MagSafe chargers made for nightstands and desks are a dime a dozen, but there aren’t many premium, travel-friendly options, especially afterApple discontinued the MagSafe Duo. Thankfully, theTwelve South Butterflyis the perfect wireless charger for jet-setting iPhone and Apple Watch owners looking to fast charge their devices.
Twelve South Butterfly 2-in-1 USB-C MagSafe Wireless Charger
The Twelve South Butterfly is built to be a compact two-in-1 wireless charger for your MagSafe-compatible iPhone and Apple Watch. It’s not as thin as the MagSafe Duo but comes with four travel adapters, a USB-C cable, and a power adapter.
Price and Availability
The Butterfly charger retails for $129.99 and is available for purchase directly from Twelve South and Apple (both online and in-store). It only comes in one color: silver.
Specifications
Comes With Everything You Need
In 2020, Apple stopped shipping power adapters with the iPhone. Four years later, everything fromSamsung’s latest flagshiptocharging stations from Nomadhave followed suit. Thankfully, Twelve South didn’t continue that trend.
When you unbox the Butterfly and move beyond the charger itself, you’ll find a USB-C to C cable and 30W power adapter. The brick isn’t anything to write home about, but the fact that it comes with four international plug adapters (for the U.S., U.K., EU, and AU) means it can be used almost anywhere on the planet. There’s also a travel bag that I use to store the unused adapters.
Personally, I didn’t end up using the included power adapter while traveling. I keep theNomad 65W Slimin my bag, which is smaller and supplies twice the juice, but it’s still a welcome addition for those who want an international adapter.
Premium Hardware, Great Performance
The Butterfly, which Twelve South advertises as being the size of anAirPods Pro case(though it’s actually a tad bigger than that), is a silver aluminum puck that can be split in two and is connected with a piece of black vegan leather. This soft leather-like material also clads the inside of the charger to ensure your phone and watch aren’t scratched. Magnets hold the charger closed—both when folded closed with the metal casing exposed and when folded open with the vegan leather on the outside.
Separating the two halves, you find that the Apple Watch charger can be tilted vertically. This allows you to use your watch in Nightstand Mode and avoid awkward charging situations if your watch band doesn’t come apart. Additionally, you’ll find the USB-C port on the backside of the Apple Watch half of the charger.
Overall, the Twelve South Butterfly’s build quality is quite excellent. It’s sturdy and dense without weighing down any travel bag it’s placed in. It also supplies the maximum amount of power your iPhone and Apple Watch can accept. The phone side is fully MagSafe compliant, outputting 15W of power, and the other half is an Apple Watch fast charger, putting out 5W.
My biggest frustration with the Butterfly came when I tried to use it as a display stand. Twelve South advertises this as being a core feature, but in my testing, it only worked on smaller iPhones, like the regular iPhone 15. When I tried propping up my iPhone 15 Pro Max (with and without aPeak Design Everyday case), the magnetic connection between pucks wouldn’t stay together, and my phone fell flat on its face.
Ultimately, this functionality wasn’t make or break for me. 99.9% of the time, I used the charger with both halves lying flat to charge my iPhone and Apple Watch. But the few times I did attempt to prop up my phone and watch something on YouTube, it didn’t work.
Should You Buy the Twelve South Butterfly?
As someone who still owns the Apple MagSafe Duo, I find it hard to ditch the extremely thin charger. But I ultimately did because theTwelve South Butterflyincludes an Apple Watch fast charger, and it’s powered by USB-C. After upgrading to the iPhone 15 Pro Max, I stopped carrying around Lightning cables and had to purchase aUSB-C to Lightning adapterto continue using Apple’s charger. It was too much of a hassle when the universal option sat right before me.
If you’re not a MagSafe Duo holdout and want a convenient charger for your next trip, I don’t have any difficulty recommending the Butterfly. It comes at a premium price ($129.99), but it’ll likely be the last portable wireless charger you need to buy for the next decade, especially as it’ll also work withQi2 phones.
When I’m traveling, I want the smallest charger I can pack in my suitcase, but if you want a third charging pad for your AirPods (or other Qi-compatible earbuds), I recommend checking out theInfinacore T3. It’s a bit thicker and doesn’t have an Apple Watch fast charger, but you can charge all of your devices at the same time.
