Anyone asking which charger the iPhone 18 Pro needs only gets half the truth from Apple’s stage: 50 percent in 15 minutes. The iPhone 17 Pro still needed 20 minutes for that. It sounds like progress you get for free. It isn’t. The actual condition sits in small print in the technical specifications — and it decides whether the charger you already own is still good enough.
The short answer first: the iPhone 18 Pro needs a charger with 60 watts and AVS. Both. If either is missing, you leave charging speed on the table. Here’s why, and how to check in ten minutes whether your charger plays along.
40 watts become 60 watts
On the iPhone 17 Pro the maximum charging power was 40 watts. On the 18 Pro it’s 60. That’s the biggest change in charging in years, and not a word about it was said during the keynote. You only find the number in the technical specifications.
First the good news: 50 percent in a quarter of an hour was something you knew from Android devices, not from iPhones. That puts the 18 Pro on the same level as a Galaxy S26 Ultra. But there’s a condition attached to that number, and Apple never mentioned it on stage.
The footnote that decides everything
Apple’s product page says „Up to 50% in around 15 minutes“ — with a superscript nine after it. And that footnote contains the actual sentence: fast charging over cable is supported with a 60-watt-capable USB-C cable and a USB-PD 3.1 or better charger with adjustable voltage supply. Sold separately.
„Adjustable voltage supply“ is the point. Short form: AVS. And that’s exactly where most chargers currently sitting in people’s drawers fall down.
What AVS is, explained in one paragraph
A normal USB-C charger delivers power in fixed steps: 5, 9, 15 and 20 volts. But the battery in your phone only wants about 4 volts. So a chip inside the phone has to convert the voltage down, and that creates heat. A warm phone throttles itself — which is why fast charging is usually only genuinely fast for the first few minutes.
With AVS the phone requests exactly the voltage it needs at that moment instead. The charger sets it, the phone barely has to convert anything, and the heat is created in the charger rather than in the device. A cooler phone is allowed to charge fast for longer — and that’s where those 15 minutes come from.
Anyone who has charged a Samsung knows the principle under a different name: there it’s called PPS and has been in use for years. AVS is Apple’s version of the same idea, written into the USB-PD 3.1 standard.
Are 60 watts enough without AVS?
That’s the question everyone with a 60 watt charger at home is asking. And Apple stays silent on it. My assessment, flagged openly as an assessment: it will go much like Samsung without PPS — it charges, but those 60 watts shrink by 10 to 20 percent, and the quarter of an hour gets longer. That is not proven. As soon as the iPhone 18 Pro and Apple’s charger are here, I’ll measure both against each other: once with AVS, once with a normal 60 watt charger without it.
Which cable does the iPhone 18 Pro need?
Good news here. The cable from the iPhone box is enough. It carries 3 amps, and the maths works out: 20 volts times 3 amps is exactly 60 watts. A 5 amp cable with an E-Marker chip does nothing for an iPhone — you only need that above 60 watts, so for a notebook or tablet.
What you do have to avoid: USB-A. If that wide old plug is anywhere in the chain, the iPhone stops at 12 watts, no matter what the charger says. Those 15 minutes for the first 50 percent then become 45.
Does it have to be Apple’s $50 charger?
No. Apple’s own charger with AVS costs around $40 and does what it should. But there are alternatives that do more. In the video I show the UGREEN Nexode Pro with 100 watts: it handles AVS for the iPhone and PPS for Samsung, and with a 5 amp cable it charges your notebook or tablet at full power too. The same model exists with 160 watts if you want several devices attached at once.
I’ll be testing both against the original over the coming days.
Check instead of guessing: Charge Check
Before you buy anything, you can find out whether it’s even worth it for you. I built a free tool for exactly that, and it works without a power meter: Charge Check runs straight in your browser.
You pick your phone — the iPhone 18 Pro is already in there, so you can play it through before you own one. Then the connector, where USB-A triggers a warning immediately. Then the charger: photograph the label and the tool reads the rest itself. If your charger says 45 watts while the 18 Pro wants 60, it flags the bottleneck straight away and doesn’t even bother calculating further. And for the 18 Pro it explicitly points out the AVS requirement.
After that you measure live: enter your battery level, start the clock, enter the new level after ten minutes. The only thing that matters is starting below 40 percent — above that the phone throttles on its own, and then you’re no longer measuring the charger.
Pros and cons of the 60 watt jump
✓ 50 percent in 15 minutes instead of 20 — noticeably faster day to day
✓ The heat is created in the charger instead of the iPhone, which spares the battery
✓ The cable from the box is enough, no 5 amp cable needed
✓ Finally on eye level with the top Android models
✗ The charger has to support AVS — many existing 60 watt models don’t
✗ Apple states the condition only in a footnote, never on stage
✗ What’s left over without AVS, Apple doesn’t say
✗ A suitable charger costs extra, there isn’t one in the box
Verdict: which charger for the iPhone 18 Pro?
Look for two things, not one. The wattage alone isn’t enough — 60 watts and AVS have to be on the charger, often labelled as „PD 3.1“. You can keep the cable from the box. And if you want to charge a laptop alongside it anyway, go straight for a 100 watt model that handles AVS and PPS — that covers every device in the house.
And before you order: run Charge Check. There’s a fair chance your current charger already does everything.
Once the iPhone 18 Pro is here next week, the accessory testing starts. Which case actually fits is covered in my roundup of the best iPhone 18 Pro cases, and which glass survives the drop test is in the 18 Pro screen protector test. For everyone waiting on the foldable, those tests run in parallel: cases that fit the iPhone Duo and the screen protection for the iPhone Duo, including the question of how you protect the inner display at all.