Baseus 160W CCZX-160CX Car Charger

This is the second product from Baseus sent in for review, and it's a car charger. The idea is interesting, and the specs are great, but "something went wrong," and we'll try to figure out exactly what.

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As an epigraph, here's a joke I remember:


The charger comes in a neat, attractive little box—another step up and you could call it luxury.


Besides the charger, the package includes a small manual and a 1-meter, 100 W USB-C to USB-C cable. There are also versions that come with two cables (USB-C and Apple) or one universal cable with three types of connectors.


The charger itself is fairly heavy and very neatly made; it feels good in the hand.


I wouldn't call it particularly small. There are noticeably more compact options, but there's a caveat: it's large from an ordinary user's perspective, while an engineer would call a charger this powerful in this size small.


There are three device ports on the end: one USB-A and two USB-C. However, the ports aren't equivalent in terms of voltage/current or supported protocols.


The housing is plastic, but it feels like metal, perhaps because of its weight.
The contacts are coated with something yellow. The side contacts have relatively stiff springs, while the center one has a soft spring.


Speaking of weight: this thing weighs about 55 grams, which is a bit odd. Other reviews and the teardown site list it at 47 grams. I even ended up getting another scale, and it also showed 55 grams.
The model marking is different too. My box and housing say Baseus 160W CCZX-160CX, while other reviews say Baseus 160W CCZX-160C. Mine was shipped on February 2, 2022, while the other reviews date from late 2021. For example, the teardown site lists September 15, 2021, clearly before I received mine.

The serial number format is different as well: mine is BLP220101, while another review shows TCZZCM-2107. I assume the numbers indicate the production date: January 1, 2022 for mine, and July 2021 for the other one.



Reviews from 2023 mention CX, as well as CS and CO. CO is clear enough—that's the 100 W version—but the difference between C, CX, and CS remains a mystery.


I used an adjustable power supply for the tests and ran into a problem: how to connect it. First I stripped the wires and tried wrapping them around the contacts. The negative side worked perfectly, but the positive side was tricky. I remembered I had one of these connectors lying around somewhere at home, rummaged through my "stash," and found it. The connector is cheap, of course, so I soldered everything as securely as I could and cleaned the contacts inside. The result was pretty solid.
By the way, the charger fits quite tightly, which matters a lot when the load current is high.

Now, about current draw and input voltage.
The manufacturer specifies an input voltage range of 12 to 24 V, but that's a rough figure. In practice, the charger is intended for 12 V and 24 V vehicle electrical systems, so the actual range is probably closer to 10–29 V.
The calculated maximum current for a 12 V vehicle system is about 14 A, which is right at the limit for cars with a 15 A fuse on this circuit. At 24 V, the current will be half as much.


When power is applied, the front lights up with a subtle bluish glow. It looks really neat, and the brightness depends on the input voltage.


I tried lowering the voltage below 10 V and found that the charger can still output 20 V with just 4 V at the input. I also tried it with a 100 W load, lowering the input to 8 V. It worked, but an unusual noise appeared.


You may have noticed the difference in power consumption at 6–8 V versus 4 V. This converter has an odd behavior that I noticed almost immediately.
First, even with no load, the housing would sometimes get noticeably warm. Second, when I checked the no-load current, it turned out not to be consistent.
If you simply plug the charger into the port, you'll see the idle current shown in the photos above. But unplug it and plug it back in, and the current will be noticeably higher.
If you unplug the charger and wait about 5 seconds before plugging it back in, the current will be normal again. Strange, isn't it...


The product page has an image listing the supported protocols. Here's why they differ between ports.
The thing is, this charger is essentially made up of three independent voltage converters (two step-down converters and one universal step-up/step-down converter), so the lists of protocols and voltages differ too.
Yes, in fact, these are three chargers in one housing, so there are no resets when switching or connecting loads, which is great, of course.


Now let's test it. I'll start in reverse order, with the USB-A port.

It supports almost all common protocols, but with some limitations. For example, FCP and AFC only go up to 9 V, while QC has a quirk: it supports up to 20 V, but only when powered from 22 V or higher. Because of that last quirk, I took two photos of the protocol list. With an input voltage of 14 V, I noticed that QC voltage was clearly above the 12 V listed for QC 2.0.


For the tests, I put together a small setup consisting of an RD6024-based power supply and an EBC-A10H load. I did have to modify the load's adapter board a little so I could connect the tester to it as a trigger.


The load current performance is also very good:
QC at 5, 9, 12, and 20 V can handle loads of up to 3.8, 3.15, 2.5, and 1.6 A, respectively. It also compensates for voltage drop in the cable.
FCP, SCP, and AFC also work, providing maximum currents of 3.2, 5.1, and 2.5 A.

