Dealworthy 20W Car Charger on a MacBook Air: Measured
Target's house-brand 20W USB-C car charger measured on a MacBook Air M5: 17.5 W delivered, no 20 V rail, and a 12 V output that sits a volt under spec.
Target’s Dealworthy house-brand 20 W USB-C car charger, tested against a MacBook Air M5 with a low battery, per the methodology.
The numbers
| Rated | 20 W |
| Negotiated | 20 W (12 V up to 1.67 A) |
| Live draw | 17.5 W (11 V at 1.59 A) |
| Protocol | USB PD 3.0 |
Profile menu:
| Profile | Rail |
|---|---|
| 15 W | 5 V up to 3 A |
| 20 W | 9 V up to 2.22 A |
| 20 W | 12 V up to 1.67 A — active |
| PPS | 3.3-5.9 V, up to 3 A |
The connector matters more than the brand
The useful comparison is the Anker PowerDrive 2 Alloy, a car charger rated 24 W from a brand that builds its reputation on charging. It delivers 7.1 W to a MacBook.
This one is rated lower, costs less, and carries a store’s own label. It delivers 17.5 W — nearly two and a half times as much.
Nothing about that is Anker doing badly. The Anker is USB-A, so there is no Power Delivery to negotiate and the Mac falls back to BC 1.2 and its 7.5 W ceiling, exactly as it should. This one is USB-C with PD, so there is a ladder to climb. In a car, the connector on the front decides your charging speed before the brand or the wattage on the box gets a vote.
No 20 volt rail
The ladder stops at 12 V. Every full-size laptop charger in this series tops out at 20 V, which is how they reach 60 W and beyond; this one has no 20 V step at all, so 20 W is its ceiling by construction rather than by rating.
It also offers 20 W twice — once at 9 V and once at 12 V — the same trick the Anker Nano 30W plays with its 30 W. Same power, two rails, so a device can pick whichever its internal converter handles best. The Mac takes the 12 V.
The volt that went missing
The negotiated rail is 12 V. The measured delivery is 11 V.
USB PD specifies a fixed supply within ±5% of nominal, which puts the allowed window for a 12 V rail at roughly 11.4–12.6 V. At 1.59 A this one sits below that. It is not a large shortfall in practice — you still get 17.5 W, and the Mac is perfectly happy — but it is measurably outside what the profile promises, and it is the kind of thing that never appears on a box.
Some of that is the job itself: a car charger is fed from a 12 V socket that sags under load, and producing a clean 12 V out of a nominal 12 V in is more awkward than stepping it up to 9 V or down to 5 V. Compare a wall charger like the Apple 96W, whose 20 V rail measures about 19.4 V — roughly 3% under, comfortably inside spec.
The cable is not the limit
macOS reports the attached cable as 3 A, no e-marker read. At this charger’s 12 V that allows 36 W, well above anything it can produce, so the cable plays no part in the result. Worth stating because a slow charge is so often a cable problem — here it is not, and the app says so before you go looking.
A cable only becomes the ceiling above 60 W, where a 5 A e-marked cable is required. See 100W vs 240W USB-C cables.
The PPS range is phone-only
PPS entries in this series usually reach 11 V or higher. This one covers 3.3 V to 5.9 V, which cannot even reach the 9 V step on its own ladder. That makes it strictly a phone feature — useful for a handset tuning its charging curve, irrelevant to a Mac, which charges from the fixed 12 V rail regardless.
It has no name
macOS reports it as “PD Charger” and nothing else. No manufacturer string, no product name, no resolvable vendor ID — the same blank that the UGREEN 30W draws.
That is normal for a house brand. Identifying itself requires either a vendor’s proprietary handshake, which is how Apple bricks report a full name, or a USB-IF vendor ID sent through standard PD Discover Identity, which costs money and effort a store label has no reason to spend. See why only Apple chargers show their name on a Mac.
Worth buying?
For a car, yes, with the ceiling understood. 17.5 W will charge a phone at full speed and will slowly gain on a MacBook Air that is asleep or idling. It will not keep up with an Air doing real work, and it is not meant to.
The unit
The Dealworthy Single Port 20W USB-C Car Charger, Target’s own label. One USB-C port, no USB-A.
Not an affiliate link - this one is a Target exclusive and is listed here only so you can identify the exact unit.