2nd generation model that improves on some of the issues I had with this model.
For more information, visit kanex.com, Facebook, and Twitter.
Originally published at https://macsources.com on February 21, 2020.
