UGreen Nexode Power Bank 20000mAh 145W Qi2 Review

Introduction

The UGreen Nexode Power Bank 20000mAh 145W Qi2 is one of UGreen’s most expensive power banks, until you head off into the wild world of ones designed to keep you going during power cuts. 

Why so pricey? You can thank the wireless charging pad, which offers Qi 2 power delivery at up to 15W. This matches what older Apple devices can receive wirelessly without MagSafe, although not the latest iPhone 17 family.

It’s a fair amount to pay for what is still fairly slow charging. But the UGreen Nexode Power Bank 20000mAh 145W Qi2 can also deliver serious punch with its cabled ports, and it’s a nicely designed power bank in general. 

The UGreen Nexode Power Bank 20000mAh 145W Qi2 sells for £139.99/$149.99 but can, at the time of review, be found selling for significantly less online. 

Design

• Three power connectors
• Hinged Qi2 wireless pad
• Bundled bag

The UGreen Nexode Power Bank 20000mAh 145W Qi2 is a chunky column of a power bank.  It measures 112mm tall by 68mm and 60mm, and weighs 555g. 

Unlike most power banks, there’s clearly some consideration given to this being used as a desk buddy. There’s a USB-C connector hidden on the rear, allowing for a neater-looking connection to a laptop or power source. There are substantial rubber feet on the bottom. And, of course, there’s the dock-like Qi2 charger pad. 

This sits on the top of the UGreen Nexode Power Bank 20000mAh 145W Qi2, and can be pulled out to a roughly 45-degree angle through a fairly substantial hinge mechanism. 

It’s one of the few metal parts of this power bank. The casing outer and screen covering are all plastic, even if they do look a bit like aluminium and curved glass from a distance. 

To wake the screen up, you press the lone button on the UGreen Nexode Power Bank 20000mAh 145W Qi2’s back. It too is plastic. Give it a long press, and you’ll activate the trickle charge mode, which is used for super-low power devices.

The screen is a full-colour TFT LCD that displays the current power output from the three connectors. Aside from the rear USB-C, there’s a front USB-C and a USB-A. Either of the USB-Cs can be used to charge the battery too. 

The display is neat, home to some cute animated face graphics, and gives you real confidence as to how fast your phone and laptop are actually charging. You get a two-page interface display here. The first shows the output summary of all three cabled connections in watts, the second a breakdown including voltage and current figures. 

There’s no indication of charge cycles or the temperature of the UGreen Nexode Power Bank 20000mAh 145W Qi2, which can affect charging speed. But the bit I miss is something else. 

This battery bank display does not show you how much power is flowing through the Qi2 pad.

Now, as this is Qi2 certified, it should mean it is able to charge previous-generation iPhones at maximum wireless speed, 15W. But it would be nice to know that in a reassuring, digestible format.

When an iPhone is attached to the Qi 2 pad in portrait, dock style, the screen is semi-obscured too. The Magsafe-style magnets on the pad provide enough force to keep an iPhone confidently in place, but their strength isn’t so great that you should start carrying the UGreen Nexode Power Bank 20000mAh 145W Qi2 around with an iPhone attached. Why you’d want to do so is another question. 

While this battery bank feels less like something you’d casually sling in a rucksack than most of its contemporaries, UGreen does include a felt drawstring sack to avoid scratching the casing in transit. The fit is a little tight, but it’s good to see some protection bundled in. 

What’s missing? There’s no phone app, and some Anker power banks have more data screens with info like charge cycles. 

Performance

• 82%+ efficiency
• 145W max output
• Takes around two hours to charge

Aside from not being able to see how much power you’re getting through the wireless charging pad, using the UGreen Nexode Power Bank 20000mAh 145W Qi2 has been an entirely pain-free experience. 

I plugged a high-power Samsung laptop into the rear port to check we could get the max 100W output. The display registered upwards of 98W, as did my power tester. 

The UGreen Nexode Power Bank 20000mAh 145W Qi2 has a maximum power output of 145W. And if you plug a second device into the front, the initial device will typically take precedence, leaving the second with 40-odd watts of power. 

Unlike this power bank’s non-Qi sibling, plugging in a third gadget into the USB-A port doesn’t nerf the others too badly. With a fast-charging phone attached to the USB-A, I recorded 56W, 42.1W and 9.8W from the three ports. We’re still getting reasonably close to the max output here. You may get even closer with a different spread of connected devices.

The theoretical max output for each is 100W for the first, 45W for the second (front USB) and 15W for the USB-A. It’s very much a laptop plus phone plus accessory trio here. 

Charging the battery itself peaks at 65W, and took two hours four minutes — pretty much dead on UGreen’s own claim. 

Over that period, the UGreen Nexode Power Bank 20000mAh 145W Qi2 sucked up 73.8Wh of power, while its stated capacity is 72Wh. This is normal. You lose some power through heat, a tiny amount through the smart electronics that keep charge levels safe, and those cute faces on the screen. 

It outputs 60.72Wh (16410mAh) when charging another device at speed, meaning we get 82% of the power we put in, or 84% of the stated charging capacity. This is a very good result, consistent with the best consumer power banks I’ve reviewed so far. 

I’ve encountered no obvious thermal throttling either. The UGreen Nexode Power Bank 20000mAh 145W Qi2 uses four 21700 format batteries. It’s why this battery bank is the shape it is, and this style of arrangement is great for high-discharge rate jobs. 

UGreen says the battery should be good for 1000 cycles, by which point it should still have 80-plus per cent charge capacity based on the usual estimates. 

We still have the question of the Qi 2 port. Can it supply 15W?

Thirty minutes of charging an iPhone 12 — the best I had to hand at the time — took the phone from 9% battery to 30%. OK, but not all that swift. iPhone charge estimator Charger Master estimates wireless max charging power at 11.32W, consistent with the output you might expect from 15W charging given the usual efficiency losses. All good, then, but iPhone 17 owners won’t get wireless charging at full power. The latest models support 25W wireless over Qi2, not just MagSafe. 

The last important point to make is this UGreen charges over the USB PD standard, so won’t charge devices that use a proprietary system at full speed, like OPPO and OnePlus’s excellent SuperVOOC. Such phones are likely to charge somewhere in the 18W region based on my testing.

Should you buy it?

FAQs