DELL 130W Laptop AC Adapter versus a Replacement Adapter
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ส.ค. 2024
- DELL 130W Laptop AC Adapter versus a Replacement Adapter
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In this video I compare a Dell 130W AC adapter from a few years ago to a replacement adapter with a USB C port. I meant to get the USB C port Dell but I bought the wrong one. I’ll update the description with the data from that one once I have it too, I don’t expect it to be any different.
Dell Model: HA130PM130
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I use this charger all the time (including now)! Thanks for the video. I had no idea where the tingly feeling came from on my Macbook, now I understand.
Thanks for watching. The tingling is actually from leakage current through the power supply. It is usually on the order of microamps but you can feel that if the voltage is high enough. There is debate on how safe it is to connect the two sides together.
@@AllThingsOnePlace Thanks!
Thanks this is exactly what I expected
Yeah, I guess I was diving into the wishing well.
Good video! Looking forward to the Dell USB-C adaptor review. The results don't surprise me; all the big OEM laptop manufactures (Dell, HP, Lenovo) generally make good quality power adapters. Also good to see PFC turn on at 25% load...
You mean they have good OEM partners that make them for them? None of those companies make their own power adapters.
Yes. Very true. Made by big reputable brands like delta or lite on.
@@LGNilsson Sure, if you want to be pedantic...
@@gloveyourway2000 well, it matters, since not everyone watching the videos here and reading the comments understand that there's a difference.
@@LGNilsson To you, yes it matters. Others see as OEM charger vs cheaper knock-off charger, which is the whole point of the video...
The underlying difference is that the Dell adapter is often furnished with equipment under a support contract with Dell. This means Dell has a real economic incentive for that adapter to not cause support cases that cost them to resolve. In the end, in my experience, that boils down to the Dell adapters surviving years longer than their aftermarket alternatives.
A similar incentive is in play with Apple and AppleCare. It’s no coincidence that today the most reliable 100W+ USB power supplies are from Dell and Apple. Companies respond to incentives. There’s not much incentive for Anker to make a reliable power supply if they never feel the support cost.
Thanks, yes, that makes a lot of sense. Apple, Dell, HP, or any other larger OEM, just wants them to work and be reliable. Compared here the OEM (I looked at the USB one in a short), is miles ahead of the replacement version.
My scout troop does electronic recycling so getting good used dell or hp adapters is the way go to. Amazon basics looked decent in your chart too.
Nice! Yeah, those adapters, tend to be quite good. The replacement here is junk. I tear it down in another video? I don't remember if that was in this one or not. But either way, nope.
Even though I am not a fan of the Dell brand, I got to hand it to them, they made a nice power adapter. Not only does the Dell power adapter provide the full number of watts its rated at, (infact it can do more!) it has active PFC for efficiency, and has a connection to ground, so your safety is secure. The OEM adapter however doesn't care about your safety, has no active PFC, but does manage to reach the required amount of watts output. But who freaking care about that, if the freaking thing electrocutes you from not having a connection to ground? We get it, China has no problems with burning your house down, they hate America anyways. But just more the reason to buy OEM, or better then OEM.
Thanks! Yeah, this is far from my best work but it was something to show how well tested and performing the Dell adapter is versus a 3rd party replacement adapter. There are so many replacements it is hard to find the original which led me to buy the wrong one. I don't want to say they did bad here but it should at least have some kind of safety listing. Lacking PFC isn't the worst thing, lots of adapters do that. But yeah, it also just isn't that efficient compared with a lot of modern offerings.
The SEC logo with the QR is the Chile energy regulator (Superintendencia de electricidad y combustibles), nice to see it by default in newer devices
Thanks! Yeah, these laptop adapters are crazy with the markings but I think it's great to cover global markets.
Any reviews on the GMM brand chargers? Someone on slickdeals linked the desktop version and it looks very similar to the Baseus one.
Yeah, I've had a few of those to look at for a while now, haven't made it onto the bench yet. I also have another device similar to Baseus to check out. Evatronic.
Any thoughts if Dell's *TINY* 24W charger used on the Dell Venue 11 (micro-usb) could charge (albeit slower) a Dell Laptop via Usb-C?