Note: most of these tests were run with an input voltage of 24 V. At 12 V, everything will be exactly the same except for QC at 20 V, which only works at 22 V or higher. So truck drivers with a 24 V electrical system have an advantage.


The picture is somewhat different with USB-C port 2. It supports 30 W Power Delivery and voltages up to 20 V, as well as FCP and AFC up to 12 V, but it doesn't support SCP or QC at 20 V. Just to be sure, I checked SCP with another tester and got the same result: not supported.


The load currents for QC at 5, 9, and 12 V are 3.9, 2.6, and 2.7 A. AFC at 9 V provides up to 2.5 A, PD at 5 V up to 3.9 A, and at 20 V up to 1.8 A.
The situation is basically the same: if your car has a 24 V electrical system, you'll get full PD support at 20 V, 1.8 A, and over 36 W. If you have a passenger car, unfortunately, you'll only get 12 V.
There's a small catch here, by the way. If your device (tablet, power bank, or phone) supports charging over PD at 20 V, but your car only has a 12 V system, you'll get a charging current of 1.5 A instead of 2.5 A. That's because the charger reports that it can provide 20 V at 1.5 A, but with a low input voltage it can only output 12 V, while the current limit remains the same. If the device only supports PD up to 12 V, it will charge at 2.5 A.


And finally, the first USB-C port. In terms of protocol support, it supports almost everything except VOOC. There are a few caveats, though—for example, SCP is limited to 3 A.
According to the PD profile, it can provide up to 20 V at 5 A in fixed mode, or up to 21 V at 5 A in PPS. It turned out, though, that 21 V isn't supported: you can select it, but the output tops out at 20 V.


I measured the current with an input voltage of 12.6 V, but that doesn't really matter; the results are exactly the same at 24 V.
QC at 5, 9, 12, and 20 V provides 3.4, 3.4, 3.5, and 3.5 A, respectively. Basically, you can say that QC provides up to 3.5 A in every mode, with power reaching almost 70 W. Yes, QC 5.0 is supported here, but unfortunately I can only test 3.0.
SCP and AFC have the same 3.5 A limit. I seem to have lost the FCP test results, but I assume its limit will be exactly the same.


But I was more interested in Power Delivery, and here are the results I got:
At 5, 9, 15, and 20 V, the current was 3.1, 3.2, 3.1, and 5.5 A. So the converter can actually deliver not just 100 W, but 110 W. As I mentioned, these results were measured with an input voltage of 12.6 V—the average voltage of a car battery.


For longer tests, I went a step further: I found an unused FNC88 tester at home, soldered wires to it, and initially used it both to connect the load and to control it. Later, I switched to a more convenient setup, connecting an FNB48 to the output and using it to set the voltage.
By the way, in the first photo you can see a short USB-C cable connected to the tester. This is needed for the charger to output more than 65 W, because the cable has a chip that allows currents up to 5 A. In other words, the charger controller just needs to detect the 100 W chip in the cable. Some testers can do without it, but this one can't.


I started testing at 12.6 and 14.3 V. The first is the voltage of a charged battery, and the second is the voltage with the engine running.
After about 7–8 minutes, the converter shuts down due to overheating. Actually, it doesn't quite shut down, but more on that later.


All right, I set the input to 24 V and the load to 100 W, then let it run for about 40 minutes. It works and doesn't shut down. By the way, you can clearly see the voltage rise as it warms up. Tests like this are pretty tedious: let the charger cool down, start the test, it shuts off, cool it down again, test again, and repeat...


Temperatures at the end of the test at 12.6 and 14.3 V, plus a couple of photos after 40 minutes under a 100 W load at 24 V. The case is noticeably hot, but in fact it simply didn't always have time to warm up fully. You can also see that the hottest area is near the contacts; it isn't visible in the first photos because it's inside the holder.


In fact, the converter usually doesn't shut down; it reduces the power limit. After restarting, it shows just 3.25 A instead of 20 V at 5 A, i.e. only 65 W. To get back to 100 W, you have to turn it off, wait, and turn it on again.


Okay, let's try it another way: I'll supply 12.6 and 14.3 V, but reduce the load itself.
Input voltage: 12.6 V, load: 80 W. It's been running for over 8 minutes now. The fact that it didn't shut down may be due to insufficient cooling after the previous experiment, but I can't say for sure.


Next, I tested it at 65 and 50 W loads with input voltages of 12.6 and 14.3 V. As you can see, runtime increases as the load goes down and the input voltage goes up. The longest run I got was 30 minutes at 14.3 V and 50 W, but in the end the converter still shut down.


