Does the power brick matter when charging USB-C devices?
Does the power brick matter when charging USB-C devices?
Yo everyone. I'm trying to understand how USB power works with batteries, hopefully this is the correct community to ask. We have so many different devices that can be charged with USB-C, yet all the power bricks and power banks have different voltage, amps, watts. Can I use any USB-C brick or power bank with any device and battery and it must intelligently never draw over the limits of the power source?
I thought that USB-C is made for this yet I can read reports that people damaged their Nintendo Switch because of a power brick. How careful do we have to be when charging our phones, tablets, laptops, gaming devices? What exactly to look out for when deciding what to plug in where? Thank you very much for any replies.
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Yes, it is not possible for a USB-C charger to deliver too much power to a device. You should be able to use any USB-C device with any charger - with three caveats.
Firstly, not all USB-C chargers will go up to the maximum limit of your device. If you have a 5v 2A charger supplying 10Watts - that's going to take a long time to fill your device.
Secondly, not all USB-C devices support all possible charging profiles. So you may have a charger which can give one device 65W but not another.
Thirdly, the cable matters. A cheap £1 cable isn't going to be able to to charge at maximum power. Get a cable which is specified for the job.
Here's my review of a USB-C charger which experienced these problems - https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/06/review-ylpower-87w-usb-c-charger-msh-87pd/
Thank you very much. I have a follow up question. Is it OK to charge a device which has an original charger of 65W with say a 10 or 22W charger? Is it just the charging speed that's affected or are here overheating concerns as well?
It can actually be marginally beneficial for the device to be charged with lower speeds than it has the support for. It's kind of like with a car, even though it can run at 120km/h without issues, driving it at 60km/h leads to less wear and tear.
Lower charging power leads to less heat generation as well. So if you charge your phone every night, I'd choose a 10W/22W charger for that purpose, while if you need to charge quickly while at work or say on a train/airplane or whatever, the 65W can be more suitable.
If a device needs 65W and you give it 22W one of two things will happen
- It will charge very slowly
- It will not charge at all
There is no risks of overheating.
That's very cool. I checked my laptop and it has USB-C Power Delivery, does that mean I can try to charge it with my Switch charger? That one gets 39W on its 15V output which my laptop has to support as well, being PD compliant?
Yes, I had to at one point charge a macbook with a samsung tablet charger (because I left the mac brick at work). I had to shut down the mac every hour or so to let the battery get some charge in, but both the mac and the samsung plug are still working fine to this day.