Best USB-C Laptop Chargers 2020: GaN Inside Makes Them Super Light

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I would love to see the Aukey Omnia 100W with 2 or even 3 Type-C ports, with even 20+ extra watts, will be very good to replace all the chargers in a the bag, great to charge the laptop, phone and an extra device there.
 
As an electrical engineer this article really makes me cringe. Not because there is a lot wrong with the tests done, and also not the low technical depth. No, the contents are fine but the constant use of the horrible words wattage and amperage are offending and make my brain hurt. Now unfortunately these words have been misused so much that they have become part of the normal vocabulary, that's how languages work. However anyone who knows the proper words would never use those. So I hope you will use the proper words next time, they are power (or rated power) instead of wattage and current instead of amperage.

Now you might think, why are those words wrong when they are in the current vocabulary. There are two important reasons:
A) Because they sound stupid to anyone with a technical background, and someone using them will instantly make it known to the technical people they are dealing with a non or less technical person.
B) Because they are wrong, even though they are in the dictionary. The best explanation is to compare these with some other more known ones. For instance lets take temperature, temperature is expressed in Kelvin, Celsius or Fahrenheit. You don't say it's 23 temperature today, no temperature is what you are talking about and you can measure it compared to a reference, for example: "it's 300 Kelvin" is a valid expression. No lets say we have two objects with a different temperature. You can say object A has a lower or higher temperature than B, or you could even tell the exact temperature expressed in one of the usual units. But you never would say, object A has a higher Kelvinage then B, or Fahrenheitage or Celsiusage, that sounds ridiculous doesn't it?
If you aren't convinced try this with distance in meters, or light years or use weight in pounds or kilograms.
The only difference with wattage and amperage is that so many people have been misusing these words persistently that they have become accepted.
So remember this: power is measured in Watts and electrical current is measured in Amperes.

As an electrical engineer this article has offended me, unfortunately I am not a woman, a gay or black so I suppose this is not going to help me get any compensation in the current PC culture but I still hope some will read this and better their lives and start using power and current! (If you really can't tell, this last part is ironic)
 
@AeroWB Do you have an issue with the term "voltage"? It also appears in this article and would seem be another 'improper' term by your logic, but you didn't mention it.

Some other examples I can think of are mileage and tonnage. I'm sure there are more that I can't think of at the moment.

I've never seen someone take issue with the terms amperage/wattage (although admittedly I'm not sure how often they come up), nor do I take issue myself. I am also an electrical engineer.
 
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AeroWB said:
(If you really can't tell, this last part is ironic)
Click to expand...
It's also unnecessary. I really wanted to up-vote your well-written and logical post, but then you had to add that.

One thing I like about this place is the ability to have discussions on the basis of ideas. Unlike certain social media networks, things like race, gender, etc. don't play a part, unless you choose to inject it (in which case it's almost guaranteed to distract or derail the point you were trying to make).

I'm not trying to shut you down: it's your right to take it there (as far as I'm concerned), but I would point out that I like having a place on the internet that's not consumed by social issues, right now.
 
@TJ Hooker
Good one, I never thought about voltage though I wouldn't know another English term, maybe potential or something like that. In my native language (Dutch) we do have a proper word for that, and in Dutch people also use the voltage, amperage and wattage (written the same though pronounced differently) and those are all wrong. About the take issue this is somewhat ironic, I don't really care that much, though it does stand out in an article in negative way, so therefore I wanted to mention it.

@bit_user
I am sorry for the unnecessary addition. I agree it is good if there is place were we aren't distracted with all those social issues and can focus on something else. Unfortunately these things are permanently popping up everywhere where, and also in my mind. So the rebel in me pops up unexpectedly sometimes
 
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AeroWB said:
As an electrical engineer this article really makes me cringe. Not because there is a lot wrong with the tests done, and also not the low technical depth. No, the contents are fine but the constant use of the horrible words wattage and amperage are offending and make my brain hurt. Now unfortunately these words have been misused so much that they have become part of the normal vocabulary, that's how languages work. However anyone who knows the proper words would never use those. So I hope you will use the proper words next time, they are power (or rated power) instead of wattage and current instead of amperage.

Now you might think, why are those words wrong when they are in the current vocabulary. There are two important reasons:
A) Because they sound stupid to anyone with a technical background, and someone using them will instantly make it known to the technical people they are dealing with a non or less technical person.
B) Because they are wrong, even though they are in the dictionary. The best explanation is to compare these with some other more known ones. For instance lets take temperature, temperature is expressed in Kelvin, Celsius or Fahrenheit. You don't say it's 23 temperature today, no temperature is what you are talking about and you can measure it compared to a reference, for example: "it's 300 Kelvin" is a valid expression. No lets say we have two objects with a different temperature. You can say object A has a lower or higher temperature than B, or you could even tell the exact temperature expressed in one of the usual units. But you never would say, object A has a higher Kelvinage then B, or Fahrenheitage or Celsiusage, that sounds ridiculous doesn't it?
If you aren't convinced try this with distance in meters, or light years or use weight in pounds or kilograms.
The only difference with wattage and amperage is that so many people have been misusing these words persistently that they have become accepted.
So remember this: power is measured in Watts and electrical current is measured in Amperes.

As an electrical engineer this article has offended me, unfortunately I am not a woman, a gay or black so I suppose this is not going to help me get any compensation in the current PC culture but I still hope some will read this and better their lives and start using power and current! (If you really can't tell, this last part is ironic)
Click to expand...
I am also have an EE degree, and yes the terms you listed are a bit nebulous. However, your little rant about PC culture and how you are not female, gay or black is why you don't get taken seriously - I am not sure what any of that has to do with anything. Go back to the right wing white male grievance sites, and stay off of tech sites - there are ALOT of non-white people involved here, some of them might be women, and some of them might be gay.
 
While I, too, lack an EE degree – is it just me, or is the methodology employed for this articles’ tests a flawed one? The reporting privileges the results from chargers that violate the Power Delivery spec – lauding devices that exceed not only their own rated power output, but also the negotiated PD contract that ostensibly gets forged between the UFP and DFP during device configuration. Isn’t that a bad thing? I mean, if my 2016 MacBook asks for 87W but ends up getting ninety-something, it’s great if the computer can productively cope with that kind of overvoltage – but that is literally not the deal that those machines negotiated.

Plus, we don’t even really know the particulars of said negotiation – according to the article, they used load testers set to deliberately overdrive the power supplies. A real-life, laptop-grade PD sink is a subtler construct, designed by dint of obediance to the PD rules to specifically not do this kind of thing. The fact that the RavPower supplies reset themselves under these contrived and extreme conditions is good behavior, no?

… For the curious, here is a fantastically well-written and rigorously illustrated article on this subject, describing the minutiae of a PD implementation bug (in Apple’s own hardware, no less!) that I would recommend to all interested parties.

But so, either way: I have both Anker and RavPower devices, and if someone were to buy me a beer I would tell them the story of how two of these namechecked GaN chargers – as well as an Innergie 60c – each individually dealt with sustained AC input power instabilities on the allegedly 120V/15A rail furnished to passengers on Amtrak trains… spoiler alert, the non-GaN Innergie was the least problematic on this one.

I would totally welcome a certified EE’s opinion on this, personally, for what it’s worth. Erm. Yes!
 
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