ZUS Car Charger [REVIEW]

The ZUS Car Charger is billed as the world’s first truly smart car charger.

And indeed it is.

The product delivers as promised on both its “smartness” and its innovative usefulness. It was a 2016 reddot award winner and a 2016 iF Design award winner. Here’s a quick rundown of why it won all those awards and how it works:

• It has a lovely sleek design, which I think is a refreshing change of pace. (Frankly, so many car chargers look clunky, ugly, or as if you stole some piece of medical equipment from the hospital and plugged it into your car.)
• It’s made in Germany, which usually means it has quality and it works well. (And it does.)
• It has two USB slots so you can charge two phones simultaneously. And the slots are situated on either side of the extended body of charger, which give the plug-in points nice angles for the driver and passenger to reach without trouble.
• It has what they call an ElegantShine(TM) lighting system inside its shell that emanate a lovely (and very helpful) glow so that you can see exactly where to plug in your phone’s USB charger plugs when it’s dark.
• It charges insanely fast. It was a noticeable difference. The charger brought two iPads to full charge in about 3.5 hours when other chargers take about 8 hours. The charter has a smart chip in it that makes this possible, according to the company that makes it.
• This is probably the funnest part. It has a tracker in it that connects to an app that you download on your phone. If you’re coming home from a long trip and you can’t remember where you parked in the airport’s massive parking lot, you open the app. The app then connects to your car charger, and it presents a compass-like display with an arrow that guides you toward your car and gives you the distance between you and the car as you walk. The app also tells you how much time has passed since the last time you parked. When you slide the main screen up, you also get a map view of your location and the location of your car in case you’re trying to find it in a more complex environment like city streets. The app will basically walk you through the streets like a GPS device to your car.
• It meets US military high temperature standards in its temperature tests. (According to its specs, it can operate up to 212 degrees Fahrenheit!). A special cooling system is built-in.
• It has titanium coating, and it seems very durable to the touch and likely to last a long time.
• When you touch a timer icon on the app, a screen comes up and allows you to set an alarm for an increment of time. This is a great feature for when you are parking at a meter or other space with a limited timeframe that you need to remember.
• The app also has a feature that snaps a photo of your car.

The experience setting it up is, thankfully, a smooth one. When you open the app on your smartphone, and press the button to activate the connection, it automatically pairs itself with the car charger. You don’t have to mess with any settings on your phone to get it working.

You can buy it here.

And here’s its feature summary if you’re interested:

• Designed in Germany
• ElegantShine™ Lighting
• Smart Device Detection
• Data Plan Free
• Titanium Coating
• 12-month Warranty
• Smart Car Locator
• US Military Grade Quality
• 2x Charging Speed (4.8A)
• Low Energy Bluetooth
• German Bayer Material
• ZUS Cooling System

We were not paid anything to publish this post and we only publish post posts about products we’re familiar with and genuinely recommend. Nevertheless, if you click on a link in this post and purchase something, it’s possible we will receive some beer money. Not a Mercedes.