Baseus CCCP30UE 2A1C 30 W power supply (charger)

Another product that was sent to me for review some time ago. It arrived at the end of February 2022 and had to be put on the back burner. As for the product itself, it's a three-port "charger" rated at 30 W.

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This charger has quite a history. It spent some time in Kharkiv, then a year in another city, came back, and I only unboxed it for the first time yesterday. I decided to review it for two reasons: first, it's still available for sale, so the review should be useful; and second, I did promise the seller.

The packaging is typical for this brand: a neat little white box.


The box shows what the charger looks like and lists its description and specifications.


Inside the box were the charger (power supply) in a plastic tray—which I could barely get it out of later—the manual, warranty card, and some stickers.




Now for the subject of the review. It comes wrapped in several layers of film; I recommend removing them.


It's about the size of a matchbox, but twice as thick. The second photo compares it with the 18 W Choetech, which isn't much smaller despite having half the power.


For those who prefer traditional units of measurement, the product page includes a dimensioned drawing.


One side of the case has the brand logo, the other shows the power rating, and the end has a table of all operating modes. Interestingly, on the Chinese version the mode table is on the same side as the plug. It seems they moved it to the end for the European version.


The specifications are also listed on the product page, where they're easier to understand. Here are the key features:
Up to 3 A at 5 V
QC support for 20 V as well as 12 V. That's quite rare; I can't even remember offhand where I last saw it, apart from one of the converter boards. For those who don't know, 20 V Power Delivery support is fairly common, even in relatively low-power devices, but it's rare with Quick Charge.



There are three ports on the end: two USB-A and one USB-C. The USB-A ports are identical, while the USB-C port also supports PD.


There's a table showing the possible port combinations and the corresponding output voltages and power. In short, the ports are interdependent, so if you connect more than one device, the output drops to 5 V.


It turns out this device is essentially an upgraded version of the previous model, which had two ports and no 20 V output.


Let's move on to the tests. Almost immediately, I found an "quirk" with this power supply: at low load current, it switches off the output, leaving about 1.3–1.5 V on it. The good news is that the cutoff threshold is low. With one tester connected, the port shuts off after 10–12 seconds; with two, it stays on. So it cuts out at 35 mA, but not at 65 mA.
This feature is only present on the USB-A ports, though I don't understand why it's there at all.


I have no complaints about the protocols: all the main ones are supported, and as I mentioned, it provides 20 V in both PD and QC modes. I ran into another oddity with the FNB48 tester. First, when I tried to select PPS mode, it simply shut down. Also, when I tried to activate Huawei SCP mode, it reported an error. The old ZY1276 handled both modes perfectly.


Load tests for the different modes.
Quick Charge at 5, 9, 12, and 20 V.
5 V — maximum current 3.3 A, power 16.3 W
9 V — maximum current 3.3 A, power 29.8 W
12 V — maximum current 2.7 A, power 32.7 W
20 V — maximum current 1.97 A, power 40.1 W.

There is either no cable voltage-drop compensation, or very little.

Everything was as expected except for the last mode, but the behavior at 20 V surprised me: I got over 40 W, so this power supply should work well with loads that briefly draw more than 30 W. For example, I have a small soldering iron that draws little power while in use, but much more while heating up. Sure, it really needs more than 60 W, but it still makes a good example.


FCP and AFC modes work normally, except that AFC is limited to 9 V; 12 V is unavailable
.

Less common modes.
VOOC DASH at 5 V. I checked it just out of curiosity; essentially, it's equivalent to the standard 5 V mode.
Huawei SCP: the same 3.3 A, but the voltage varies a little more with current, and the starting voltage is 4.5 V rather than 5 V. The mode selected was SCP 5 A, but unfortunately it isn't really supported.
Power Delivery at 11 V: no issues. Rated for 2.7 A, I got 3 A.
Power Delivery at 15 V: 2.4 A, 36.3 W.


Long-duration load test.
For the 5 V test, the load was connected directly. At 12 and 20 V, it was connected through the tester, which was operating in trigger mode.


The 5 V, 3 A test caused no problems at all.


The test lasted one hour. The first photo shows the temperature after half an hour; the second and third were taken after an hour, from both sides of the case. I later found that the bottom edge got the hottest, when viewed with the company name facing up.


The power supply failed the 12 V, 2.5 A test, shutting down on protection after almost an hour. I also noticed that the output voltage dropped slightly from its initial value during the test.


Unfortunately, I measured the temperature about a minute later, after noticing that the load had shut off because the fan had stopped.
Even so, you can see that it got hotter than at 5 V, which makes sense: the power was now 30 W instead of 15 W.


The power supply passed the 20 V test without any problems, although it got noticeably warm. This is because 20 V is the most efficient operating mode: the power is at its full rating, but the output current is lower. In other words, the primary side of the power supply operates in almost the same conditions as at 12 V (even a little more easily), while the output rectifier has a lighter load. At 5 V, it runs cooler because the power is halved.



To capture the waveforms, I had to modify my adapter for the electronic load. I added another connector in parallel with the USB-A plug and connected the USB tester to it in trigger mode.


Low- and high-frequency ripple with no load. You can see bursts of pulses that the power supply most likely uses to power the load-detection circuit.


And low- and high-frequency ripple in these modes:
5 V, 3 A
12 V, 2.5 A
20 V, 1.5 A.

