With all the order of new regulations and the advancement of technology, the time will soon come where we will use the cable USB-C as the new standard for charging laptop batteries and other compact equipment.
However, the sad and confusing reality is that you won’t be able to use just any type of cable to recharge these devices, and the game of capabilities has become much more complex than ever before. Here we try to explain it.
As many of us remember the European Union has become in recent years the main driver to start using USB-C connectors as the base for any type of chargers in the industry.
The main affected at the time and until now has been Apple, who have continued to use their Lightning cable despite the fact that charging speed technology has evolved much further since its launch.
The USB cable has in fact established itself as an obligatory reference for the sector and practically any modern smartphone already uses this type of connector.
But we are about to enter a new era where its charging capabilities will already support more robust and demanding devices, such as laptops.
However, this will represent a latent problem for future consumers for a simple and compelling reason.
You won’t be able to use any USB-C cable to charge your laptop for this simple reason
Over the years we have become accustomed to the fact that upper-middle-range smartphones onwards have a fast charging system. But we have not stopped to think deeply about what this term is really about.
The USB-C cables themselves have different qualities in terms of their voltage, intensity and power. We describe below its different classes and the precise order of its evolution, based on an interesting and extensive article by colleagues from HardZone:
- Voltage / Current / Power: 5 V / 0.1 to 3 A / 0.5 to 15 W
- Voltage / Intensity / Power: 9 V / From 1.67 to 3 A / 15 to 27 W
- Voltage / Intensity / Power: 15 V / From 1.8 to 3 A / 27 to 45 W
- Voltage / Intensity / Power: 20 V / From 2.25 to 3 A / 45 W to 60 W
- Voltage / Intensity / Power: 20 V / From 3 to 5 A / 45 W to 60 W
- *Voltage / Intensity / Power 20 V / From 3 to 5 A / 60 W to 100 W
- *Voltage / Intensity / Power 48 V / From 3 to 5 A / 144 W to 240 W
The final two on the list, highlighted with an asterisk, are the new types of USB-C cables that are beginning to hit the market and that will have the ability to support charging laptops and all kinds of notebooks.
On top of that they will have technology USB Power Deliverywith which it will be possible to adapt different charging profiles, so that those more powerful cables can work to charge smartphones, tablets and other devices safely.
However any other cable with power from 45W to 60W will not work at all to charge those laptops.
So in the near future it will be necessary Consult the packages of the USB-C cables that we buy to verify that they have the logo listed at the end of the image above or a range of 240 W.
Broadly speaking, if they do not have the capacity to load data in Gbps, it is because it only works to load robust devices, such as a laptop.
