After my Wahoo TRACKR RADAR post/video a few weeks ago, where I noted that Garmin’s RTL-515 is the very last micro-USB device in my house, a bunch of you jested: “What about SRAM AXS batteries?!?!”.
That’s because, indeed, SRAM does still distribute a micro-USB charger with all AXS-equipped bikes. That’s the same battery type as eTAP, they are fully interchangeable. While I will continue to give SRAM a hard time for still distributing a micro-USB charger with $15,000 bikes, I will give them credit in that the eTAP/AXS batteries haven’t changed in like a decade. Seriously, what other company has kept the same proprietary battery for that long? Even most legacy camera companies slowly shift/tweak their batteries over time. So, kudos there.
Still, it’s ridiculous to have micro-USB for the charger in 2025.
Thankfully, there are some 3rd party USB-C options for charging that are great. I’ve been using one of them for a few years now, this dual-battery USB-C charger:
Simply slot in two batteries, plug a USB-C cable in the back, and come back whenever, and it’s charged. Donezo.
On the unit there are three status lights: Green, Yellow, and Red. As you might guess from your extensive experience with such primary colors, red means something’s bad-bad, yellow means charging, and green means go. Complex, this is not.
On the back, it notes this is a 5V-2A charger. While charging a single battery, it seems to float between 1-1.5W, and while charging 2 batteries, it floats around 2.5-3W (according to my Anker PowerBank I bought a year ago, also a favorite cause it can charge everything from my laptop, to drone batteries on a multi-day hike…all at 100w):
(At left, the USB-C variant. At right, the official SRAM micro-USB charger.)
Officially, the manufacturer claims it charges the batteries via USB-C some 30% faster, though practically it’s really hard for me to validate that, since I virtually never get my AXS batteries down to dead-dead status (let alone two of them to test side-by-side). And even if I did, I have no idea which ones are 3-5 years old, and which ones are 3-5 months old.
Wattage-wise, I’d see the USB-C version pulling about 4.0w for one battery, whereas the micro-USB one was pulling about 3.0w. But that’s, of course, only a piece of the amp/watts/volts story, and both units fluctuated a bit.
Either way, charging speed has never really mattered to me here…cause…uhh…below. If my math is right, I think I currently have five SRAM AXS battery-equipped bikes active in our fleet, between my wife’s bikes and mine. Additionally, we have three Shimano Di2-equipped bikes.
Now, while there are 3rd party batteries for SRAM AXS, I don’t use them. In general, my jam is that I try to use company-specific batteries as much as possible, to reduce any unexpected problems. Especially when that might result in me being gazillions of miles away from a solution (such as in the mountains on a multi-day trip). So I keep to the official SRAM AXS batteries, but use the third-party chargers. Likewise, I used to use third-party GoPro batteries, but eventually the GoPro ones became reasonable enough, price-wise with certain bundles/discounts, that I didn’t bother with third-party ones. However, for my main mirrorless cameras, I do use a third-party battery because those have USB-C charging ports directly in them (making it so I don’t have to carry any extra chargers):
At this point, we’ve totally gotten sidetracked on this review. But frankly, there isn’t much more to say. It just works, and I don’t think about it. As for the older micro-USB charging blocks? I actually stick them in my bike case in one of the secret compartments, just in case I somehow forgot the real USB-C charger, I’ve at least got something (and someone can always find an older micro-USB cable in a hotel from a desk drawer somewhere).
Now, I will leave you with this: You can also buy an 8-port AXS battery charger. While the inner-charging-geek in me could easily find a justification for this (at least, to justify it to my wife), it’s pretty hard for me to realistically justify it:
Still…I want it.
With that, thanks for reading!
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SRAM AXS/eTAP USB-C Dual Battery Charger
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