Best USB Power Outlet? 65 watt PD charging without an ugly power brick.

Power outlets with built in USB ports are excellent for installing in kitchens, guest rooms, and anywhere else you need to charge, and you’ll never have to worry about your charging brick going missing and ending up in your kid’s bedroom.

Today I’ve got six of Amazon’s best-selling 60W USB electrical outlets and we’re going to see if a name brand like Leviton is really worth twice as much as the generic brands, and as always there are no sponsored reviews on this channel, and I bought all these outlets from Amazon with my own money.

Micmi GaN 65W

The least expensive outlet we’re testing today is this $25 Micmi 65W GaN Power Delivery Outlet with one USB-A port and one USB-C. The Micmi claims to support power delivery (PD) compatibility for 5-20V on the USB-C port with a maximum of 3.25A at 20V, which is 65W, and in my testing it was able to supply each of the listed voltages, but only delivered 56.9W maximum when connected to an Anker 737 Power Bank which is capable of charging at up to 120W. The Micmi also claims to support the Quick Charge protocol on the USB-A port, and in my testing, it was able to supply 5, 9, 12, and 20V using QC 3.0, but older QC and QC 2.0 devices were not able to properly negotiate voltages higher than 5V.

BESTTEN GaN 65W

Next, also for $25 is this very similar looking outlet from BESTTEN, which also has a PD enabled USB-C port supporting voltages from 5-20V and a USB-A port that is labeled QC for quick charge, and although it’s mentioned in the Amazon listing, there’s no mention of quick charge compatibility anywhere on the box or in the manual. In my testing the BESTTEN was able to supply each of the PD voltages properly, and at 20V it supplied a maximum of 56.9W to the Anker 737 Power Bank, exactly the same as the Micmi. Also, just like the Micmi, the BESTTEN was able to supply 5, 9, 12, and 20V to a QC 3.0 device on the USB-A port but was not backwards compatible with standard QC and QC 2.0 and only delivered 5V to those devices.

Amerisense GaN 65W

Next for $32 is this 65W GaN outlet from Amerisense with one USB-C port supporting power delivery, and one USB-A port that supports the quick charge 3.0 standard. In my testing the Amerisense was able to supply all the standard PD voltages from its USB-C port, and at 20V it provided a maximum of 61.3W to the Anker 737 Power Bank, roughly 5W more than the previous two outlets. The Amerisense was also able to supply 5, 9, 12, and 20V from its USB-A port to a QC 3.0 device, but unlike the previous two outlets it was also backwards compatible with older QC devices and was able to supply 2A at 9V to my QC 2.0 soldering iron.

Leviton 60W

After that for $42 is the Leviton T5632-W which interestingly is advertised as 60W USB on Amazon, but on the box itself it’s more clear that it supports a maximum of 50W on its USB-C port, and 10W via USB-A for a total of 60W instead of 60W from a single port. In my testing the Leviton outlet supplied 5, 9, 15, and 20V from its USB-C port, which is notably missing compatibility for 12V devices, but it does accurately describe which voltages it is capable of delivering on the box. Connected to the Anker 737 Power Bank the Leviton delivered just 46.6W at 20V, about 25% less than the Amerisense. The Leviton doesn’t make any claims of supporting the QC standard on its USB-A port, and in my testing, it was limited to 5V at 1.5A via USB-A.

Amerisense GaN 65W Dual USB-C

Next for $45 is the upgraded version of the Amerisense outlet that includes 2 USB-C ports with PD compatibility and a single USB-A port supporting QC 3.0. This Amerisense outlet performed almost identically to the previous one, correctly supplying all PD voltages and at 20V it reached a maximum of 62W when charging the Anker 737 Power Bank, narrowly putting it in first place above the other Amerisense outlet. Also like the other outlet from Amerisense, the USB-A port correctly provided 5, 9, 12, and 20V via the QC3.0 standard, and was also backwards compatible with older QC devices and properly delivered 9V at 2A to my older soldering iron.

Top Greener GaN 60W

And last the most expensive outlet in this video is the $57 Top Greener GaN PD outlet, which has a single USB-C port capable of a maximum of 60W and a standard non-QC enabled USB-A port. In my testing the Top Greener was able to supply all the PD voltages on its USB-C port and at 20V it supplied a maximum of 55W to the Anker 737 Power Bank, which puts it in 5^th place just behind the Micmi and BESTTEN, and the USB-A port performed as advertised, which is to say that it only supplies 5V and is not QC compatible.

So that means that the highest performing outlets so far are the two from Amerisense, but almost all the outlets were able to more or less live up to their performance claims.