I won't include the temperature readings; they were roughly the same as in the tests above, since the internal temperature sensor is essentially what limits operation.
Instead, here's an efficiency test. There is, of course, some measurement error because the voltage drop across the connector isn't accounted for, but the result is still close to the actual value.
I measured at loads from 0.5 to 5.5 A in 0.5 A increments, and at voltages of 10, 12.6, 14.3, 16.8, 20, 24, and 28.6 V. As you can see, the converter delivers 100 W even at 10 V.


This test is closer to real-world use. I used my own power banks for it—fortunately, I have plenty. These power banks also have a quirk: they always try to select the highest possible charging power, although there was a slight hiccup in this case.
For some reason, the USB-A port output only 9 V, even though it could have output 12 V, and the power was just 17 W instead of 30 W.
The second USB-C port was limited to 1.5 A, but since the input voltage was only 14.3 V, the power was 20 W. I wrote about this "quirk" above.


So, I started with an input of 14.3 V; total input power was 144 W.
After a while, just out of curiosity, I briefly raised it to 24 V. You can see the power went up, and the second USB-C port started working normally. It stubbornly tries to run at 20 V and 1.5 A instead of 12 V and 2.5 A.
Just 5 minutes into the test, input power dropped to 106 W, and the first USB-C port switched to 65 W mode.
Another 5 minutes later, the first port switched down to 45 W, and total charging power fell to 86 W.


I raised the voltage to 24 V, and power went up to 95 W. The second port started running at full power, delivering 27 W—or rather, the power bank was drawing 27 W from it.
I let it run like that for a while longer, but essentially nothing else changed.


Temperature during the test: by the end, the device had gradually warmed up to 73 degrees, and the temperature stopped rising.


I was ready to wrap up the tests and had even charged one of the power banks, but then I thought it would be good to check how the charger performs on a 24 V mains supply. So, rather than get out the electronic load again, I pulled a little trick: I used the charged power bank to top up two others that were also part of the test.
It started at 100%. I discharged it to 69% while charging the other two to 78–79%.

And here's what I can say so far. As an honest person, I list the actual specs. I modified the boards so the power banks could deliver not 100 W, but at least 90 W continuously. Turns out I could have done what Baseus did: claim 100 W, and who cares if that mode only works for 7 minutes...
Below you can see that I discharged a 285 Wh power bank to 69%. The discharge actually took about an hour, and during that hour the first power bank delivered almost 100 W at full power, while the other two charged at the same power for half an hour.



I won't pretend they stayed cool: the boards and connected components get noticeably hot, although some of that heat also comes from the tester itself. Nevertheless, in the photo below the case temperature was around 45–50 degrees, while the highest temperature, 77 degrees, was recorded on the tester’s case, not the power bank.


I connect it in the same configuration, apply 25.2 V (the voltage of a charged 24 V battery), and start the test.
At first, I get 153 W at the input—not bad.


The test started at 11:06. After 6 minutes, the first port switched to 65 W mode and the input power dropped to 114 W. After that, the converter kept running at this level without reducing its power.


I kept it running until the power bank connected to the first port was charged—something like an hour and a half to two hours—but I didn’t take any more thermal images, since it had reached thermal equilibrium. The charger’s case temperature was 76 degrees, and the total output power across all ports was about 110 W.


Now for the internals. As I mentioned, there’s a full teardown on one well-known Chinese website. It doesn’t include load tests, but I don’t need those; I’m very interested in the internals, so let’s take a closer look at the photos.
Everything is packed in very tightly. As I said, from an engineer’s point of view, this is a very compact device.


The design consists of three boards: one handles USB-C port number one, another handles ports 2 and 3, and the third board is just for the backlight.
You can see that the engineers fought hard to dissipate the heat. They also used thermal pads, and the board is most likely multilayer, with thick copper.


The high-power converter uses an H-bridge topology. It’s not only a versatile converter, whose operating principle I described in this review, but can also work in both directions, like the ones in my power banks. In other words, it can step up or step down, and charge or discharge.
Here, of course, the converter only works in one direction, but it can still both step the voltage down and step it up.
The power stage is controlled by a Baoliwei PL5501 chip, which in turn controls Asterman AD30N80D5 transistors rated for up to 30 V, with an on-resistance of 2.1 mΩ. The markings haven’t been rubbed off; they were most likely damaged by the thermal pad. By the way, 30 V is not much for a circuit like this. I applied 28.6 V, but keep in mind that voltage spikes in a car’s electrical system can be much higher.

The capacitors are solid-state, and there’s a common-mode choke to reduce interference.
The “brains” here are an Yingjixin IP2726S controller, the first in the world to receive QC5 certification from Qualcomm, certificate number QC20200812181.


