I am charging my laptop with one of the “quick charging” phone chargers right now, currently it says 5 hours until full charge. Does this wear out the battery faster or something? Or does it make no difference apart from taking a little bit longer?
Slower charging is generally more healthy for the battery, but faster charging is no problem as long as heat generation while charging is kept low.
This. I still keep my old 500mA phone chargers and use them on my phones to be gentle on the battery for slow, overnight charges. I am also a battery expert in my day job…
😁nice!
😄did you have the joy of working USB-C PD charging and dead battery with self protection and USB OTG support? (On embedded Linux 4.15)
(Plug in -> 5vSAVE due to CC pull down on default -> power negotiation -> agreement on 20v -> death of Linux due to short interupt of supply on Vbus and no power from battery because of self protection -> back to step plug in -> 5vSAVE)🤪
If you are using the laptop at the same time, there is a chance that the charger may not provide enough power to the computer to operate and force it to temporarily draw from the battery to supplement the power from the charger. This causes additional wear on the battery.
For example, if you plug in a 15 W charger and the computer wants to draw 20 W, it will draw it from the battery. Spikes in power consumption are not uncommon during ordinary use as the CPU will temporarily engage turbo mode during certain tasks, such as when it is loading a Web page or starting a program. Depending on your operating system, plugging the charger in may also cause the OS to disable battery conservation features which leads to more frequent spikes in power consumption.
None of this would be a problem if, for example, your charger delivered 45 W of power, because during those spikes, it just means the battery receives slightly less power as more of it is consumed by the computer.
If you are not using the laptop at the same time as you are charging it, I can’t think of any potential negative effects.
I think there should be written somewhere what the computer needs. For example 20V 3A ~ 60W. I don’t know how much voltage the super fast phone chargers have, but looking only at power isn’t enough.
Just for curious readers: I noticed some annoyance with my laptop, it has 100W mode, but only with the original charger. So just plugging it into a dock with original charger attached limits the laptop to 65W only. And if I tried (mainly out of curiosity) charging with an insufficient phone charger, CPU switched to 300MHz and everything got very laggy. The same thing happened when I connected two of the USB ports together :D
The required input for the computer is usually inscribed on the chassis at the bottom. However, the text is usually faint and can be easily rubbed off after the computer has been used for some time. Mine says 20 V 2.25 A.
There are also supported outputs on a charger, and usually the maximum power output mode is the same as the optimal input for a laptop it came with.
Good to know!
Slow charging is marginally better for battery life so as long as it charges faster then it drains your fine.
Really the only problem you have to keep in mind for charging is heat generation. As long as the tempature is fine. Then it doesn’t matter how fast or slow you charge.
Slow charging will generate less heat anyways
I have done this for years now and seen no problems. I have a Lenovo from my job and it can use and 85 watt charger for steady charging but my 4 bank phone charger is a 100 watt charger with the highest port charging at 65 watt if only 1 device is plugged in. It does fine with this, but i do get the message in windows stating slow charge. I only use this on trips to avoid taking more things than i have to.
Some of it is the cord, but usually the limiter is the AC DC adapter. “The brick” some would call it. The battery should be fine as far as my limited knowledge goes. Stay at 80% and below and you should keep the life of a lithium ion battery long
The 80% rule is rather out of date and doesn’t apply to modern batteries. Lithium doesn’t care, and most batteries naturally report 100% at 80%. So it’s already accounted for when needed.
I use my laptop charger for my phone. It’s super quick.
Depending on the charger, it may be exactly the same thing.
Go watch a video about the P.D (Power delivery) standard.
Macbook air and up use P.D2.0 (65W)
There is a newer version (PD3.0) that goes up to 100W, but it’s more expensive, rare and hasn’t really caught up as much.
Not really. It depends more on what wattage that the power supply can give, and what the laptop is willing to take. USB-PD is pretty smart, and will only give as much power as the laptop wants to take, up to the limit of the cable/power supply.
But if it’s capable of supplying the same wattage, it makes no difference if you’re giving it 65W by phone charger, or 65W by manufacturer power brick.
no problem at all, but in some cases the power drain on the laptop could be larger than the amount being charged which makes it kinda useless unless charging while in powered off/suspend mode.
No difference really, you’re good
