Another reason I'm glad I bought the LG Ultrafine 5K with 94 watt power delivery for use with my MBA M1.
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30W USB‑C Power Adapter rage
- Thread starter Revireco87
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So... you intentionally click-baited folks.
Nice. Really community-minded. *rolleyes*
Here's some more actual data in case anyone's interested.
This is what CoconutBattery shows when a 65W charger is plugged in:
I only got this Mac yesterday and as you can see from the fact it only has 2 cycles my battery history has no useful info in it yet, but if there's still interest in a week or two I can post screenshots.
It doesn't seem to be taking a full 61W of charge though which is the potentially interesting thing here. It's only charging ~10W above what the stock charger would provide anyway. As I look at CoconutBattery now it continues to hover around the 40W area. I haven't seen it get up to 60W. Right now it is at 39.53W.
Seems pretty clear to me the computer just takes the power it needs. While it can theoretically accept 61W I wouldn't expect much real world difference unless you are charging from empty or close to it. At 40% it clearly takes only 40W (or just below) from a 65W source.
As I have a 65W charger here anyway I'll see if I notice any difference in real life use as I have more time with the machine.
Anyone who is properly interested in this, get CoconutBattery installed and see what it reports from the stock charger vs a 60W+ one.
This is what CoconutBattery shows when a 65W charger is plugged in:
I only got this Mac yesterday and as you can see from the fact it only has 2 cycles my battery history has no useful info in it yet, but if there's still interest in a week or two I can post screenshots.
It doesn't seem to be taking a full 61W of charge though which is the potentially interesting thing here. It's only charging ~10W above what the stock charger would provide anyway. As I look at CoconutBattery now it continues to hover around the 40W area. I haven't seen it get up to 60W. Right now it is at 39.53W.
Seems pretty clear to me the computer just takes the power it needs. While it can theoretically accept 61W I wouldn't expect much real world difference unless you are charging from empty or close to it. At 40% it clearly takes only 40W (or just below) from a 65W source.
As I have a 65W charger here anyway I'll see if I notice any difference in real life use as I have more time with the machine.
Anyone who is properly interested in this, get CoconutBattery installed and see what it reports from the stock charger vs a 60W+ one.
Would you be kind enough to provide the data from the battery preference panel as I did so that we could track the charging over time and compare it to mine (12.5%/h).
I've been using it for such a short amount of time I'm not sure if this will be of any use to you, and I don't plan to discharge and recharge my battery for an experiment because that'll just reduce its lifespan, but here's what my battery panel looks like if you can glean anything useful from it.
The previous charge shown on this was also with the 65W charger.
If you want I can provide another screenshot when I reach 100% on my current charge from ~40%.
P.S. As of right now, at 72%, my machine is only taking in 27.34W from the charger.
Many thanks for posting.
Honestly, it looks similar, about 12.5%/h up until around 80%. This can be observed during the first charging session at 06.00-09.00.
However, I haven't used CB on this new Mac, so I don't know how many W it draws with the 30Wmax charger.
Yeah I really don't think the difference will be in any way significant unless you are charging from empty or close to empty. CB clearly shows the machine only takes an additional 10W when charging from 40% and as it gets above 50% it quickly goes down to the 30W range. I imagine if I discharged to 1% it'd pull more power but that's not how I use my laptops.
Out of pure curiosity I wouldn't mind seeing the stats on an MBA charged from 1% at 60W though. That's where any difference is going to actually be noticed.
More data on this would give a clearer picture across different machines, setups, use cases, etc but I highly doubt that investing in a 60W+ charger is going to produce noticeably faster charging especially on a machine with such strong battery life to begin with (i.e. most people will be "topping up" the battery rather than having to charge it from empty too often).
I will likely end up using the 65W charger a lot anyway purely because it means less wire clutter and because I hate the fragility of Apple cables. But I don't expect it to supercharge my laptop.
Anyway here is a screenshot of my battery preferences showing the charge from 40% to 100%. If there is any difference to be noticed it'll be more visible on this charge.
So, now people are raging because they bought a computer that was advertised as having a 30-watt charger, and it came with a 30-watt charger?
If the MacBook Air has all-day performance, or close to it, charging time is not going to be that important anyway. You have to sleep sometime, right?
If the MacBook Air has all-day performance, or close to it, charging time is not going to be that important anyway. You have to sleep sometime, right?
Agreed. And if for some reason anyone really wants a 60W USB-C charger even Apple themselves sells an Anker one for just £30. If you can afford a £1k laptop you can afford a £30 charger lol.
People have to find something to whine about, otherwise they would just be able to sit down, shut up and enjoy their machine instead of taking to forums to try and gain attention to satisfy their ego's.
Use the Macs, or next time you won't get them ! just an empty box !
Hello Revireco87,
For your third-party higher wattage charger consider
Nekteck 60W USB C Wall Charger [GaN Tech], PD 3.0 Fast Charger[USB-IF & ETL Certified] with Foldable Plug
Item NK60WGANUS
Enjoy your M1 Air! I'm eager for mine to arrive.
Best, KM
(Edit to add: Removed faulty link. It's available on Amazon with cable for ~ USD$20. I have no financial interest.)
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Since I happened to have each sitting here figured I'd help out with this...
30W - 56 x 56 x 28mm, 106gm
61W - 74 x 74 x 28mm, 208gm
(I measured with an old manual slide caliper, so could be off by a mm easy enuf)
when should I charge my M1 air? Run it down to 10 percent then change to 100%? I will never use it plugged up I don't believe. it is an ultraportable for me so I don't plan to use it at a desk.
Avoid full discharge and full charge both. Keep in the 20%-80% interval if possible, but don’t bother to get too anxios about it. Since the MBA has such a long battery life, it’s easy to keep it from completely draining, and it won’t go through as many charge cycles. Unless you mistreat it, the battery should stay healthy for a Very Long Time. You’ll kill your MBA by spilling beverages into it, or by dropping it - and that is pretty much the only way, since there are no moving parts.
Internaut
macrumors 65816
Ummm... Really dumb question. A lot of the aftermarket (Anker and Rav Power) supplies are 65w. Will 65w fry my MacBook Air?
In the not too distant past, you were lucky to get 3-4 hours of battery on a fully charged laptop. Near 20 hours on an m1 laptop is MORE than generous no matter how much you travel. And it comes with a less a wattage charger because it doesn’t have a fan, touchbar, 500 nits screen brightness, etc to run like the Pro.
No. That's just a maximum - the laptop will only draw what it wants to use and won't draw more. Those aftermarket (well known brands) will be fine. Be aware the MBA apparently will not charge at more than ~41 watts per reports posted here.
Also worth noting - with USBC you can also provide *less* and the laptop will use it to charge more slowly or even just to extend battery life. Thus if someone is choosing between MBA and MBP solely based on battery life, a 20,000maH USBC-PD battery pack would be cheaper.
You must not travel much. I'd rather lug around the 30w charger than a heaver one, and with the improved battery life, charging time is a non-issue.
Charging to 100% should be ok. If the battery health management is enabled it reduces the max capacity. It says 100% but is at least 5-10 below the max capacity.
You do see the irony in your comment, yes? Criticizing a post.... because it was criticizing a post... LOL
Even more amusing since you've made zero positive contributions to the thread, whereas I've made two helpful contributions within the six posts before yours.
Cheers. Have a nice day.
Thanks so much! So the MBP+charger is 0.4 lbs heavier than MBA+charger (3.45 vs. 3.03 lb).