Have you ever bought a product that was a little bit expensive compared to its peers, largely on the basis of recommendations from friends? Were you then disappointed? Well, that’s me with the quadlock maghead magnetic charging head.
So first off, all I want is to be able to wirelessly charge my phone while commuting. I had a dock which did that, but it died, so I was in the market for something better. I drive a 4WD and actually go off road, and one of the flaws of the previous dock was that it wasn’t rigid enough in difficult terrain, and basically everyone said I should change over to quadlock. So… I did.
Now of course you need to buy into their eco system, so you can’t just buy a dock. I needed a windscreen mount, a case, and a magnetic charging head to replace the stock passive head, and all of that came to just over $150 AUD. My previous dock was $30 AUD so it felt fairly expensive.
I must say quadlock make excellent suction caps — the windscreen mount is super rigid and definitely a step up in terms of quality. However, the maghead has simply never worked right. I’ve tried with three USB current inputs — a 100 watt charger (because you want to charge fast right?), a 60 watt charger because that’s what all the other USB-C PD outlets in the car are, and whatever slightly terrible USB charging current the head unit can provide. All of these chargers cause the maghead to immediately overheat when I try to use it, regardless of environmental factors like ambient temperature of the starting temperature of the head. Now, the head unit charger takes maybe a few tens of seconds to overheat, but the others do it within single digit seconds so either way its pretty useless. I have repeatedly asked quadlock for documentation on the expected input current for the maghead, but they refuse to answer the question. The only documentation I can find is for the maximum output current for the head.
But its ok right? I was also told quadlock has excellent support. So I filed a ticket. Which they didn’t reply to for ages. All up, it took ten days to get them to answer my ticket and eventually receive a replacement unit. This included such gems as being asked for a photo of how hot the maghead is. Like… what? I want to reinforce that while their initial response to my ticket was fast, there were multiple sessions of waiting days for a trivial answer, and they still haven’t answered all my questions.
In the end they shipped me another maghead, which fails in exactly the same way. So I am going to give up and just put them in a draw and use the passive head with a USB-C charging cable plugged into my phone like a neanderthal. Oh, and I’ll warn everyone I meet that quadlock isn’t quite what people tell you it is, unless you just want a really good suction cap.