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Are there long-term negative effects on laptop when using a lower wattage charger?
Hi all,
I recently bought a personal dell laptop which came with a 130W charger.
Coincidentally, my work laptop is also a Dell, but uses a 65W charger.
As I planning to travel (and bringing both laptops), would there be any problems with me just bringing a 65W charger to charge both laptops?
I did get a Dell warning on my personal laptop when I used the 65W charger saying it detected that it is not plugged into a 130W charger and that charging may be slower.
I am fine with slower charging, but I want to ensure using a lower wattage charger will negatively affect my personal laptop long term because I used the wrong charger. Thank you for your insights
jphughan
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November 19th, 2017 20:00
It won't do any damage, but plugging a 65W adapter into a system designed for a 130W adapter will not only reduce charging speed, but will probably also cause the system to throttle CPU and GPU performance, potentially significantly, so you may prefer to carry just the 130W adapter even though it's a bit larger.
jphughan
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November 19th, 2017 21:00
Just to clarify my above answer a bit, there's no problem at all plugging a HIGHER wattage charger into a system designed for a lower wattage charger, which is why I suggested bringing ONLY the 130W adapter, since you could use that on both laptops without any negative side effects on either one. Sometimes systems will actually charge faster than normal that way, but worst case they simply won't draw as much power as the charger can provide. The system always controls the amount of power it draws; the charger doesn't "force" extra power into a system that can't handle it.
I have an XPS 15 that requires a 130W adapter, an XPS 13 that requires a 45W adapter, and a Latitude 7480 that requires a 35W adapter, and I just have a 130W charger in my living room that I use with all of them. No issues whatsoever.