A lot of hubbub was caused by the discovery that the Pixel 3's wireless charging was limited to 5W on third-party pads. Even though the device was clearly able to fill up at 10W with the Pixel Stand, other brands of chargers weren't able to supply that much power unless they were accepted into the Made by Google program. The Pixel 4 eschews this ridiculous restriction and can charge wirelessly at up to 11W, even on third-party Qi pads.

The Pixel 3's listing at the Wireless Power Consortium says it supports up to 5W, whereas the Pixel 4 can go up to 11W. We verified this on our end and were able to pull 8.4W on a third-party Qi charging pad that supports 9W. 9to5Google's Justin Duino got up to 10.8W in a separate test.

Left: 8.4W in our test on a 9W pad, measured with the Inware app. Right: Justin Duino's test.

This confirms that the Pixel 4 family has finally let go of that silly restriction regarding third-party chargers. So you no longer need the Pixel Stand or Google-approved hardware to fast-charge your phone wirelessly.