For non-Tesla owners, what's your actual experience with J1772 portable chargers?

I have been using the dual voltage L1/L2 unit that came with my 2024 Leaf SV Plus, plugged into a NEMA 14-50 in the garage. It charges at 6.6 kW, which is the most the Leaf will take, so the unit isn't what limits me. On 120 VAC it's about 1.4 kW. I have owned four Leafs since 2018 and none of the portable units has failed on me. The one that came with my 2023 is still in a closet; that car was a lemon, but the cord was fine.

Speed depends on your car's onboard charger more than the unit. What are you driving

Mine shows amps, not kW. It matches what the car reports closely enough. Reliability hasn't been an issue in three years.

The indicator depends a lot on the unit. Some of the cheaper ones aren't measuring anything. They display the current they're offering to the car on the pilot signal and multiply it by 240 for a kW number. If your actual voltage is 225 or so, or the car is drawing less than offered, the display is just optimistic. I'd trust the car's number over the box. Honestly the whole reason this is confusing is that in the US we call the cable the "charger" when the charger is in the car. The box is basically a smart extension cord with a relay. In Europe you mostly bring your own cable to a socket and nobody thinks about it. Hopefully we head that way here too.

Small correction on the Europe thing... at least in Germany it's not really "bring your cable to a socket". Most people with a house put in an 11 kW wallbox, partly because there were subsidies for it for a while. The Schuko cable that comes with the car is called a "Notladekabel", literally emergency charging cable, and plenty of electricians will tell you not to use it every night on an old socket - same melted plug stories as here. Where we do bring our own cable is public AC charging. Those posts are mostly Type 2 sockets with no cable attached. That part I'd agree is nicer.

Bolt EUV. I know the cable isn't technically the charger, I just meant the portable box. Mostly I want to know if the $180 Amazon ones die after a year or if that's people exaggerating.

I can't speak for the Amazon brands since I have only used the Nissan units. Whatever you buy, check for a UL or ETL listing, and make sure the outlet is in good shape. Most of the melted plug pictures you see are from worn outlets or extension cords, not the box itself.

On the $180 ones, the failures that do happen are mostly heat at the plug end, not the box randomly dying. Look for a listed unit with a temperature sensor in the wall plug and a decently thick cable, then feel the plug after the first few full-length 32A sessions. If it's more than warm, that's the outlet or the plug telling you something. A Bolt will take the full 32A, so that check matters more for you than for a Leaf.