Nomad announced its first Qi2 Wireless Charging Stand, and it costs $100

Nomad has just announced yet another new wireless charger, which is a Qi2 wireless charger. That’s going to be the new wireless charging standard going forward, and we’re already starting to see some phones launching with Qi2 support. And it’ll be available in both black and white like Nomad’s other wireless chargers.

This new Qi2 Stand is able to support 15W wireless charging on Qi2 devices, which includes the iPhone 13, 14, and 15 models. So far, there are no available Android phones that have Qi2 support. But we do expect that to change in 2024.

Nomad confirms that a 20W adapter is needed for this charger to work, and unfortunately, it is not included in the box. That’s something we’ve seen the accessory makers starting to do, as well as the phone makers. It’s unfortunate, especially when this charger is $100. For iPhone users, this will work fully with StandBy mode, which was added in iOS 17 earlier this year. There’s nothing special to make that work, of course, but Nomad does make it possible by not having anything in the way.

What exactly is Qi2?

You may or may not have heard about Qi2 over the last few months. It’s pronounced as “chee two”, and it’s the next iteration of wireless charging, as standardized by the Wireless Power Consortium.

With Qi2, the WPC is incorporating the magnetic charging alignment that Apple introduced with MagSafe, and basically making it available to all devices with wireless charging. And it will also support up to 15W wireless charging, which is double what the current Qi standard supports.

The big advantage for Qi2 when it comes to iPhone users is that manufacturers like Nomad won’t need to license the MagSafe charging functionality from Apple. Those that aren’t officially licensed from Apple, are limited to 10W of charging, which might not sound like a big difference from 15W, but it can be a huge difference.