As the voltage increases, the ripple amplitude not only fails to increase, it actually decreases. This is because the transformer has a fixed turns ratio, so the pulse amplitude barely changes; only the duration of the pulses changes.
In other words, this is essentially a 20 V power supply, with lower voltages produced simply by reducing the output using PWM.

My take: the ripple is a bit high at 5 V, but more than acceptable at 20 V. Keep in mind that the measurements were taken right at the output. After the cable, the spikes will be negligible, so I would estimate:
5 V — 60–70 mV
12 V — 50–60 mV
20 V — 40 mV



Next was supposed to be a teardown, but device cases are now ultrasonically welded rather than glued, which makes them quite difficult to open. In principle, I could take it apart, but there’s a very good site, chongdiantou.com, where they publish less in the way of tests and more teardowns—and very detailed ones at that. They’ve also taken apart this power supply.



Of course, I could have just shown a few photos and provided a link, but I think I can do an analysis too.

The layout is very cramped, but that was more than predictable: squeezing half of what was in a box eight times bigger into a tiny enclosure isn’t easy. Though, of course, with a layout like this, I doubt the power supply will last 10–20 years.
Still, it has everything it needs: an input inductor, a fuse, and a thermistor.


Now that I’ve taken a closer look at the assembly, though, I can say there’s still some free space, so there’s room for improvement. I’d add a heatsink to the case; it doesn’t help a lot, but it does help.


Three electrolytic capacitors are used on the input: two rated at 22 µF and one at 15 µF, all rated for 400 V. The total capacitance is 59 µF, which is perfectly fine.
The PWM controller is a Mao Ruixin MK2687
The high-voltage transistor is a TPD65R600M, rated at 650 V and 0.6 Ω. This is only the second time I’ve come across a transistor marking that specifies voltage and resistance rather than voltage and current. It’s unusual.
The board also has an optocoupler and a 1 nF Y capacitor. There’s also an inductor in the input capacitor circuit, forming a CLC filter.


A snippet from the PWM controller’s description. In general, it seems the Chinese have been using their own components for quite a while now.


1. The synchronous rectifier IC, MK1718, includes both the control circuitry and a power switch rated for up to 4 A.
2. The USB-A outputs are switched by separate transistors, while a dedicated chip controls power to the USB-C output.
4, 5. The output has a pair of polymer capacitors, each rated at 470 µF and 25 V. The capacitors themselves are different, which is something you sometimes see in name-brand power supplies too.


It’s all controlled by an XPD977 controller. A very interesting chip: it supports a bunch of protocols, can control chargers rated up to 65 W (that’s determined by the PD profile), and has a built-in power switch for Type-C.


And all of this is implemented with a minimal number of external components. I’ve noticed that chips for QC/PD are mostly designed in China; it’s much harder to find ones from European companies.


To finish, a small spoonful of tar. I have an old phone, and I test all my chargers with it. The thing is, it often only charges at 5 V, even though it can charge at 12 V. As proof, I recently showed a power bank that supplies it with 12 V.
Well, testing showed that with this charger it only draws 5 V, from both USB-A and USB-C. The same thing happens with another charger, from Choetech.
For some reason, it shows Huawei SCP mode, even though it has nothing to do with that company.
I connect another tester, and it shows QC 2.0, but still tops out at 5 V. I connect it to the original charger, and that also shows QC 2.0, but supplies 12 V.

Here’s my point: all these protocols and their support don’t guarantee that your particular phone will charge quickly. If they can’t “agree,” you’ll just get the usual 5 V, even though, as you’ve seen, this charger can supply up to 20 V using either protocol. Ideally, you’d try it out first, but unfortunately that’s not always possible.


I tested another charger today and think I figured out why my phone can’t always get 12 V: it’s down to the way its power management works.
0. When you plug it in, it usually defaults to Apple 2.4 A mode. That’s very common and perfectly normal. If the charger is really basic, the phone draws around 0.6–0.8 A.
1. After connecting, it starts at the standard 5 V, but uses the Huawei SCP protocol; in this mode, the phone can draw up to 2 A.
2. Then it switches to PD MTK mode at 7 V.
3. Next, it requests 9 V using the same protocol.
4. And if all goes well, it requests 12 V over QC, charging at around 1 A.

Most likely, the sticking point is PD MTK support. If the power source can’t handle it, the phone won’t switch to 7 V and 9 V, and therefore can’t move on to QC—even though chargers usually do support QC. So if your phone is listed as supporting QC charging, that doesn’t necessarily mean it will be able to select that mode. Just to be sure, I checked with the original charger, and it follows exactly the same sequence.

By the way, there’s an interesting quirk with this phone: when I try to charge it from a regular charger with resistors on the data lines, it charges at 0.6–0.8 A, but most of the time it doesn’t show the charge percentage. In other words, it is charging, but the counter stays put. If you leave it charging for a very long time, the numbers start moving fairly quickly near the end, and it eventually shows 100%.


Conclusions.
As usual, there are pros and cons, so everyone has to decide for themselves whether they want one or not.
Support for a large number of protocols, especially the ability to output 20 V, is definitely a plus.
Overheating is obviously a downside, but it’s worth noting that this showed the thermal protection is there and working. It overheated during the 12 V tests, but I think if it had been a little hotter at home, it would have shut down at 20 V too.
Its small size is neither a plus nor a minus. It has lots of ports; personally, two would have been enough for me, but I’m not exactly representative in that regard. And then there’s the price: in my opinion, $16 is a bit much, so it’s worth waiting for a sale.


That’s all for today. I hope this was useful, and as always, I’m looking forward to your comments