Good news for anyone whose junk drawer, like mine, is a graveyard of old wall warts: Anker has released an upgraded version of its compact Nano Charger in the UK, and this one brings a smart display along with 45 watts of power. Notebookcheck has the details, and it's a more interesting little gadget than you might expect.

The headline feature, pun fully intended, is that display. Instead of guessing whether your phone is fast-charging or just trickle-charging while you go answer the door, the charger shows the actual wattage being drawn in real time. For those of us who remember when a charger was a beige brick that got worryingly warm and offered zero information in return, this feels positively futuristic. My granddaughter Jess teased me last week for getting excited about a readout on a plug, and I told her, honey, information is never a gimmick.

The 45W rating matters more than it sounds. That's enough to fast-charge a modern phone, top up a tablet at proper speed, and even handle a small laptop in a pinch. Anker says this is an upgraded model with improvements over the original, though the specifics of what exactly changed haven't been spelled out yet. I'd rather wait for the full spec sheet than guess, and you should too.

Availability is confirmed on Anker's own UK website as of now. I don't know UK pricing yet, and I won't pretend to. What I will say from years of watching this company is that I generally wait for a sale before buying any accessory, but that's my own shopping habit talking, not a verified fact about this product.

So should you buy one? If you're still using the charger your phone came bundled with three phones ago, or you're cobbling together charging from a tangle of underpowered plugs, this is an easy upgrade. Technology should work for you, quietly and well, and a charger that tells you exactly what it's doing is a small but genuine example of that.

I'll keep an eye out for a full review unit, because a display is only as good as its accuracy, and I want to verify those wattage numbers before I recommend it to the whole family. You know they'll all be calling me about it eventually anyway.