A week with the IKEA Nordmarke (wireless charging pad)

I have always been fascinated with the idea of wireless charging for the cellphone. It seems so easy and nice to just plop the phone down on the desk and it just feeds the battery and when I need to go I just grab the phone and run. Seems like such an ideal world. A world without fiddling with wires (or at least visible wires), a world where your phone is perpetually being topped up with power when you are not actively using it. This is the dream.

So while I was walking through and browsing wasting time at IKEA with Baby Girl, I noticed the IKEA Nordmarke triple wireless charging pad on sale, for a very good price of just over $20 down from $80. I jumped on the deal without a thought in the world. OK, I did have a thought, how I was going to explain to the Wife on my indiscriminate spending spree. But my urge to buy overtook my fear (and besides, they have a lenient refund policy).

Anyhow, I bought the Nordmarke and home I went. Got it all plugged in. It came with the pad, an AC adapter and some pieces of paper (that I assumed were the instructions). In a true guy fashion, I didn't read the paper and plugged the thing in and plopped my phone down on it. And the phone started to charge. A delight to the heart. There appeared to be a status light right under the phone that was barely noticeable (at a later point, after reading the forsaken manual, I found that there are three statuses: solid = charging, blinking = error, none = not working). The light was barely visible under these modern smartphones with a barely manageable size of 5 inch. So I'm not quite sure why they even have it there under the phone and not at a more visible locale.

Overall, it seemed like it was a delight to play with the QI charging pad. However, upon further interrogation by the Wife, I had to admit that there is only a limited number of phones carrying the QI wireless charging standard and thus only certain phones would work (the iPhone being one of the major players that doesn't work without an add-on). That wasn't the only downside, the charger was pretty darn slow. It was more like a trickle charge than an actual charge. When compared to charging the old-fashion way, via a wire plugged into a wall outlet, I would estimate the time to charge was about 2x longer at the very least. Either way, I found that throughout the week, my phone was not getting enough juice and it was still running low despite the consistent trickle charge. And to top that, the USB port on the Nordmarke had a hard time sustaining a charge for my Fitbit Charge HR.

In the end, I had to say goodbye to the IKEA Nordmarke. It was a good idea but the current practical outplay of it wasn't all that great. If only it could charge faster. I guess if you are just plopping down your phone for the night while you sleep, it would be fine, but for that, how hard is it to just wire it up? Either way, the product was nice and thoughtful but the practical aspect of it was lacking. Maybe when they improve on the tech some more in the future it can be more useful.

A disclaimer, I was not paid to write this or review this.