Videos
Can you use a charger with a lower wattage than your laptop?
You can but you should try to avoid using a lower wattage charger than what your laptop requires. A 30W charger can’t supply sufficient power for a 90W laptop’s needs. At the least, your laptop is likely to run out of power while you are using it. At the worst, you could damage the laptop or create dangerous problems for the charger.
The under-powered charger won’t have enough power to give to your laptop and it therefore has to work harder to try to match the needs of your laptop. The danger is that this can cause overheating and potentially fire.
For more details read our explainer What wattage USB-C charger can you use to charge a MacBook?
Can you use a charger with a higher wattage than your laptop?
Yes, you can safely use a laptop charger with a higher wattage as the laptop will only ever draw the amount of power required at the time. If your laptop was supplied with a 35W charger it will never draw more than 35W unless being fast-charged, so you can use a 65W, 90W or higher charger. To reassure you even further, you can safely charge your 5W AirPods with a 240W charger if you wish.
If the charger has multiple ports that extra juice will mean you can charge other devices at the same time.
I have an Anker charger that lets me use the 60w or 100w port. Anker website suggests my macbook pro 13" to require 61w charging. Do I use the 60w or 100w port? Which is more beneficial? Will it harm my battery or macbook if I keep using the 100w port?
Anker Website: "MacBook Pro (13-inch):This model requires a power supply of 61 Watts (W). It's optimal for lightweight, everyday use."
Hello,
Currently I use a 2020 13" M1 MBP - and while I have searched around for a bit, I couldn't find any info regarding the maximum charging wattage of the M1 MBP (only the M1 Pro and the M1 Max MacBooks) - would a 70w or even a 96w adapter be viable to charge the 2020 MBP faster or does it max out at 61w? (aka the adapter I currently use) Thank you in advance.
Edit: If anyone is reading this on Google from the search results, I decided to buy the 140w charger. The 2020 13" M1 MacBook Pro only supports up to 94w of power from both of its USB C ports (using an Anker cable which supports up to 240w)
Edit 2: It only can take up to 60w - when putting it under heavy load via cinebench it only draws 59w according to al dente. When the load gets heavy it does 30 watts to the battery and 29w to the laptop itself.
Talking about the first retina MacBook pros that were introduced in 2012 and lasted until 2015. They all use the same charging port, but different chargers.
For example a 2014 13" one runs with 16.5V, whereas a 2013 15" one runs with 20V
Are those chargers able to regulate the voltage, meaning it just shows the max. voltage on the charging brick?
I assumed they don't, so am I damaging anything if I charge a 13" with the 15" charger or the other way around?
I recently lost my MacBook Pro charger that I was given when I first bought my MacBook. The 30W Charger Adapter that I bought is smaller than my old charger adapter, so I was wondering if this 30W Adapter was still compatible with my 2017 13 Inch Macbook-pro, or do I need to use the adapter that came along with my macbook? Is there a difference between the two?
Just asking because I don't want to end up damaging my Macbook due to me using a weaker charger. Thanks.
Edit- I am pretty sure the charger that came with my laptop was a 60W btw.