Best Power Towers

One face of this tower is 3.38 inches, which is the measurement that matters when the only free surface is the strip of counter beside a microwave or the gap between a bed and a wall. The octagonal body comes in a black finish that reads as furniture rather than office equipment, and the base carries an anti-slip mat so it does not skate when you pull a plug.

The rest is conventional and well executed: 12 AC outlets, four USB ports with one USB-C, a 6.5-foot cord, and overload protection with a reset switch. Total USB output is 3.4A shared, with each USB-A capped at 2.4A and the C port at 3A. It is a 10A tower, so it is happiest with desk gear, a monitor, a lamp, a laptop and a printer, rather than anything that heats a room.

USB-C is where it gives ground to the top pick: one port instead of two, and the same 3.4A ceiling to share between them. It also costs more than several towers here that hand you more sockets for less.

It keeps its place because we think the finish and the base are better than most, and because a tower that looks like a black column rather than a plastic toy is worth something on a bedside table. If your devices are mostly AC and your space is narrow, this one earns the shelf; if you are charging three phones and a tablet every night, the second USB-C port on our top pick is worth more than the nicer housing.

Purple is why some people will pick this one, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. A tower that sits on a dresser or a console table is visible, and a finish that matches the room is a legitimate reason to choose it over a slightly better-specified grey box you would want to hide.

It is not a compromise on paper: 12 AC outlets arranged around four faces, four USB ports made up of three USB-A and one USB-C sharing 3.1A, 1200 joules of surge protection, a 10-foot cord, and separate power buttons rather than a single master. The two-year warranty is the longest in this group alongside two others.

Against the picks above it is mid-pack on USB, with 3.1A shared across four ports and a single USB-C, which means phones charge overnight rather than quickly. The 1200-joule rating also sits below the 1800-joule leaders. What lifts it into the roundup is that it does the big things properly, 12 usable outlets, a long cord, a stable base, and does them in a finish you can leave out in the open. Fewer people have lived with this one than with our top picks, and that is the only reason it sits lower.

Twelve outlets on a base that measures 3.15 inches square is the whole argument for this tower. Stand it in the back corner of a desk and the sockets climb rather than spread, so the space it claims is roughly what a mug claims. At the other end, the plug is only 0.3 inch deep, which lets a desk or a nightstand sit almost flush against the wall instead of being pushed out by a plug head.

This is the tower we recommend first, because it gets the unglamorous things right. The 12 outlets are wide-spaced, so a laptop brick and a monitor plug can live side by side instead of fighting over one gap, and two of the four USB ports are USB-C, where several picks here give you just one. The 1800-joule surge rating is the highest in this group alongside one other pick, and the tower stands 5.79 inches tall, so it disappears behind a monitor.

The USB budget is the part we mind. Four ports share 3.4A, so a phone charges steadily rather than quickly, and a tablet plus a phone splits what is there. If your desk is mostly USB-C devices, the TenTrend's dual 20W ports are the better buy. For the lamp, the monitor, the dock, and the spare charger, it simply does the job and disappears behind them.

Ten feet of cord is the reason to pick this over the top pick. That is the difference between a tower beside your chair and one on the floor behind the sofa, and it is the first measurement we check for a bedroom, where the socket tends to be behind the bed. The base weighs 1.6 pounds, so when you pull a stiff adapter out one-handed, the tower stays where you left it instead of tipping over.

Nine AC outlets is three fewer than the leaders here, but they are distributed around the tower, so chunky adapters clear each other. The four USB ports include two USB-C and share 4.5A, which is more headroom than the top pick gives a phone and a tablet together. Surge protection is rated at 1080 joules, and a master switch on top cuts power to everything at once.

Its 5.5-inch square base is the widest in this group, which is the number to check before you give it a shelf corner. Otherwise it is a plain grey column that hides under a monitor stand, and after living with it we stopped noticing it, which is about the highest compliment a power strip can earn.

Two 20W USB-C ports are what separate this tower from everything else in the group, and it is the difference we kept coming back to. That is the wattage a phone actually asks for, so the charger in your drawer can stay there: plug the cable into the tower and the phone charges at the rate it was designed for rather than the trickle a shared port gives it. Most towers here treat USB-C as a checkbox; this one treats it as a charger.

The rest of the specification is generous too: 12 AC outlets plus eight USB ports, which is 20 devices on one column, and a housing made from a fire-resistant ABS and polycarbonate blend rated to 1382°F. The plug head is 0.27 inch, the thinnest in this group, and the cord runs 10 feet, so a desk against a bare wall is not a problem.

Weight is the compromise. Load every port with thick cables and it can tip when something snags a cord; run the stiff adapters low and the phone cables high and it settles down. Twenty ports on a 6.5-inch column also invite a tangle, so a pack of cable ties earns its keep with this one.

Four switches, one per side, change how the tower gets used. You can leave the router and a monitor running on two faces, kill the bank feeding three phone chargers overnight, and never reach behind the desk to do it. That sounds like a small thing until you have crawled under a desk at midnight to unplug a charger.

The hardware underneath is solid: 12 AC outlets set 1.7 inches apart, which is enough clearance for most adapters, five USB ports, and 1800 joules of surge protection, the joint-highest rating in this group. The cord runs 10 feet and the base is 4.84 inches square, so it stands steady on a counter without taking much room.

Of the five USB ports only one is USB-C, and it is an 18W PD port, which is fine for a phone and not for a laptop; the four USB-A ports run 2.4A each. That mix suits a shared space, where most of what gets plugged in is a phone or a tablet, better than it suits a single user with a USB-C laptop and nothing else. If that is your desk, the TenTrend's dual 20W ports are the better match.