Jackie Dove

Owners of late-model iPhones (starting with iPhone 8) can stash all their old Lightning cables in a desk drawer and start charging their phone more easily with a wireless charger. Instead of sticking a wire into your phone and attaching it to a power adapter, you just place the phone on a small charger pad — or on a stand-up charging pad — and you’re good to go.

Now that Apple officially killed off its AirPower charging mat, it’s time to take the plunge and get yourself a third-party wireless charger. And if you’ve got one of those newfangled AirPods wireless charging cases, a charging pad is even more essential to your setup.

Here are our recommendations for best wireless chargers.

USB Type C — it’s no longer a novelty but an emerging connectivity standard for Apple products. As a newer, more powerful variation of the same USB we all know and love (well, kinda), USB-C features higher power and faster data transfer than its predecessors via a smaller connector.

While older USB Type A and B were a great gift for Mac users — few mourned the passing of ADB and SCSI — USB is often finicky. Just plugging in an old-school USB cable can prove challenging, since you must position the connector just so for it to slide smoothly into the port. That often means several tries to achieve the proper angle and orientation.

Those obstacles disappear with USB-C because, in addition to its smaller size, it is designed to be reversible — with no up or down orientation, just like a Lightning cable — and the cables can have the same type of connector on both ends.

For a huge percentage of mobile photographers — from amateur snappers to creative artists — the iPhone is the camera you always have with you. Every iPhone packs an undeniably great camera. But, as with DSLRs or mirrorless cams, the more you shoot, the more variety you crave.

Swapping out lenses at will helps you create a vast mélange of visual adventures with your iPhone. Our roundup of the best iPhone lenses shows you how to find the right external lens or lens kit for your needs.

You have in your hands a brand new iPad. Now what? Sure, you can just go ahead and use it au natural. But consider: While iPads may look like hulking slabs of aluminum and glass, they are deceptively delicate. They cry out for protection.

Gauging which is the best case to safely secure your tablet is not for the faint of heart, given the myriad options out there. That’s where our iPad case roundup comes in. We’ve scoured the best reviews, including our own, and looked at buyers’ favorite cases on shopping sites like Amazon.

Then we gathered our picks into several categories, depending on how much you want to pay, what type of protection you need, and any extra functionality offered (like keyboard cases). And we’ve also put together a list of runners-up — cases that are pretty good, or even great, but just didn’t make our cut.