My Dell's laptop's original USB-C charger is much bigger (65W), but I wouldn't mind picking a tiny Dell 24W charger and just swapping the Micro-cable for a USB-C.
That's a good question. Odd combo. I bet it doesn't use PD so it probably won't work with USB C devices but something to try out. I'll look around for a used one.
I'd be interested to see a review of Dell's adaptor and power bank combo. They used to sell two versions with different sized batteries, but it seems they only sell the larger PW7015L now.
Thanks for the suggestion. Yeah, the adapter is probably pretty uninteresting but the power bank should be worth a look.
No surprises there. Even my OEM Acer 65W barrel plug adapter for my laptop has no PFC, but to be fair it is lower wattage. I would be curious to see a teardown of one of those sketchy adapters. I have seen "ebay special" adapter bricks of this type where they had heatsinks which ran down the entire length of the adapter, violating the primary-secondary separation. I think Big Clive even has a video of one with an isolation fault from a component on the secondary touching the heatsink, causing the output to go live. Suffice to say there is a reason why we do safety testing, and those listings matter!
Yeah, I've done a bunch of teardowns of the real low wattage adapters and found a lot of no separation situations. I should tear down this 130W replacement to see how they did inside this one. I hope this one is a little better it is not really rock bottom price but yeah no listing means a corner was probably cut somewhere. Diode gone wild and Big Clive always have good videos on the dangerous side of things.
Thanks for reviewing this .
I’m currently using the same Dell power charge ( original) for my laptop dell precision 5560 , so any advice on which power charge ( smaller preferably ) that can provide 140 W same as the original laptop charger ?
Right now, nothing comes to mind. This is probably the smallest adapter in this power range, having to support the 6.5 amps on one port is tough to find.
@@AllThingsOnePlace I do apology for late reply and I do appreciate your valuable feedback. Btw I recently got Anker 737 power bank and tested for dell precision 5560 and yet didn’t charge it as it’s original adapter.Anker claiming 140W PD on their specs which failed to k opinion , is that statement technically correct ?!
Thanks
@@MusallamJab I don't think so since the Dell expects higher amperage and lower voltage, the Anker achieves higher power using higher voltage instead. So, the Dell simply can't negotiate for the highest power delivery mode in the Anker.
Okay , got ya , thanks alot
Do you know what dell does to make the 130w usb-c charging proprietary instead of following the usb-c PD 3.1 standard?
I’m see on Anker’s website and others that even if you buy the 140W charger that is usb-c PD 3.1 compliant, they state that it will have degraded charging on various dell laptops like the xps 15 due to the proprietary charging dell used on usb-c for the higher wattage devices.
Yeah, it needs further explanation. It is using a different data transfer on the cable so it won't even negotiate above 90W with non-dell parts. I couldn't find anyone who actually reverse engineered the protocol online. So, they get the USB certification by limiting the wattage to non-dell-proprietary devices to 90 watts, but then if you plug in a dell it'll let the USB C port rise up to 6.5 amps. That is the difference in the way it moves power, more current versus more voltage. The 140W chargers use EPR, 28V and 5 amps (the recognized current limit for USB C connectors and cables, plenty of data why this is). Dell pushes the current beyond this point rather than doing the more efficient thing and increasing the voltage. They do not follow the guidelines of a standard that has been out for a long time. Not just Dell, all the others are doing this too except Apple is the only one bucking the trend and actually going with good practice here, well sort of. Apple still makes you buy the 'magsafe' cable to get EPR to the laptop. Which is a complete cash grab.
In fairness Dell was doing this long before EPR was a thing. This behavior is from May of 2020, EPR wasn't even in spec form until May of 2021 and wasn't in a real product until October 2021. They're also only crossing 1 connector since the cable is bonded directly at the charger end.
That's not to say I wouldn't love to see them deploy EPR of course.
@@BillyONeal Yep, I understand. Also, they'd need time to implement EPR of course but there was some good discussion about why they'd never implement it on reddit, keep it within their own ecosystem and keeps better control of reliability.
