Between using a navigation app, streaming music or chatting on the phone, you can drain your phone's battery pretty fast while in the car. That's due to the fact that, unless your vehicle is equipped with a built-in screen that's compatible with CarPlay or Android Auto, your phone's screen is on pretty much nonstop, which can burn through your phone's battery pretty fast. Even if your car has a built-in USB port for charging, it probably won't be the best car charger for the job. Is it providing enough juice to keep up with the demand on your phone's battery? If not, there may be better USB car chargers out there. It's worth investing a few bucks to get yourself one of the best car charger options -- one that plugs right into your vehicle's power supply.
Fortunately, car charger tech has improved just like home charger tech. You can now get some high wattage options, at least for the category, that can either maintain the charge on your phone and/or charge up another device rapidly. And that's the key: You definitely want to invest in a dual-port charger that you can plug into your vehicle's 12-volt adapter (or "cigarette lighter," if you're from the old school). And having one that can charge multiple devices simultaneously is a huge perk when you're on the go.
There are a variety of options when it comes to multiport car chargers. Historically these were two or more USB-A ports, the wide rectangular connection we've had on nearly everything for decades. More recently, there have been a growing number of USB-C options. USB-C, the small, rounded-off rectangle, is found on nearly all cell phones (other than Apple), tablets, laptops and more. It's basically the new standard in everything but name. We decided to focus on chargers that have one of each, as this gives you the flexibility to charge newer USB-C devices, plus a "legacy" USB-A port that can connect to any USB devices as long as you have the right cable. (You can always pick up dongles or adapters to go from USB-C to USB-A or USB-A to USB-C, too.)
In our testing, there wasn't a huge difference in charging times between the models we tested, though some were faster than others.
