Back in February 2020, I backed the Maco Go project on Kickstarter. This tiny, portable, USB-C Apple Watch charger arrived in September 2020. While I was impressed with its size and portability I was less impressed with its charging speeds.
In my tests, shown below, the Maco Go took roughly twice as long to charge as the standard Apple Watcher charger cable in the same charging plug.
| Apple Watch cable | Maco Go | Apple Watch cable | Maco Go |
| 18:25 22% 19:25 92% +70% | 13:19 28% 14:19 58% +30% | 18:25 33% 19:25 96% +63% | 16:51 15% 17:51 44% +29% |
In the end, the project creator accepted that this version was slower than the Apple cable and offered up this:
We will definitely take your feedback on board with us for the next version. We are planning to design the V2 for faster charging and integrated a battery inside.
Maco Go 2
In December 2022 the Three1Design were back on Kickstarter launching Maco Go 2 which promised to be: “The Smallest Apple Watch Fast Charger”. It arrived today and so let’s see if they have made good on their promises to increase the charging speeds.
I ran the same (admittedly unscientific) tests as before comparing the Maco Go 2 with the standard Apple USB-C charge cable in the same power block with nothing else also charging. These were the results.
| Apple Watch cable | Maco Go 2 | Apple Watch cable | Maco Go 2 |
| 20:30 41% 21:30 97% +56% | 15:05 23% 16:05 72% +49% | 20:55 45% 21:55 96% +51% | 18:33 21% 19:33 64% +43% |
As you can see the Maco Go 2 performed a lot better than its predecessor. You still get more charge over the same time period using the Apple-supplied charger but you need to weigh that against the convenience of the small form factor of the Maco Go 2.
Get your Maco Go 2 here.
What Apple Watch were you charging? AW6? Or 7? 8?
In your tests, were you using the original Apple fast charging cable (that came with Apple Watch 7/8/9/Ultra), or were you using the older Apple Watch charging cable from Series 6 and older?
Lot’s of questions and here are the answers. It will have been a Series 5 watch using the original charge cable. If you are suggesting that the older cable that came with the watch wasn’t fast charge then that’s even worse for the Maco 2 as if I reran then tests today with my S9 and the latest cable I’d expect it to be even quicker.
Thanks for clearing this up. The original charging cable that came with Series 1 – 6 and SE was a slow charging cable (charging module C162). Since Series 7, a new fast charging cable has been bundled (charging module C962). Maco 2 may (or not) technically contain the charging module C962 but still charge slow despite it. C962 requires quite ingenious cooling solution – the Apple’s fast charging cable separated the PCB and charging coil by moving the PCB to the USB-C connector, as well as dipping the PCB in lots of thermal glue and wrapping it in steel shield for cooling. And the separation also helped to make sure the coils and PCB don’t warm each other up. I don’t think Maco 2 put much thought to thermals.
In your tests, the Apple fast charger was tested starting at 45%. The lower the initial charge, the faster it will charge, especially below 80%. You should’ve tested both the Apple official charger and the Maco Go 2 starting at the same lower battery percentage.
The Maco Go 2 results of 43% and 49% added over 60 minutes is pretty pathetic compared to the Apple fast charger, which if you had measured from a lower percentage, adds 50% to an Ultra 2 in just 30 minutes. The Mac Go 2 is hence less than half as fast at charging than the Apple charger. Ouch