@@AllThingsOnePlace that’s unfortunate. Fingers crossed that Reddit is wrong
Long comment warning:
Very nice video you made
Probably too late because this video is 7 months old at this point of writting this but anyway:
The mention of the non standard USB-PD on the USB-C port really surprised me especially
Because I got new laptop (Lenovo Legion 5 15ARH7H) with USB-C charging and I wanted to get new USB-C charger for it because of portability because I ain't lugging around a 300W brick
So the laptop claims it can charge with 135W on USB-C and so then I go "Oh I should get 140W charger for me" so then I'm choosing around but I don't like the options for 140W chargers so then I forget about it.
Some time goes by and I'm searching for USB-C speeds and other info in the official user manual of this laptop then I find the page about USB-PD page and it lists the following voltage and current ranges:
20 V, 3,25 A = 65W
20 V, 4,75 A = 95W
20 V, 5 A = 100W
20 V, 6,75 A = 135W
So I calculate it to get the wattage and then I remember and go and check the official USB-PD voltage and current ranges and I'm like "What the hell is that!?" so I go onto the Lenovo forums and of course no help and after some other findings I find the official Lenovo Legion charger and I think "That's odd" but yea I realized that the 135W (and 140W for some laptops) is non official USB-PD voltage and current range so then I'm disappointed that I nobody told me this and that I don't get 135W via USB-C. I would actually buy the official charger but 1. it doesn't come in EU plug (only US plug) and 2. it only has one port. Surprisingly despite what it might seem the official Lenovo Legion USB-C 140W charger does support USB-PD official voltage and current ranges so at least that's the plus.
So to end with some last words: I also read more comments under the video and I think that having 100W charging via USB-C than just 65W via USB-C but still it kinda pisses me off but hey I'm gonna give Lenovo some points like actually listing off the voltage and current ranges in the user manual and providing chargers that can work with their official laptops and other 140W devices. But still the charging should have been with official USB-PD voltage and current ranges
TLDR: Wanted to get USB-C charger for my laptop realized the 135/140W voltage and current range is non-official USB-PD and there is official charger for laptop but it isn't with EU plug or with multiple USB-C ports was pissed off about it then realized my laptop can at least do 100W via USB-C than only 65W via USB-C
Also will provide feedback about charging because I haven't gotten any charger yet
Tried it with 30W charger but USB-C cable with display showed it is 1W so idk
Hi, the warning made me wait a while before reading until I had some time. But believe it or not I try to stay up to date on first posts at least although at some point I am not going to be able to keep up with that anymore. Comments on comments I can't keep up with.
So, the main thing in your table versus a 140W typical USB charger is the voltage isn't 20, it's 28, so it is an EPR range voltage on a USB C PD power brick. Lenovo, Dell, HP all extend the power level by cranking the current, which doesn't follow the power delivery standard which limits the current to 5 amps on USB C cables and connectors (which is already pushing it). You are completely correct that it isn't compatible though. The laptop manufacturers could very easily add support for 140W USB charging at this point but as of now, Apple is still the only one I know of with an available product with this technology. Framework is working on it and a few others have announcements but I haven't seen any product available yet. It's been available for years now.
They should let it work with a 30W charger too, but maybe not operate. Annoying that they restrict the lower power level too, but yeah slightly better that they list the modes it does work with.
@@AllThingsOnePlace
Hello
I wanted to write a update for you
So here it goes
Reply to your comment: That's true they could extend the EPR range voltage but no clue why not, maybe costumers aren't complaining enough?
