Ugreen Nexode Air Slim fast charger (X865) review: How good is the ultra-thin GaN charger?

The Ugreen Nexode Air 65W GaN Slim (X865) solves a genuine everyday problem: It is pleasantly compact, fits easily behind furniture, and eliminates the need to carry bulky power bricks in your bag. Thanks to broad protocol support, including PD 3.2, PPS, and QC, it also works well with a wide range of devices from Apple, Samsung, and other manufacturers.

In testing, however, the ultra-slim design also reveals its material-related limitations. Under sustained and full load, the charger heats up noticeably, reaching temperatures of up to 65°C, and slightly reduces charging power after a few minutes. When multiple devices are connected at the same time, output from the main port also drops to 45 watts, which can be borderline for power-hungry laptops under full load.

For travelers, commuters, and use with outlets in tight spaces, the Nexode Air Slim is a very practical and attractive charging option. However, if you primarily want to charge a high-performance laptop under a heavy workload, you should take its heat buildup and power distribution into account.

The Ugreen Nexode Air Slim charger can be purchased directly from Ugreen and is also available from Amazon Germany, among other retailers.

Whether on a plane, at a crowded power strip in a coworking space, or behind the sofa at home, bulky power adapters can quickly become impractical in everyday use. This is exactly where Ugreen’s Nexode Air 65W GaN Fast Charger Slim (model X865) comes in. The accessory maker promises a full 65 watts of charging power in an extremely slim housing that barely adds bulk even in a packed bag and does not block neighboring outlets. Thanks to modern gallium nitride (GaN) technology, the compact charger is also designed to deliver fast charging while remaining efficient and cool. But how does the ultra-slim charger perform in a demanding real-world test when a laptop and smartphone are drawing power at the same time?

The Ugreen Nexode Air Slim (X865) is available exclusively in gray. It has a compact design with a thickness of 14.5 mm, excluding the plug. With the folding plug folded against the housing, it measures 28 mm. Because of the Type F plug, it takes up more space than the U.S. model with a Type A plug, whose live prongs can be fully retracted into the housing. Even so, the charger remains very slim and is therefore also suitable for use behind furniture.

The Ugreen Nexode Air Slim has three ports with different maximum power outputs: The first USB-C port delivers up to 65 watts, the second up to 30 watts, and the USB-A port up to 22.5 watts. On paper, that gives the charger enough power to run smaller laptops while also supporting fast charging for smartphones and tablets.

However, the full 65 watts are only available when the first USB-C port is used on its own. When two or all three ports are in use, the maximum output is distributed as follows:

With all ports in use, a combined output of up to 75 watts would theoretically be possible. In practice, however, the Ugreen Nexode Air Slim never draws more than 70 watts from the outlet, and even then only briefly. With all three ports in use, we measure 64.1 watts of power consumption at the outlet, while the ports deliver 41.7 W, 7.0 W, and 7.0 W, respectively. This corresponds to an efficiency of 86.9%. It also highlights a potential limitation: A laptop under heavy load may no longer receive enough power when one or two additional devices are connected.

When only the 65-watt USB-C1 port is used, the charger initially draws up to 70 watts from the outlet, of which 61.3 watts reach the connected device (efficiency: 87.5%). After a few minutes, however, this drops to 60 watts of input and 51.1 watts of output, corresponding to an efficiency of 85.2%. Efficiency could certainly be a little better, but it should still be sufficient for most use cases.

At idle, we measured a power draw of 0.0568 watts at the outlet for the Ugreen Nexode Air Slim.

Heat buildup increases significantly under full load, with some areas reaching nearly 65°C. That is very warm, but not particularly surprising given the space-saving design.

The Nexode Air Slim 65W supports USB Power Delivery 3.2, including AVS and PPS, as well as common fast-charging protocols such as Quick Charge, Samsung AFC, and Huawei FCP. Proprietary standards such as SuperVOOC and Xiaomi HyperCharge are not supported, so compatible smartphones fall back to USB Power Delivery or another supported charging standard.