Quick Tips: Tiny Garmin Watch $8 Keyring USB Charger

There comes a time in every watch users life where you get to the hotel in a far flung city, only to realize your watch battery shows 7%. Of course, the problem isn’t that it shows 7%, the problem is that you most definitely left your charger at home, or the previous stop along your trip. I’ve provided many an Amsterdam and Paris visitors over the years free or loaner charging cables, given the stupid quantity of them I have. However, that still doesn’t keep me from occasionally forgetting a charging cable.

But, there’s one little Garmin watch charging cable that’s come to my rescue a few times over the years because it’s *always* with me. Specifically, it’s on my keys. This tiny little plastic thing simply attaches to your keyring, and there’s a pretty good chance if you’re traveling, you’ve got your keys with you:

(Before y’all get worried about me showing my keys, I don’t even know what most of these keys are for these days. There’s only two keys I actually use there, which you can’t see. The rest are various bike/backup keys that frankly probably don’t even work.)

The other end of the adapter is a standard USB-C port, meaning, if all else fails, you can find someone, anywhere to loan you a USB-C charging cable for an hour. Or, buy one at any hotel/airport/gas station. USB-C cables/chargers are as ubiquitous as soda, but Garmin charging cables are not.

This means you can use your phone charger, laptop charger, or anything else with USB-C. As a reminder, the way the USB standard works, the device (e.g. your watch) requests the amount of power it uses. Then the charging block will deliver the requested amount. That ensures that a powerful laptop charger doesn’t harm a small watch. But it also makes stuff like this super easy, since the Garmin watches draw such a tiny amount of power, that literally any power block on earth you find, will deliver more than enough power for a Garmin watch (see my silly long post on that).

This little adapter works for any Garmin watch that has the standard Garmin charging port. There are a handful of current-gen watches that don’t (e.g. some of the MARQ series), but about 98% of Garmin watches from the last near-decade, use this charging port.

Note that data transfer works just fine too, no issues with copying files/maps/etc if you have to. Most critically, they’re cheap, just $8 for a two-pack:

– $8.99 for a two-pack of USB-C Garmin watch keyring chargers (7.99EUR for a two-pack  UK here)

In terms of durability, it seems fine. It’s been smashed around in my keychain for 3 years now. I’m not sure if I used it every single day if it’d be in perfect condition, but that’s not the point. Instead, it’s an emergency use thing – and it’s been perfect for that. It’s not a Garmin-branded accessory, which…is why it’s so reasonably priced.

Lastly, I continue to use a plethora of the Garmin charging pucks, the ones I talked about a few years ago. A two-pack continues to be $7 as well, and they’re just handy to have all over the place. A few people have said the connection gets flakey after a while (a year or so), though I’ve only had one of them die (out of the many I use).

Given they also cost ~$3/each, I’m OK with them having a shorter shelf life (since I seem to kill just as many Garmin-branded charging cables just as fast, though, their newer USB-C ones seem more durable). The desk charger linked below is still my main charger on my desk, some 4-5 years later.

– $6.99 for 2-pack of USB-C charging pucks (EU site)
– $8.97 for 2-pack of USB-A charging pucks (EU Site)
– $13.99 for a Garmin watch desk charging stand/cable (regular USB) (9.73EUR)

Note there are similar concepts for other watch brands. I’ve got an Apple Watch one, it doesn’t hang out on my keyring since it’s a bit bigger, instead, it’s just permanently tied inside my backpack. In any case, thanks for reading (or, supporting the site with the various Amazon links here).