I don't know honestly but yea it's annoying
And that 30W charger thing I think that might be because of battery being too big? or maybe the laptop needing just more power to charge the battery but I don't honestly care in my case but still kinda neat
Also update to my charger situation:
The laptop charges just fine with 100W and 65W but also can charge with 45W but only in sleep mode/hibernate mode/shut down
(No popups or annoying hiccups even tho there is loads of warnings about USB-C in the manual of the laptop but that's probably because of the 20 V, 6,75 A = 135W mode they got)
Also I bought the UGREEN CD226 charger for this and basically I realized it was bad (I don't mean in the nerdy stats you did), wattage was constantly being in mode of lowering wattage and then reseting to 95W and repeating constantly, charger overheating and buzzing/squeaking of the charger. And yes I knew what I was getting myself into but this is even worse than having no PF or safety mark because it literally is a danger. Anyway filed a refund for it and now I'm searching for new charger that has at least 3 USB-C ports and 100W PPS mode and maybe long mains cable that is removable but no luck so far so I kinda giving up on it for now
Again I don't really need it for now because I don't travel that much now
But still might need it for future because again travel reasons
Honestly I might forget about it all and just buy one charger for Laptop only and one charger for Phone/Tablet/SmartWatch if that's a good idea
Again again I might need to think about it
So yea gonna think about it
Will you be testing the discharge efficiency of the xtar pb2s 2023 version ? Maybe it’s charging efficiency too?
Yeah, that is a cool one, I will definitely test that one. Looks like it'll be a while before it arrives but should be fun to try a few batteries in it.
@@AllThingsOnePlace I have an olight seeker 2 that I edc and I have 2 hot swap propierty 21700 for it from olight and the xtar is the only brand I’ve found so far that can charge them outside of the flashlight ( only specific models ) and the xtar makes my hot swaps way more useful now (long term testing still needed )
Obviously the cheap one isn't a relabelled OEM version, as the Dell one is made by Chicony which is a wellknown Taiwanese manufacturer, whereas the cheap one is made by some random Dong Guan based factory I've never heard of. It's important to check who the OEM/ODM is when buying these things. That said, the power brickt that came in the box with my Acer 4K monitor has no label at all...
Yeah, makes a big difference. I have started to see how sketchy lower end adapters make their way into the market on products that should come with better adapters. Audio products are getting real bad, little amplifiers come with the death bringer transformers with literally no separation all to save a penny.
Dell said it support 100w type c charger on xps laptop but when I use 100w gan charger with 100w cable, it only reconize as 65w charger. How to get 100w?
That's a trick Dell plays. The Dell 130W USB C charger also only acts as a 90W charger for other devices. It won't run up to 130W unless it is a Dell laptop plugged in.
Could you do a diy on converting dell power charger to usbc charger for newer dell laptop. I have a bunch of old power charger but not in usbc interface
Yeah, that could be an interesting one. The Dell supplies are usually very good quality.
I hate the cost, but I have yet to see a knockoff get to equal terms to an OEM... It´s super interesting with your machines measuring absolutely everything, can you review a Ugreen GaN USB-C? interested to know if they´re feasible options while traveling.
I've looked at lots of Ugreen GaN devices. They are generally functional. Some have safety listings for some countries but some don't have safety listings at all. In general UGREEN does cost a bit more.
Thank for great video.
I would recommend you some big charger
URVNS 245W Gan 3 Pro and 260W Charger
EXINNO 300W Charger
Artmu GE610 230W, GS210 155W
Verbatim 200W, I think it has the same as Wotobeus 200W
About laptop charger
I recommend Lenovo C135 135W and C140 140W for Legion series
Thank you for the suggestions. Yeah, I think you are right on the one adapter being the same.
Thanks.
You are welcome.
Could you recommend the best travel charge 100-140watt for multi device phone, tws , laptop and etcc ? It could power adaptor or power strip ( like baseus 100 watt ). Btw if it possible i prefer baseus, anker and uneed if it possible because that 3 brand is the one that my country available with.
Yeah, the Baseus 100W multi port wall adapter is probably the one to go with.
@@AllThingsOnePlace for the 140 watt do you recommend baseus ?
@@stevencen4076 I haven't done any long term testing with it but functionally it seems like a good device.
sir between this two anker product anker 30w and anker 45w which can i use in the future??
The 45W nano II is a better charger but I do have videos coming on Ankers newer offerings later this week.
@@AllThingsOnePlace okay sir thank you so much i will wait for that video
Awesome thanks!
No problem!
