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I recently received a new work laptop in the mail. And IT had stuck a piece of paper inside explaining it is essential I only charge it with the charger it came
by city41 5y ago
I recently received a new work laptop in the mail. And IT had stuck a piece of paper inside explaining it is essential I only charge it with the charger it came with, other usb-c chargers/cables might not work and could possibly damage the laptop. I am very ignorant on usb-c, but to me it seems crazy it's come to things like that.
- maxerickson 5y agoHow true is it?
- Macha 5y agoNot working? Totally true. Damaging it? There's definitely historical evidence for it [1], but I think the situation is a little improved these days. I personally had a nexus 5x charger damage a Pixel 3a such that that charger and usb a-c cables were the only ones which would work in that device from then on. [1]: https://www.engadget.com/2016-02-03-benson-leung-chromebook-pixel-usb-type-c-test.html https://www.engadget.com/2016-02-03-benson-leung-chromebook-...
- donatj 5y agoFwiw, I have been charging my Pixel 3aXL with my Nexus 5X charger every night since I got the 3aXL a year and a half ago without issue.
- jazzyjackson 5y agoI had a pixel 3a melt its own charging port, drawing too much power from an aftermarket usb hub
- concinds 5y agoBad USB-C cables and hubs could brick M1 Macbooks as recently as February of this year before Apple issued an update.
- adzm 5y agoOff brand chargers are probably more of a concern than the actual cable. There are some really shoddy ones out there.
- neoromantique 5y agoNot very, barring some ridiculous chinese knock-offs. Normally low power cable wouldn't be able to negotiate more power than what it is rated for.
- frosted-flakes 5y agoYou can charge with any cable that supports that power level. The problem is you can buy cheap cables that don't meet standards and can burn up. Or, the laptop won't charge at all because the user's own charger doesn't support Power Delivery, and IT doesn't want to deal with supporting 3rd party chargers—I know my Dell XPS 13 won't charge over normal USB at all, and needs a 45W charger to charge at full speed.
- atatatat 5y agoLots of Nintendo Switch charger/dock anecdotes revealing issues here.
- mschuster91 5y agoMost of the anecdotes revolve around a specific faulty dock whose manufacturer thought it were a brilliant idea to implement PD with a microcontroller that used 9V signalling level, whereas the (standard compliant!) Switch PD chip expected 5V (with 6V max) and as a result, the dock fried the Switch's PD chip. Also, the Nintendo Switch Dock's male USB-C plug is a tiny bit more narrow to provide a smooth slide in/out (and the Switch-side female receptacle is standard-conforming)... un-licensed and thus unaware dock vendors cluelessly tried to emulate that and botched the tolerances, exposing the CC pins to 15V. See https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/08/heres-why-nintendo-switch-consoles-keep-frying/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/08/heres-why-nintendo-sw... for more. tl;dr: the Switch is standards-compliant, the problem are third party accessories.
- philistine 5y agoMy own work laptop is a bit old and has a barrel plug and USB-C. When the laptop is truly out of juice, only the barrel plug will charge it. So I can't leave it at work. YMMV.
- nikau 5y agoNot at all - its likely they wanted to reduce support calls from people who try and charge the laptop using mobile phone and other inappropriate chargers. I use dell, Lenovo, & apple PD chargers interchangeably without issues.
- IshKebab 5y agoYou can charge a laptop with a mobile phone charger. It just charges really really slowly (or probably not at all if you're actually using it).
- llampx 5y agoDepends on the charger and on the laptop whether that works.
- disiplus 5y agoi could not charge my late 2016 pro with my huawei charger (45w)
- hadlock 5y agoThe 2016 model will charge in sleep mode on a 30w charger, it's just glacially slow, 2-3% per hour at best. 65W seems to be the universal standard for day-to-day use with laptops.
- nikau 5y agoGenerally it has to be usb-pd and 45W or more in my experience.
- hadlock 5y agoI think that piece of paper spreading FUD is a simple attempt by the IT department to minimize the number of people trying to charge their laptop off of an 10-18w cell phone charger and generating charging failure tickets in the system Dell famously won't charge off anything less than 65w USB-C PD when turned on, and I think 30w when turned off. Apple will trickle charge when off, on 15w (standard phone charger) if the charger truly is USB-C PD compliant (about 50% of the time these days) Given that most people don't own a 65W USB-C PD charger (yet) I can see the IT department adding warnings in an attempt to avoid confusion and reduce the amount of extra work. That said, I've been using USB-C 65W chargers since the original Pixelbook came out + Nexus 5, and later Anker branded 65W chargers and I've never had any problems. I generally don't use off brand stuff though.
- viraptor 5y agoNot common, but there are models more susceptible to issues than others. For example I've got a Lenovo Yoga which breaks when connected to an apple charger. The touchpad starts to misbehave and if you put it to sleep, it won't wake up until you disconnect the charger. (no long term damage though as far as I can tell) OnePlus 6 phone behaves correctly, but gets much hotter with the apple charger than with its own / google nexus / lenovo.
- pantalaimon 5y agoThe Nintendo Switch famously has this problem on third-party USB-C docks
- skrap 5y agoI burned out my XPS 15 USB-C charging electronics by using a high-end charger. I think many laptops of a certain age were not rigorously tested for USB charging. Hopefully that's changing.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]