Aukey Releases Its First USB Power Delivery 3.0 Single Port Charger with the AUKEY PA-Y8 PD 3.0 USB-C Wall Charger

The emergence of USB Power Delivery 3.0 makes this fast charge technology even better than it already is. The newer 3.0 version should provide more efficient charging at lower temperatures when supplying power to most mobile phones, tablets, and notebook PC's sold today over the USB Type-C port. Charging peripherals supporting USB PD 3.0 technology have recently showed up which include the AUKEY PA-Y8 PD 3.0 USB-C Wall Charger.   

The AUKEY PA-Y8 PD 3.0 USB-C Wall Charger is a single port wall charger which can output up to 27W of charging to your phone or tablet from its USB Type-C connector. Instead if you're looking for a dual port wall charger, you may consider the AUKEY PA-Y10 Amp PD 3.0 USB-C Wall Charger with an additional USB Type-A port for legacy charging. 

To see how the AUKEY PA-Y8 PD 3.0 USB-C Wall Charger actually looks like, we purchased the charger which came delivered in typical Aukey cardboard packaging. Obviously Aukey prefers to keep their product box plain and simple. 

For an Aukey product, don't expect a USB Type-C cable to come with the charger which would have been useful otherwise. Here it includes only the standard 24-month product warranty and instruction manual. In contrast you would normally find a included USB Type-C cable from other popular charger brands like Belkin and Ventev.

The charger can use USB Power Delivery 3.0 technology over USB Type-C to support Power Data Objects (PDO) protocol negotiation using 15 watts (5 volts @ 3 amps), 27 watts (9 volts @ 3 amps), 27 watts (12 volts @ 2.25 amps), 27 watts (15 volts @ 1.8 amps), and 27 watts (20 volts @ 1.35 amps) power profiles as well as Programmable Power Supply (PPS) of 3-11 volts @ 3 amps.

To enable faster charging, the USB Type-C port can be used to charge phones which support USB Power Delivery technology like the iPhone X, iPhone 8, Galaxy Note 8, Galaxy S8, HTC 10, and LG V20 or tablets such as the Huawei MateBook. Note if you need to charge your iPhone you need to use the Apple USB-C to Lightning Cable.

Similar to other wall chargers, this charger also has foldable ac power prongs that are used to plug in to a ac power outlet for charging.

The AUKEY PA-Y8 PD 3.0 USB-C Wall Charger is a very compact option if you need USB Power Delivery 3.0 through USB Type-C although it only comes with a single USB Type-C port. While you will not be able to charge two devices at the same time, the charger has enough power to support all phone and tablet models.

To view more details on the power capabilities of the AUKEY PA-Y8 PD 3.0 USB-C Wall Charger, we used the USB Power Test App from Granite River Labs with the Granite River Labs USB Power Delivery Compliance C2 Tester to produce the following test results.

The USB Power Test App first negotiates a power contract for every PDO supported by the AUKEY PA-Y8 PD 3.0 USB-C Wall Charger, and increases the load gradually to find the threshold where over current protection (OCP) kicks in and voltage and current start to drop for safety reasons.

The USB Power Test App also reports out all the PDO's supported by the Aukey charger and their OCP thresholds. OCP thresholds for the charger are set at about 14-32% above the maximum current levels for the fixed PDO's.

PDO	OCP (A)
PDO#1 Fixed: 5V 3A	3.95
PDO#2 Fixed: 9V 3A	3.95
PDO#3 Fixed: 12V 2.25A	2.7
PDO#4 Fixed: 15V 1.8A	2.26
PDO#5 Fixed: 20V 1.35A	1.55
PDO#6 PPS: (3~11)V 3A	3.29

The USB Power Test App takes this data to produce an I-V curve which graphically shows the relationship between voltage and current for each PDO. Like other chargers that support PPS (Programmable Power Supply), we can observe current fold-back behavior where as the current increases beyond the OCP threshold, the voltage starts to curve down rather than immediately shutting off. The 5th PDO shows more dramatic fold-back behavior compared to the other PDO's.