I have one of the square 100w Dell power brick that has a barrel jack. And i noticed that those barrel jack one has a data pin to communicate with the Dell pc or laptop. The wire of the pin is easy to break if you wrap the cable around the brick. When it broke, the cpu will be limited to 0.6ghz. Dell seems to be tricking the cpu that it's overheated so the clock speed is all the way down. It's probably their way of preventing people to use clone or knock off chargers but it can happen on genuine ones. You can disable it by using software but it only runs after windows is running so your laptop will boot slower and it comes back after windows update
One type C bricks I don't get the slow down, only on the barrel jack ones
Yeah, the extra pin connected to a chip that identified official dell adapters. They still do this with USB C over the 'cc' line to figure out if the adapter can go beyond 5 amps in some cases.
Shargeek Storm Premium bigger one Power bank, When are you doing the review especially the temperature heating warning issue ???
I haven't done that one yet. I had a lot of requests for some smaller power banks so those will be out first. Plus that first Shargeek thing was terrible so I don't want to spend more money on their stuff.
Can I find small adapter to replace dell adapter from your experience? :( please advice us we need adapter replacement of this dell 130w to be for in the go..
The dell adapters are proprietary in output so the usual USB output devices won't support the higher current mode since they can't assume you have a rated cable, etc. These are fairly compact devices, the cables take up more room than the adapter.
@@AllThingsOnePlace So as I understand from you is that I do not have to find high watt adapter as a charger for my dell laptop in the go? :( sadly I was looking for that..
@@AhmedZ3iM Not saying that either but in many cases it is true, the laptop will operate from 100W in most use cases just fine. The issue is if you really stress the machine, video rendering or heavy gaming, then you may exceed the 100w power budget and need that larger adapter. But yeah, in terms of separate 130W-20V adapters these are basically it.
@@AllThingsOnePlace Okay let us say we need it only for charger without using the machine, so something portable more than 130w and we can take it on the go. What do you recommend from all the experience which you get it to test out all the adapters?
Sorry to bothered you this was A very important thing for me since we need to take one adapter for all our devices in the go.
Thank you.
@@AhmedZ3iM I don't really have a recommendation in that category yet. That is kind of the plan though to evaluate all other types of power supplies also. So, far I looked at a few mean well power supplies as stand alone devices.
please help me decide which is better for me to buy between these two products of anker anker 511 (nano 3) 30w or
anker powerport 3 nano 20w ??
I'd go for the 511. The extra 10 watts lets you charge even a laptop in a pinch.
@@AllThingsOnePlace thank you
@@AllThingsOnePlace sir last question between this two anker 30w and anker 45w which can i use in the future??
please help me i want to buy charger that can i use in the future
@@burgerthingz974 I am going to be looking at a bunch of Anker 45W devices with Friday, between nano 2 devices the 45w is a little better.
Plot twist they both do the work lol
Sort of. The 'fake' doesn't have the correct protocol, so likely would stop at 90W on a Dell Laptop. The replacements are fairly poorly constructed as well.
my ugreen 100w charge my xps 17 only with 65w and also my anker battery bank 737, dell is blocking any charger frome charging the xps over 65w, but their own charger is charging it with 130w
Yeah, I don't like that. I have a slightly newer HP laptop and I noticed it is very picky about chargers, OEM Dell or HP charger no problem, basically anything else is hit or miss. Worst part about the machine is locking down the charging compatibility, and the user manual doesn't say anything about it. Sad that apple is leading the way with 3rd party charger compatibility.
I hate how Dell DRM lock their laptop's charging capabilities ifwe use third party chargers. I just bought a Baseus 140w charger thinking I could use it to replace the original Dell usb-c 130w charger, because mine just stopped working for no apparent reason. Nope, it will only output 65w and no more...
Yeah, Dell and HP are up there with the power adapter non-friendliness and they don't plan to change.
Heyo! apparently, this product has the Nemko mark (N with a ring) which means its safety tested In Norway. Not sure how trustworthy this fake charger is though. for all i know, they just slapped it down
Thanks! I wouldn't be surprised if it is faked on the cheap product, wouldn't be the first time I've seen that, I did a teardown, this thing isn't great inside. Still haven't ripped the dell apart yet though.
Best to stick with OEM
It certainly appears that way.
@ 2:22 - Ichthyosis detected?
