Belkin Releases its First Qualcomm Quick Charge 4+ Power Adapter

Belkin is well known for its wide range of products supporting USB Type-C and has added to that line up with its first Qualcomm Quick Charge 4+ charger. The Belkin 27W QC4+ Power Adapter offers up to 27 watts charging using USB Power Delivery 3.0 based PPS (Programmable Power Supply) and Augmented PDO's for Qualcomm Snapdragon based phones that support PPS and can take advantage of the technology to optimize charging speed, performance and temperature like the Xiaomi Mi 8. 

Qualcomm Quick Charge 4+ technology also addresses compatibility with other phones that support non-PPS Power Delivery like the Apple iPhone XS Max or Android phones such as Google's Pixel 3 XL and the Samsung Galaxy S9+. The Belkin 27W QC4+ Power Adapter uses USB Power Delivery to support fixed PDO's (Power Delivery Objects) of 15 watts (5 volts @ 3 amps), 27 watts (9 volts @ 3 amps) and 27 watts (12 volts @ 2.25 amps) as well as variable power of 9.9-17.7 watts (3.3~5.9 volts @ 3 amps) and 8.1-27 watts (3.3~11 volts @ 2.45 amps). By supporting 27 watts, the Belkin 27W QC4+ Power Adapter has enough juice to quickly charge even tablets and smaller notebook computers like Apple's 11-inch iPad Pro (2018) and MacBook (Early 2016).

To maximize compatibility, the Belkin 27W QC4+ Power Adapter also supports phones using Qualcomm Quick Charge instead of USB Power Delivery like the Xiaomi Mi 5.  

Based on the testing done below, Belkin has done a great job with the Belkin 27W QC4+ Power Adapter exhibiting spec compliance and nice functional performance.

Here's how the Belkin 27W QC4+ Power Adapter looks like as it got unpacked after purchase.

We used the USB Power Test App from Granite River Labs with the Granite River Labs USB Power Delivery Compliance C2 Tester to generate the following test results for the Belkin 27W QC4+ Power Adapter.

The USB Power Test App first negotiates a power contract for every PDO supported by the Belkin 27W QC4+ Power Adapter, and increases the load gradually to find the threshold where over current protection (OCP) kicks in and voltage and current starts to drop for safety reasons. It takes about 8 seconds before the charger is ready to provide voltage and current again. Other chargers take excessively long to recover from OCP or may require the user to physically unplug the adapter from the AC wall socket.

The USB Power Test App also reports out all the PDO's supported by the Belkin charger and their OCP thresholds. OCP thresholds for the Belkin 27W QC4+ Power Adapter are set at about 10% above the maximum current levels for the fixed PDO's.

PDO	OCP (A)
PDO#1 Fixed: 5V 3A	3.26
PDO#2 Fixed: 9V 3A	3.27
PDO#3 Fixed: 12V 2.25A	2.45
PDO#4 PPS: (3.3~5.9)V 3A	3.12
PDO#5 PPS: (3.3~11)V 2.45A	2.55

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 Test App and FLIR thermal imaging tools, we measured the heat emitted by the Belkin charger as seen in the following temperature heat map graphs for both the lowest 5V, 3A and highest 12V, 2.25A PDO's.

The max temperature was observed at 47.7 degree Celsius for the lowest 5V, 3A PDO while the highest 12V, 2.25A PDO recorded a max temperature of 64 degree Celsius.  

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, no compliance failures were observed for most of the tests performed for the Belkin 27W QC4+ Power Adapter.

USB-IF High Level Mapping Summary

Sl No	Test Category	Test Group Description	Test Result
1	PHY_PRIMARY_TX	BMC Physical Layer Transmitter	PASS
2	PHY_PRIMARY_RX	BMC Physical Layer Receiver	PASS
3	PHY_PRIMARY_MISC	BMC Physical Layer Miscellaneous	PASS
4	PROT_PRIMARY	Protocol Specific Primary	PASS
5	POWER_PRIMARY	Power Source/Sink Primary	PASS

Result Summary

Sl No	Test ID	Test Name	Test Result
1	TDA.2.1.1.1	TDA.2.1.1.1 BMC PHY TX EYE	PASS
2	TDA.2.1.1.2	TDA.2.1.1.2 BMC PHY TX BIT	PASS
3	TDA.2.1.2.2	TDA.2.1.2.2 BMC PHY RX INT REJ	PASS
4	TDA.2.1.2.1	TDA.2.1.2.1 BMC PHY RX BUSIDL	PASS
5	TDA.2.1.3.1	TDA.2.1.3.1 BMC PHY TERM	PASS
7	TDA.2.2.1	TDA.2.2.1 BMC PROT SEQ GETCAPS	PASS
11	TDA.2.2.7	TDA.2.2.7 BMC PROT BIST NOT 5V SRC	PASS
13	TDA.2.2.9	TDA.2.2.9 BMC PROT GSC REC	PASS
14	TDA.2.3.1.1	TDA.2.3.1.1 POW SRC LOAD P PC	PASS
15	TDA.2.3.2.1	TDA.2.3.2.1 POW SRC TRANS P PC	PASS

BMC Eye Diagram

We look forward to testing the Belkin 27W QC4+ Power Adapter in upcoming reviews to see how it works with various USB Type-C devices.