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Laptop has a 90W (USB-C) charger, my new monitor has a USB-C connection so I just want to use that to connect the display (and hopefully charge the laptop) - monitor is 65W output apparently, just trying to get into my head whether it'll just charge slower or may actually have a bit of a hard time and I don't particularly want to overload the monitor (or indeed the laptop). Can't see me doing much on the laptop that'll make it run at full tilt.
Am I going to end up frying anything, or is the worst case I'll use a bit of laptop battery and/or basically just trickle charge it?
Am I going to end up frying anything, or isthe worst case I’ll use a bit of laptop battery and/or basically just trickle charge it?
It’s the latter.
I don't know about the monitor, but my work Dell laptop complains constantly if its getting anything less than 90W.
The answer is ‘it depends’
It will absolutely charge the laptop.
It may not, however, be able to provide enough power to run the laptop meaning even in use it will operate as if on battery and slowly drain. The laptop software might also piss and moan about this.
Check the specs of the laptop, it may have been supplied with a 90w charger but it may also only need 60w.
Finally, the monitor will only deliver its maximum. You won’t kill it so it’s safe to give it a go. Try it out and let us know.
About 3 months ago my dog decided to chew through my laptop power cable whilst I was using it. Fortunately the low voltage side.
Was in a bit of a tiz as I needed to get work done for the rest of the day and as I WFH couldn't pop down to IT to easily grab a replacement. Managed to convince the laptop to keep on running using my 33w phone charger. Definitely wasn't losing battery power but was charging very slowly. This was an Acer laptop.
If you have a Nintendo switch or a reasonably powerful phone charger test it with that.
I've had a HP laptop that uses a USB-C connection to Charge.
It was full-bore charger or nothing. It wouldn't entertain a phone charger (inc fast charger) or a lower power supply. I assume that is something software based in the internal power supply board preventing battery charging ?
macbook pro will happily use as much power through usb c as it can get. Stupidly, the supplied usb-a/charge/hdmi adapter only passes through ~80w, regardless of your charger, so if you run decent workloads (i do) the battery will drop all the way to zero eventually whilst plugged in. Muppets.
My Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga 4 won't charge on anything other than it's 90W USB-C charger, it throws a proper wobbler and flicks up warnings bout batter damage and all sorts, but then again it'll do 10 hours on power save mode.
I can charge my laptop with a 33w phone charger. Saves me lugging the PC charger around
It depends is the right answer. There are a few articles around looking at just what a confusing mess USB C is. This is the first that came up on a search -
https://www.androidauthority.com/state-of-usb-c-870996/
Most of the time a laptop charger will charge a laptop while you're using it so will be rated above the normal power drain. But power consumption depends how intensively you're using it as well.
One thing to watch out for is not all USB-C ports are the same, my Huawei will only charge using the left port but only output the display on the right port.
Also I think it might be similar on some monitors, the USB-C for the display isn't one that can deliver that much power, I think that's what my Dell manual said. It has another "downstream" port that can be used to charge.
Just checked and my monitor can deliver power out of the display port it's the secondary port that's limited
Most likely the laptop will go into a low power mode as well as trickle charge to the battery. Stopping CPU boosting to higher frequency etc.