The USB Power Test App can also use the Granite River Labs USB Power Delivery Compliance C2 Tester integrated with the GW Instek APS-7100 programmable AC power supply to compare the charger's power output vs power input so that power efficiency can be measured and compared to regulatory limits from United States of Energy (DOE) Level VI or European Union's CoC Tier 2 requirements. We can repeat the power efficiency tests for different PDO's, current load conditions, and different AC input ranges, allowing us to get a complete picture of power efficiency ranges across all different usage scenarios.

Using the USB Power Delivery Compliance C2 Tester from Granite River Labs to run just a subset of the full USB Power Delivery compliance test suite, some USB Power Delivery 3.0 compliance failures were observed for the AUKEY PA-Y8 PD 3.0 USB-C Wall Charger.

Result Summary

Sl No	Test ID	Test Name	Test Result
1	LL3_E1	GoodCRC Specification Revision compatibility	PASS
2	LL3_E2	Retransmission	FAIL
3	SRC3_E1	Source Capability Fields Checks	PASS
4	SRC3_E2	Accept Fields Checks	PASS
5	SRC3_E3	PSRDY Fields Checks	PASS
6	SRC3_E4	Specification Revision Check after Contract	PASS
7	SRC3_E5	Source Capabilities Extended sent timely	PASS
8	SRC3_E6	Source Capabilities Extended Fields Checks	PASS
9	SRC3_E7	Battery Status sent Timely	PASS
10	SRC3_E8	Battery Status Fields Checks	PASS
11	SRC3_E9	Battery Status Fields Checks Invalid Battery reference	PASS
12	SRC3_E10	Unrecognized Message Received in Ready State	PASS
13	SRC3_E11	Get Status Fields Checks	PASS
14	SRC3_E12	Get Battery Status Fields Checks	PASS
15	SRC3_E13	Status sent timely	PASS
16	SRC3_E14	Status Fields Checks	PASS
17	SRC3_E15	Battery Capabilities sent timely	PASS
18	SRC3_E16	Battery Capabilities Fields Checks	PASS
19	SRC3_E17	Battery Capabilities Fields Checks Invalid Battery Reference	PASS
20	SRC3_E18	Manufacturer Info Sent Timely	PASS
21	SRC3_E19	Manufacturer Info Fields Checks	PASS
22	SRC3_E20	Manufacturer Info Fields Checks Invalid Manufacturer Info Target	FAIL
23	SRC3_E21	Manufacturer Info Fields Checks Invalid Manufacturer Info Ref	FAIL
24	SRC3_E22	Cable Type Detection	PASS
25	SRC3_E23	Vconn Swap	PASS
26	SRC3_E24	Unexpected Message Received in Ready State	FAIL
27	SRC3_E25	Receiving chunked extended message	FAIL
28	SRC3_E26	Soft Reset sent regardless of Rp value	FAIL
29	SRC3_E27	PPS Status Sent Timely	PASS
30	SRC3_E28	PPS Status Fields Check	PASS
31	SRC3_E29	SourcePPSCommTimer Deadline	PASS
32	SRC3_E30	SourcePPSCommTimer Timeout	PASS
33	SRC3_E31	SourcePPSCommTimer Stopped	PASS
34	SRC3_E32	ChunkSenderResponseTimer Timeout	FAIL
35	SRC3_E33	Country Codes Sent Timely	PASS
36	SRC3_E34	Country Codes Fields Checks	PASS
37	SRC3_E35	Country Info Sent Timely	PASS
38	SRC3_E36	Country Info Fields Checks	PASS
39	VDM3_E1	Fields Checks Discover Identity	FAIL
40	VNDI3_E1	Source Capabilities	FAIL
42	VNDI3_E4	Manufacturer Info	FAIL
44	VNDI3_E6	Unchunked Extended Messages Supported	PASS
46	VNDI3_E9	Source Capabilities Extended	FAIL