No idea. I’ve been to dr for skin issues. Basically said this looks fine call if it gets worse. No itch or pain. I expect nothing more from USA healthcare. YT would take 10 years at current channel growth to pay for bad health insurance in the USA, ha. But this isn’t a job. Anyway yeah I’ll try to hide more, longer sleeves maybe?
@@AllThingsOnePlace No please don't hide anything, just a fellow Ichthyosis person that loves working with my hands too, also I just subbed ❤
@@therealist2000 Ah, yeah, then sounds like business as usual. I should move somewhere with a humid climate, ha.
I do not understand why you focus on power factor correction so heavily in these videos; it's important to electrical utilities and from a grid management perspective in aggregate, but is completely irrelevant to the end consumer that you're ostensibly writing reviews for.
The fake adapter (which has admittedly abysmal power factor) will demand 1A of reactive current at full load on top of its real current. The NEC permits a 5% voltage drop to the farthest outlet, which for a 120V 15A circuit means maximum of 0.4 ohms of resistance on "your" wiring at least after the meter (in fact probably covering more than that). That works out to 0.4W of wasted power after the meter that the consumer actually pays for, or 0.3% of the output power. At lower load, it's an even smaller percentage. Since residential consumers only pay for real (not apparent) power, this very tiny resistive loss from the extra current shuttling back and forth is the _only_ component you pay for as an end user.
The (very small) efficiency difference between the two adapters is a way more dominant factor in the losses the consumer actually sees and pays for. If the knock-off adapter was even 1% more efficient than the Dell (it isn't, but it's only slightly behind) it would actually be _cheaper_ to run the knockoff with no PFC than the official Dell adapter. Looking at it another way, the idle consumption for the Dell adapter (which occurs all the time) is in the same ballpark (hundreds of mW) as the resistive losses caused by the fake adapter at full load (which the device will almost never operate at) so it makes more sense to emphasize both idle parasitic consumption and conversion efficiency *well* above power factor.
Now, do I really think we should be continuing to sell power adapters with power factors this terrible? Not at all, but that's a job for the standards and government regulations on what can and can't be sold to consumers in the first place, rather that misleading consumers themselves into obsessing over a parameter that will not, in fact, cause them any direct harm or cost them any meaningful money. Highlighting that a device does not comply with power factor standards that it is supposed to meet is important (as non-compliant devices should be pulled from sale), but I would really prefer if you stopped implying it was going to cause this massive amount of wasted money to the person buying the device.
tl,dr: resistive losses are absolutely negligible in AC household wiring (especially for things at electronics power levels), and consumers only pay for the real power component. It's important to be aware of power factor and which devices comply with which standards, but it's not going to save you any money as a consumer or result in a somehow "better" experience or outcome as a user.
Thank you for the detailed response! It is exactly the kind of conversation I want to encourage. You are correct in the math, and it is true the resistive losses are all you pay for as a consumer. The comparison in this case is in the efficiency, these two power adapters are very close to each other. The losses you pay for will be higher with the replacement adapter though from both the efficiency and the poor power factor. I include that specific math in the video on replacing a wall wart with USB video, I should do it more. It shows it is cheaper to the consumer to use a high efficiency non-pfc adapter in terms of real cost. I don't hide it but I have standardized that power factor bit a little too much and it needs to be re-written to be clearer to consumers, 100% agree with your assessment.
The grid concerns itself with poor power factor from essentially linear sources, as these tend to be larger devices anyway, motors, drives, etc., they don't even consider higher THD in many technical papers (higher meaning like 100%+). In a house hold small power adapter, this is easily absorbed and doesn't matter. At 130W, a non-linear load starts to reshape the voltage waveform and cause large amount of distortion, I can see this easily in test equipment and I can see this effecting performance of other equipment plugged in. Yes, this adapter will probably spend most of it's life at 50% load or less but you don't generally have one adapter in your house.
Stack a lot of these up and behavior and performance of other devices is effected, I want to do some analysis of leakage current as the AC waveform is distorted by other power devices. This leads into the issue non-linear current consumption issue of switching power supplies and PFC but yeah probably way too advanced for my crumby channel, ha.
