Your iPhone and Apple Watch Need This Charger

Key Takeaways

• The Twelve South Butterfly is ideal for jet-setters with a MagSafe iPhone and Apple Watch.
• The charger comes with a 30W power adapter, USB-C cable, and four international adapters.
• The Butterfly is not as thin as the MagSafe Duo, but it’s more premium and more powerful than most 2-in-1 wireless chargers.

MagSafe chargers made for nightstands and desks are a dime a dozen, but there aren’t many premium, travel-friendly options, especially after Apple discontinued the MagSafe Duo. Thankfully, the Twelve South Butterfly is the perfect wireless charger for jet-setting iPhone and Apple Watch owners looking to fast charge their devices.

Price and Availability

The Butterfly charger retails for $129.99 and is available for purchase directly from Twelve South and Apple (both online and in-store). It only comes in one color: silver.

Comes With Everything You Need

In 2020, Apple stopped shipping power adapters with the iPhone. Four years later, everything from Samsung’s latest flagship to charging stations from Nomad have followed suit. Thankfully, Twelve South didn’t continue that trend.

When you unbox the Butterfly and move beyond the charger itself, you’ll find a USB-C to C cable and 30W power adapter. The brick isn’t anything to write home about, but the fact that it comes with four international plug adapters (for the U.S., U.K., EU, and AU) means it can be used almost anywhere on the planet. There’s also a travel bag that I use to store the unused adapters.

Personally, I didn’t end up using the included power adapter while traveling. I keep the Nomad 65W Slim in my bag, which is smaller and supplies twice the juice, but it’s still a welcome addition for those who want an international adapter.

Premium Hardware, Great Performance

The Butterfly, which Twelve South advertises as being the size of an AirPods Pro case (though it’s actually a tad bigger than that), is a silver aluminum puck that can be split in two and is connected with a piece of black vegan leather. This soft leather-like material also clads the inside of the charger to ensure your phone and watch aren’t scratched. Magnets hold the charger closed—both when folded closed with the metal casing exposed and when folded open with the vegan leather on the outside.

Separating the two halves, you find that the Apple Watch charger can be tilted vertically. This allows you to use your watch in Nightstand Mode and avoid awkward charging situations if your watch band doesn’t come apart. Additionally, you’ll find the USB-C port on the backside of the Apple Watch half of the charger.

Overall, the Twelve South Butterfly’s build quality is quite excellent. It’s sturdy and dense without weighing down any travel bag it’s placed in. It also supplies the maximum amount of power your iPhone and Apple Watch can accept. The phone side is fully MagSafe compliant, outputting 15W of power, and the other half is an Apple Watch fast charger, putting out 5W.

My biggest frustration with the Butterfly came when I tried to use it as a display stand. Twelve South advertises this as being a core feature, but in my testing, it only worked on smaller iPhones, like the regular iPhone 15. When I tried propping up my iPhone 15 Pro Max (with and without a Peak Design Everyday case), the magnetic connection between pucks wouldn’t stay together, and my phone fell flat on its face.

Ultimately, this functionality wasn’t make or break for me. 99.9% of the time, I used the charger with both halves lying flat to charge my iPhone and Apple Watch. But the few times I did try to prop up my phone and watch something on YouTube, it didn’t work.

Should You Buy the Twelve South Butterfly?

As someone who still owns the Apple MagSafe Duo, I find it hard to ditch the extremely thin charger. But I ultimately did because the Twelve South Butterfly includes an Apple Watch fast charger, and it’s powered by USB-C. After upgrading to the iPhone 15 Pro Max, I stopped carrying around Lightning cables and had to purchase a USB-C to Lightning adapter to continue using Apple’s charger. It was too much of a hassle when the universal option sat right before me.

If you’re not a MagSafe Duo holdout and want a convenient charger for your next trip, I don’t have any difficulty recommending the Butterfly. It comes at a premium price ($129.99), but it’ll likely be the last portable wireless charger you need to buy for the next decade, especially as it’ll also work with Qi2 phones.

When I’m traveling, I want the smallest charger I can pack in my suitcase, but if you want a third charging pad for your AirPods (or other Qi-compatible earbuds), I recommend checking out the Infinacore T3. It’s a bit thicker and doesn’t have an Apple Watch fast charger, but you can charge all of your devices at the same time.