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Is it all just marketing?
Google’s new Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro have a lot of things going for them, like the Tensor CPU and the renewed camera setup. They also have bigger batteries this time around — although the tech community is divided on whether they actually make a difference when it comes to improving battery life. But there are also a couple of not-so-stellar things about these phones, like the charging speeds. On both phones, Google advertises 30W — pretty standard, but nothing close to what the competition offers. However, tests have shown that the new Pixel phones might never actually even reach these relatively low speeds.
We already came across this while we were reviewing both smartphones. We noted in our Pixel 6 Pro review that the advertised charging speed doesn’t quite match the real charging speed, and the best we ever got out of the Pixel 6 Pro was 23W.
Android Authority corroborates our findings with a number of further tests involving different chargers from multiple manufacturers. Not only does Google not state the peak wired charging speeds in its official support pages, but the publication shows that the peak charging speed is just 22W for it (1W slower than for us), which is especially noticeable in charging speeds — the phones often take a whopping two hours to fully charge. This was both with the official Google 30W power adapter and other third-party power adapters.
Why is this happening? It might be a software or hardware issue that’s keeping the Pixel 6 phones from charging at the advertised speed, or Google might’ve been intentionally misleading about charging. 23W is fast enough to charge a lot of smartphones with smaller batteries in a pinch (the Pixel 5’s 4080mAh battery charges at 18W and doesn’t take as much time), but in phones like this, it’s clearly too slow — the Pixel 6 Pro is packing a 5,003mAh battery, while the Pixel 6 packs a smaller but still respectable 4,614mAh.
We’ve reached out to Google for comment on this problem, and we’ll update this post if we hear back.
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