It’s a genuinely interesting chip, with a ton of supported protocols. It would probably be easier to list the ones it doesn’t support.
The maximum input voltage is 30 V, and the nominal voltage is 25 V, though there may be a regulator in the power supply circuit.


The other two ports and their converters are mounted on a separate board.


The second USB-C port is handled by an SW3522 chip, which has everything needed to build a charger supporting PD at 30 W and QC at 12 V—except for the inductor, of course.


The USB-A port is connected to a Zhirong SW3521 converter chip. It’s similar to the previous chip, but differs in its protocol configuration.


A general photo of the disassembled unit.


I could end the review on this depressing note, but I’d like to say something about the other “reviews.”
First, take a look at how many of these chargers have been sold—and that’s just at the main store. And yes, I didn’t quite get it: are they really going to sell it for $31 instead of $23 during the sale?


Now let’s figure out where all these buyers came from. First, let’s watch a video by the well-known shill and blabbermouth blogger TECHNOZON.


Then let’s visit one of the well-known websites and read the review. At first I didn't want to include links, but authors often insist, so what can you do? The internet should know its “heroes.”

I especially liked this line: “In the summer, I often head out into nature and take road trips around the country.”
Sure, especially in summer, in a car, 160 watts—yeah, right.


And the icing on the cake is a review by a top author on an even more famous site. He didn't bother with any testing at all, just posted a few photos of a USB tester and said something like: “People on the internet say it's all OK, gotta buy it.”
That's basically all you need to know about the quality of some authors' reviews on this site, and what they think of their readers. Then they get offended in the comments, too.


So that's how it works: the people who drive sales make the money. Testing? Who needs that, especially if it might hurt sales—and that's before you factor in the follow-up payment for advertising promotions and sales.
Can you make money publishing honest reviews? Most of the time, no. My more than nine years of experience say so. There are exceptions, of course; I'm not arguing that. For example, the product may simply be good, or the low price may make up for its shortcomings, or the seller may just not care. (Sometimes sellers do ask for an honest review, but what they really want is for someone to do the testing and draw conclusions for them—in effect, a technical assessment.)
For example, I'm used to writing honestly, but sellers rarely send me anything under those terms. And buying something with my own money, then writing an honest review that means nobody buys it—sure, I could do that, but as you can imagine, it won't help me earn enough for the next product, especially given the current situation in our country. By the way, thanks to your donations, I may be able to order something for a review after all.

But it's not all bad. While looking for reviews of this charger, I came across an honest video where someone ran into the same overheating problem and showed it on camera. The only difference is that his unit ran for 15 minutes at 100 watts, compared with 7–8 minutes for mine.


The description for another listing in the same store includes a disclaimer saying that you need to use a voltage above 12 V to get more than 100 watts. But that isn't mentioned on the main page. Besides, we've seen that even at a higher voltage, it can't sustain full power for long.


Conclusions.
Based on the packaging, design, number of supported protocols, and specifications, I'd give it a solid A+ if it weren't for one important “but”: it only delivers its rated specs for a short time. Mine lasted 7–8 minutes; someone else's lasted 15, but the difference isn't significant—sooner or later, it will go into protection mode. I'll also point out that it has three converters, rather than one shared converter.
I wouldn't say it gets extremely hot: the case reaches 76 °C. I'd guess the temperature inside was around 100–110 °C, which is why the chip went into protection mode.
That said, it should work reasonably well with loads drawing around 50 watts, and can handle up to 100 watts for short periods. Why “reasonably”? Because after warming up at 50 watts, its runtime at 100 watts will be measured in minutes—closer to 1–2 minutes, in fact.
There's also the odd behavior of its no-load current draw, which increases if you switch the charger off briefly and then turn it back on.
Another thing to note is that it uses 30 V transistors, so there may be problems when powering it from a truck's electrical system. This mainly affects the C1 output; the other ports are rated for up to 35 V, which also leaves virtually no headroom. But when powered from 24 V, you get more options: the first port can deliver more power without going into protection mode, and the second and third ports can output up to 20 V instead of 12 V.
In a passenger car, the voltage is generally fine (though there are some caveats here too; it's worth checking the requirements for automotive-grade components), but power is significantly limited.

To sum up, I could use the joke from the beginning of the review, except that in this case, “it didn't take off.” The idea is genuinely great, and the components are decent too. You can use it to charge tablets and phones, especially since it supports so many protocols and has a thermal protection system that works properly. Just keep in mind that you won't get 160 watts continuously.
If you want something that works properly, then it's probably better to buy the 100-watt version at the same link, for $19. It seems to be better designed.

That's all for today. This review turned out to be a bit of a slog—in effect, three reviews in one. I hope it was useful, and as always, I look forward to your comments.