Anker’s pint-sized 100W USB-C charger is now shipping, but it’s already sold out on Amazon

Image: Anker

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in December, Anker added a more powerful version of its Nano II USB-C charger with two ports that can charge up to 100W. The sold-out Anker 736 charging station is on sale on Amazon for $79, but it is also known as the Anker Nano II 100W.

The company's second-generation version of gallium nitride-based components that replace older charger's Silicon components pump out more power in a smaller package with less heat. Apple's 96W charger is larger than the 100W version by 34 percent, with similar capabilities and two extra ports that help you reduce the number of items you need to keep all of your devices powered up. It is compatible with a wide array of devices, with both Quick Charge 3.0 support and the programmable power standard.

Image: Anker

When you have one device plugged into one of the ports, they are capable of up to 100W power output. If you have a larger MacBook Pro, you should consider the amount of power it takes to charge or fast charge it. The max output from the first and second ports is cut to 60W from 40W from the first slot.

Image: Anker

Apple's first brick with the tech is the 140W power supply that ships with the 16-inch MacBook Pro.

In an interview with The Verge Nilay Patel, the CEO of Anker explained why his company has been so quick to introduce GaN and iterate products based on it.

Gallium nitride is a key enabling technology that hit the market around three years ago, but you are already talking about the third generation. Is gallium nitride a technology that you have to invest engineering resources in? Is there a supplier pipeline or a material science pipeline? How do you manage that investment?

Anker was actually the first to introduce gallium nitride to consumer electronics charging. The way we were able to do that was by partnering with the frontier chipset manufacturers who developed the gallium nitride charging chip. We were almost their alpha customer. So when the chip was first developed, it’s a lot of hoops to jump through to make it into a product. That requires not only material science knowledge, but also application knowledge, system architecture knowledge, and knowledge about managing heat. It’s almost a system effort. We accumulate knowledge in that, and couple that together with the gallium nitride chips and the manufacturer to build them into products.

You’ll be seeing the GaN2 this year at the 65-watt size and the 30-watt size. We’ve been working with Power Innovations for almost a year on that. GaN2 is the brand new generation of chips that we launched in the middle of this year. GaN2’s 65-watt size was a fraction of the competition’s.

The reason we were able to do that is based on Power Innovations’ newest generation of their GaN2. We’ve been the sole partner for almost a year developing that — you won’t be seeing similar products coming from other brands for at least three to six months because PI and Anker are working together, solely.

So Anker and PI have had an exclusive relationship to develop the next generation GaN chipset, and then that window opens three to six months later so other people can buy that chipset.

Yeah.

Tyler Mallery, head of media relations for Anker US, confirmed to The Verge that the charger did launch and that the company is waiting for more inventory to arrive. If you've been waiting for the 736 charger, keep an eye on the Amazon page because it's not listed yet.