Safety Testing

However, one of the most important things for me when permanently wiring a device into my house is the safety of that device, and all the outlets in this video are UL certified meaning they’ve been tested by the third party UL testing lab to be safe under normal use and even reasonable misuse. To test their safety for myself I ran a maximum load test using a projector pulling between 55-60 watts and recorded the temperature after one hour from the front of the outlet as well as inside the wall.

After an hour the lowest external temperature came from the Amerisense single USB-C outlet which measured 55 degrees when peeking through the USB-A port, and the lowest temperature measured from inside the wall was the Leviton which had a maximum of 45.7 degrees. The Amerisense with two USB-C ports got approximately 15% hotter than the single USB-C port model, but the highest temperatures by far came from the BESTTEN and the Micmi which each measured over 77 degrees from the outside and around 66 degrees from inside the wall. 

UL testing is also supposed to include testing for safety during reasonable misuse and all the outlets claim to have overcharging and overheating protection. To test this I used an uncertified USB-C adapter to pull an increasing amount of power until the outlets shut themselves off and I found that all the outlets performed as expected with the BESTTEN, Micmi, and Amerisense dual USB-C outlet supplying exactly 65 watts before shutting off, the single USB-C Amerisense supplied 58 watts before shutting off, the Leviton shut down at 50 watts, and the Top Greener actually refused to supply power to the uncertified charger and repeatedly shut down at just 42 watts.

Simultaneous Charging Power

I also tested the behavior of charging from both ports simultaneously and I found that the Amerisense outlets both adjusted their total output to provide the maximum charging speed for both outlets without going over the total rated wattage, so they provided around 47 watts to the USB-C port and 7.5 watts to the USB-A port. 

The BESTTEN and Micmi didn’t do as well and only provided 10.8 and 10.9 watts to the USB-C port when a USB-A device was charging at 7.5W, and the Leviton and Top Greener outlets provided the same amount of power to the USB-C port regardless of whether there was a device plugged into the USB-A port, which is the result of their USB-A ports being 5V only and not supporting quick charge. 

The downside of supporting quick charge via USB-A is that it means that whenever a new device is plugged in, all the outlets need to renegotiate their power to make sure the outlet won’t go over its maximum wattage. As a result, the Micmi, BESTTEN, and both Amerisense outlets briefly drop power to existing devices whenever a new device is plugged in, which could be an issue if you are using them to power a non-battery powered device.

Also on this subject, many power banks have a minimum load that they will power and after a certain amount of time they shut off power to smaller devices. To see if these outlets had the same behavior I tested each outlet for 24 hours with a minimal load on the USB-A port and they all continued to provide power indefinitely regardless of how low the current draw was.

Idle Power Consumption

I also measured each outlet’s efficiency, and idle power consumption.  To do this I hooked up a power meter to the incoming power supply, and measured the outgoing supply via the USB port and I found that the Leviton, Top Greener and Amerisense outlets all had less than 10mW of idle power consumption while the BESTTEN and Micmi were much higher at around 30mW even with nothing plugged in, probably due to the blue LED that is constantly lit, and as far as I can tell doesn’t serve any purpose.

I also measured how efficiently they were able to deliver power and I suspect there was a slight miscalibration between my AC Kill-A-Watt power meter and my USB power meter because all of the outlets had efficiencies between 97 and 99%, which is basically unheard of, but there was only a 2% difference in efficiency between the highest performing Amerisense outlets, and the lowest performing Micmi and BESTTEN outlets which again can probably be attributed to that unnecessary blue LED.

Size and Ease of Installation

The last subject to cover is ease of installation and, with the exception of the Leviton, all the outlets were basically identical in size and connections with standard screw clamp style terminals. The Leviton on the other hand comes with wire pigtails and the entire Leviton outlet is significantly larger than the rest, so it may be difficult to fit into smaller electrical boxes.

Conclusions

So all things considered which USB outlet is the best? The dual USB-C outlet from Amerisense was by far the best performer with the most connectivity, best compatibility with PD and QC standards, highest power delivery, highest efficiency, and lowest idle consumption, but it does come with one of the highest price tags.

The single USB-C Amerisense also performed very well, and the only negative thing that I have to say about it is that the USB-C port doesn’t feel like it is manufactured as well, and you can feel the USB-C cable slide against the plastic on the housing rather than going straight into the metal port.

If you want an outlet that can provide constant power to its USB-A or USB-C port while plugging in other devices the Leviton and Top Greener are your only options, and between the two the Top Greener had slightly higher charging speeds and also supports 12V USB-C devices while the Leviton had slightly better efficiency and created less heat.

And even though the Micmi and BESTTEN are cheap, I don’t think I’d recommend either of them due to their high idle power consumption and inability to provide more than 10 watts via USB-C when also using the USB-A port.

I’ve got links for all the outlets in this video below and as always, I appreciate when you use those links since as an Amazon affiliate I do earn a small commission on the sale at no cost to you.

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