Nomad Base Station Hub Review: Expensively Flawed

POSITIVES

✓ Build Quality

Leather surface and aluminum body

✓ Can charge five devices

5 devices charge with one brick

NEGATIVES

✘ Expensive

Triple digit price tag is extremely high

✘ Have to Find Sweet Spot

Can't drop and go

✘ Average Charging Speeds

10W is acceptable but not the fastest

Purchase Price: $149.99

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I’ve been searching for a good bedside hub to wirelessly charge all of my daily electronics and so far I haven’t been able to come across a perfect product that just works flawlessly. Lida purchased the Nomad Base Station Hub for my birthday recently and at $150, it automatically becomes the most expensive and premium charging dock I’ve ever owned. While there is an Apple-esque prestige behind Nomad and their product lineup, a high price tag doesn’t always justify the performance quality and that is the case with this expensively flawed product.

Look And Feel

The Nomad wireless charging dock is exactly as the name implies, a place to drop off all of your Apple products at night time in order to charge them up in anticipation for the following day. At its main function, the Base Station Hub can simultaneously charge an Apple Watch, a pair of earbuds and a phone. While the only proprietary charging space on this hub is the magnetic Apple Watch puck that is integrated with the system, the other two Qi charging locations can charge any branded devices that have wirelessly charging capabilities. The Base Station has three coils that allow for charging in different orientations. They’re concealed by a padded leather surface which certainly gives this product an added premium flair. That along with the anodized aluminum frame surely separates a Nomad product from cheaper alternatives on Amazon. This product does feel a tier above the packages you can buy at TJ Maxx while waiting in the checkout line. The one aspect of the design that irks me is the inability for the Apple Watch puck to fold down. It is locked upward in place, which makes it difficult to transport during travel. I understand that this product wasn’t specifically designed for portability, but that flexibility it would have provided by just being able to flex would have been tremendously beneficial. 

Charges Up To Five Devices

The two Qi slots are matching 10W charging areas. 10W has been a settled standard for wireless chargers over the last few years and while it is acceptable, I couldn’t help but desire 15W at this triple digit price tag. You can charge at 18W through a wired USB-C port on the rear or the Nomad. A 7.5W USB-A port is right next to it for another charging slot. Technically you can charge up to 5 devices at once by utilizing the USB ports as well. Nomad included a couple braided cables which is a nice bonus for a luxury product.

On the front of the body, three LED indicators display how many of the Qi slots are currently being used. My setup includes an Apple Watch SE, an Apple iPhone 13 Pro and the Xiaomi Redmi Buds 3 Pro. They all charge properly as advertised. My biggest complaint isn’t based on what the device can or can’t do, instead it’s aimed directly at the inconveniences that the hub generates because of its layout. You know how in the early days of wireless charging, we’d have to hold our phone on a mat and slide it around to find the sweet spot before the display would light up notifying us that the phone finally picked up a charge? That’s what happens here with the Nomad Base Station. There’s an extremely distinct spot that the phone’s Qi chip has to hit in order for it to trigger charging. As this is a bedside companion, I can’t tell you how annoying it is to not be able to just plop the phone down and have it begin charging. Even after weeks with it on my nightstand, I still find myself needing to sit up and shift the phone around in order to get it to start charging. I find it hard to understand how even after so much time with the device that I still can’t find a strategic or consistent place to put the phone down to charge. I surmise the difficulty in triggering the charging point comes down to either an inductor that’s way too narrow or some sort of interference due to the thickness of the leather top surface. Regardless of the reason, it defeats the purpose of a bedside hub when it becomes a chore to set the phone down instead of simply dropping it into place without hunting for the right spot.

Is it Charged?

Hitting that sweet spot becomes a frustrating game at that point and the only loser is the user.

While I certainly appreciate the slim and minimalistic look of the Nomad Base Station, I find it extremely difficult to use it over a regular magsafe charger or Pixel Stand. That does require me to use a separate charging brick for my Apple Watch puck, but I don’t have to worry about whether my phone is charged or not when I wake up the next morning. That’s happened to me a few times while using this Nomad station as I thought I placed it correctly only to find the next morning that the phone didn’t recharge. Hitting that sweet spot becomes a frustrating game at that point and the only loser is the user. The Nomad product lineup looks like it belongs in a room of a mansion in the Wolf of Wall Street. There’s an aesthetically pleasing balance of business professional and clean simplicity. However, like many finer things in life, things often provide under performing value in lieu of proper common sense logic. For a wireless charging pad to require such precision in setting a phone down that it becomes an skillset, I can say with certainty that this is not a good Qi charger regardless of how much it costs.      

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