Another thing I tend to harp on is energy efficiency standards which set the bar quite high several years ago. Meeting these was a great first step. Now, adding PFC to some of these higher wattage adapters can squeeze an extra couple percent of performance from these adapters. Going from 70% to 80% was easy. Going from 80% to 90% was more of a challenge. Getting 90+% is the next step and it will require some challenges. But the question is, is it worth pursuing a more efficient design? Or, going after a couple percent savings? There are multiple paths too. As many of these adapters do, achieving a PFC of >0.9 with PFC is actually almost meaningless. Getting to 0.8 mitigates all the issues for wattages under 300, if we want to talk maximizing savings to consumers. In the case of these two adapters yeah, it is an extra 2 watts or so of loss not being shown. So, say its 87% instead of 89%, the Satechi 165W I looked at (yes much more modern) did 93%, 94% on 230V and that matters.
Do you think I should just calculate that value out? Just show the 'effective real percentage efficiency' with say 0.4 ohm resistance? Then not mention power factor at all? I didn't really plan the channel to be this thing but it is what people seem to watch so, certainly not trying to spread misinformation and I'd rather it be more clear so improvements are constantly being made, obviously still have to check the getting a video out box. This video was more of a check the box kind of video if you couldn't tell. I do want to switch to a more efficiency focus. Maybe just mention it has or doesn't have PFC? Maybe take that line out of the data all together. It has VA in it already so people who know can see if it has PFC or not. What metric should go into the chart in it's place?
Sorry for the long response. I really do like the engaging comment, this is the point of making videos. tldr, I agree. I can do better.
@@AllThingsOnePlace Thanks for the response, and great points here. I think including at least some information on power factor is worthwhile; at least noting it informationally (if correction is present, and at what power level it turns on, and what the power factor value is) allows anybody who cares about power factor on these kinds of devices to make an informed decision. Mostly, the issue I have is that the way it's described and weighted in the rankings, power factor is ending up as a much larger deciding factor than I feel is fair, given typical consumer priorities. Either excluding it as a factor from your final scores (or at least reducing its weighting, and not marking adapter columns in red for bad power factor in the summary charts, or at least mediocre power factor) so that the overall impression more closely matches the important factors to a consumer would make the reviews more broadly useful to people who don't have the background to tease out the relative importance of each score themselves.
To me, I definitely want it called out clearly if a device advertises a standard that includes power factor specs like DoE V/VI and does *not* meet those specs; either you don't put the label on there, or you do and you make darn sure you meet the spec properly with the real devices you're sending out to consumers, not the "golden" sample you shipped off to the testing house. Plenty of shenanigans happen in this space! Would also be nice to see an isolation test, although you might not already have the equipment for it. Usually only the very cheapest of no-name adapters fail this, but it's an instant no-buy if so.
Aside from the usual non-performance stuff you cover well (connectors, renegotiation, physical properties of the adapter, supported profiles etc), efficiency (both idle power and losses under load) is IMO top of the importance from a performance perspective. The quality of the power outputs I think needs more emphasis (vs what the adapter is doing on the AC side); are they noisy at high or low load, how do they respond to load/line transients, how much do the outputs sag across their operating voltage range, are there cross/loading issues between the different ports etc). These kinds of things can be especially important when charging capacitive touchscreen devices, where a noisy DC output on a USB power supply can actually cause the touchscreen to malfunction when plugged in which can be quite annoying to the user, and is definitely something I'd want to know about before buying a device!
It would be very interesting to me personally to see the effects of a highly distorted AC waveform on things like leakage or efficiency of _other_ devices, although this is a pretty niche topic and definitely outside your usual review subjects.
Thanks again for making these videos; they're highly informative, and provide information that is absolutely unattainable anywhere else! I would love if this kind of information was included with the products, but in the meantime your channel is an invaluable resource for people trying to source a suitable power adapter/bank for their needs.
Don’t reward garbage clone makers in China…
They dominate the replacement market though. So, I think it needed to be made from a content perspective? I hope I was clear enough to get the official one.
china makes the real ones to dummy