inCharge XS review: 4-in-1 iPhone/Mac charging cable | Cult of Mac

By Ed Hardy • 11:45 am, October 29, 2024

Rolling Square’s inCharge XS is a finger-size iPhone or Mac charging cable that squeezes in enough connectors and built-in adapters to ensure you can juice up virtually any Apple device.

Despite its diminutive size, the cable handles up to 240W of power. And it provides fairly quick data transfers, too.

I attached the inCharge XS to my keychain so I could put it to the test.

Public charging ports are finally getting more common, but you can’t use one to juice up your iPhone if you don’t have a cable handy. And a USB-C cable in your bag isn’t much use if the port you want to use is an old USB-A one.

Rolling Square inCharge XS is designed to be a lifesaver in just this sort of situation. Keep it on your keychain so the cable/adapter is always ready to let you plug in.

Or you might run into a surprise need to copy a file from one device to another. This cable can handle it.

At its core, inCharge XS is a 6.1-inch USB-C to USB-C cable. A Lightning adapter fits over one end, and a USB-A adapter fits over the other. By switching these out, it’s possible to get four different connector combinations.

Need USB-C to Lightning? Yes. USB-A to USB-C? Not a problem. Lightning to USB-A? It can do that too.

The only limitation is the short cable. You’re not going to use it to connect your Mac sitting on a desk to a power adapter plugged into a wall socket, for example. It’s less convenient to use than a longer cable.

But the short cable makes the Rolling Square inCharge XS much more convenient to carry around. It folds to be just 3.1 inches long.

You really can attach it to your keychain. It comes in a variety of colors for just that reason: gray, orange and beige.

The design includes a rubberized cap that protects the connectors. This is permanently attached to the cable so you can’t lose it.

Rolling Square promises the inCharge XS can handle up to 240W. I don’t have a USB device that draws that much power for testing. The best I can do is 65W. But I can say for sure that the cable transferred 65W to that device — I used a voltmeter for confirmation.

As I continued testing, I found the cable delivered 36W to my iPad Pro, which is the most the tablet can handle. And it sent 28W to my iPhone 16, the handset’s maximum.

As for data, given its name, no one should be surprised that inCharge XS focuses more on power transfers than bits and bytes. Still, it can be used to move files around.

Rolling Square says transfers top out at 60MB per second. In my real-world testing, the cable handled transferring a 1GB file in about 30 seconds. That’s fast enough to be useful. But for reference, with a faster cable, that same transfer takes less than 2 seconds.

It would be nice if we could easily carry a 1-meter Thunderbolt cable everywhere we go. Because we can’t, we need a practical alternative. And that’s inCharge XS. It can get your iPhone or Mac powered up in a pinch, or let you transfer that file you must have now.

And the USB-A and Lightning adapters permanently attached to the cable make it just what Apple users need.

But “lengthy” and “portable” are almost always mutually exclusive. This cable/adapter is well suited for emergencies but maybe not convenient enough that you’ll use it every day.

★★★★☆

Rolling Square inCharge XS costs $29.90. That seems a reasonable price for a well-designed iPhone/Mac emergency charging cable.

Buy it from: Rolling Square

Rolling Square provided Cult of Mac with a review unit for this article. See our reviews policy, and check out more in-depth reviews of Apple-related items.