Apple 5W USB-A Charger (A1385) on a MacBook Air: Measured
The 5W cube that shipped with iPhones for years, against a MacBook Air M5: 4.6 W delivered - and this time the charger is the limit, not the Mac.
The Apple 5W USB power adapter (model A1385) is the small white cube that shipped in iPhone boxes for the better part of a decade. Tested against a MacBook Air M5 with a low battery, per the methodology.
The numbers
| Rated | 5 W |
| Offered | ~5 W (5 V up to 1 A) |
| Negotiated | 5 V, USB default |
| Live draw | 4.6 W (4.9 V at 0.93 A) |
Profile menu: one entry - ~5 W (5 V up to 1 A). That’s the whole list.
What’s limiting it
Nothing on the Mac’s side, for once. There’s no fast-charging profile here of any kind - no USB Power Delivery, no legacy Apple 2.4-amp signaling worth speaking of at this size. It’s a plain 5-volt, 1-amp USB port, and the 1-amp output stage of the charger itself is the cap. The Mac simply draws what’s available.
That makes this the baseline of the whole series: roughly as slow as charging a laptop can get. It’s genuinely impressive that macOS bothers to charge from it at all - it will, it’s just a very patient way to top up.
The higher-wattage siblings of this brick behave differently - the 10W and 12W adapters run into a negotiation ceiling rather than a hardware one.
No longer sold
Apple stopped selling this cube some time ago, and it was never intended to charge a laptop in the first place.
If you want a current Apple adapter, the 40W Dynamic Power Adapter (60W Max) is the modern compact option. It is far more capable than this one - enough to charge a MacBook Air at a genuinely useful rate rather than merely holding it steady.
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