After the initial announcement of MagSafe, I didn’t think it would be something I’d use that often. After nearly two years of MagSafe, I can’t remember the last time I used a Lightning port on my iPhone. MagSafe is the single way I charge my iPhone now. I’ve used multiple car chargers compatible with MagSafe, but I’ve found one that solves the single problem of charging your phone at full speed while keeping it cool: The ESR HaloLock with CryoBoost.
MagSafe in the car has really made the difference compared to using a standard dock in the car. Instead of manually lodging my iPhone into a clip attached to a dock, I just pop off my MagSafe Wallet, pop my iPhone on a MagSafe dock, and it starts charging. When I arrive at my destination, I grab the iPhone, reattach the wallet, and I am off to the races. It sounds like a small change, but small changes do add up when you do it multiple times a day, every single day.
The challenge of MagSafe in the car
One challenge I found with MagSafe over the years is the amount of heat it generates. You might think this would be a problem in the summer months in the US, but it was the opposite. In the summer, the car’s air conditioning kept the iPhone cool; where I ran into problems was in the winter months when my truck’s heat would be running the majority of the time. Since my iPhone was docked via MagSafe attached to one of the air vents, I would have an iPhone charging in a heat-intensive way while the heat was blowing on it. When you have a device that’s generating heat as it charges while hot air is blowing on it, it’s a challenging environment.
ESR HaloLock Car Charger with CryoBoost
This problem is what ESR aimed to solve with its CryoBoost technology. Unlike any of the other MagSafe docks I’ve used, the ESR HaloLock Car Charger keeps an iPhone cool regardless of the temperature outside or in the car. It’s designed to keep cool air flowing around your phone with a fan and keep your iPhone charging at its maximum speed. When you initially plug it up and mount your iPhone, you’ll hear the fans inside the ESR HaloLock Car Charger start to spin up with its cooling process. When there’s no iPhone attached to it, the fans and the light turn off. Even when the fans are spinning at full speed, I was barely able to hear it if my music was at an extremely low volume. Otherwise, I never noticed the additional sound.
On top of doing a great job of getting your iPhone cool regardless of the weather, the ESR HaloLock Car Charger has some of the strongest magnets I’ve used with MagSafe. The non-slip silicone ring holds up to 1400 grams (vs. Apple 700 grams) to ensure a stable mount regardless of the terrain you’re driving on. I ran over some bumpy roads recently coming back from a trip to Atlanta, and at no point did my iPhone 13 Pro Max move whatsoever. Overall, it’s a pretty compelling product for charging via MagSafe in the car with durable magnets and built-in cooling, so your iPhone is always at optimal temperatures. It’s powered by a USB-C (on the dock side) to a USB-A cable. My truck has a USB port in the dash, so I snaked the cable behind the steering wheel so it’s always out of the way.
The ESR HaloLock Car Charger with CryoBoost is compatible with iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 models. If you’re using a case, it needs to be a MagSafe compatible case. At the moment, it’s my favorite way to use MagSafe in the car.
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