I’ve been on a quest to find the smallest possible “travel brick” for my Framework 13, and I’ve spent the last week swapping between the Anker 715 (Nano II 65W) and the Anker 735 (Nano II 65W).
If you’re looking for a compact GaN charger, you’ve probably looked at both of these. They both claim 65W, but in the real world (and especially with the Framework’s power draw), they behave very differently. Here’s my breakdown.
The “Single Tasker”: Anker 715 (Nano II 65W)
This thing is tiny—nearly 60% smaller than the old silicon-based bricks.
The Pro: It is a dedicated 65W line. When I plug this in, the Framework gets the full juice 100% of the time. There is no “negotiation” lag or power cycling.
The Con: It only has one port. If you need to charge your phone, you’re either daisy-chaining through the laptop or swapping cables.
The “Multi-Tasker”: Anker 735 (Nano II 65W)
This is the one most people buy because it has two USB-C ports and one USB-A.
The Pro: Obviously, you can charge your laptop, phone, and earbuds at once.
The “Framework Problem”: This is where it gets tricky. If you have your Framework plugged into the top port and you suddenly plug your phone into the second port, the charger resets the connection to redistribute power. On my Framework 13, I sometimes see the “plugged in” notification flicker, and the power drops to 45W or lower for the laptop. If you’re doing heavy work, the battery might actually start draining while plugged in.
TL;DR / The Verdict
If you want the smallest footprint and a “set it and forget it” charging experience where you know your laptop is getting the max 65W, get the Anker 715.
If you travel with multiple devices and don’t mind your laptop charging a bit slower while your phone tops up, get the 735. Just be aware that the 735 “shares” that 65W—it doesn’t give 65W to every port simultaneously.
Which one are you guys using in your expansion card setup? I’m leaning towards the 715 just for the reliability, but the 735 is hard to beat for one-bag travel.
I bought the 715 when I built my FL13 and it works great. I don’t really see swapping the cable as an issue since it won’t normally need to be done for very long and the phone and laptop rarely need a charge at the same time.
There are some other things worth pointing out here, though:
The laptop can use more than 65W if it is both charging and under load. That’s the max charging rate, the power to run the laptop can stack on top of that.
Something I found after already buying this stuff was that Anker also makes a Y-cable for charging, which can take 140W. Maybe a good option if you don’t want to deal with multiple ports / cables. Similar logic applies, there is a chip in it that distributes the power.
I’ve been perfectly happy with the 715, but a 100W brick with a split cable might also be a great option.
Are you sure? It seems to support (and in fact, rely on) PD protocol. It has a small block partway through the cable at the splitting point which seems to be a controller, so it functions more or less as a charging hub. This is against the standard?
The product I was referring to is called “Anker 140W 2-in-1 USB-C to USB-C Cable.”
The problem of this (and the magnetic USB PD cable) is that transient load may cause a voltage spike. What’s the detail of the cable? Namely the voltage and current that makes up the 140W. Is it 28V5A or 20V7A(the latter is outside of PD standard). Also, how does it handle two outputs with different voltage request, does it have additional DC-DC converter built in? What if the two outputs request the same voltage, does the DC-DC get bypassed or the power pins are effectively connected in parallel? Will it reset the connection as OP described? What if data transfer is involved? There are lots of variables to consider and not all of them are written in the product description.
It looks like this Anker 2-in-1 usb-c cable does PD negotiation with both upstream and downstream, and can turn off each output, or buck-down to 5V 2A for either output. I don’t think this is a “hacky” adaptation of usb-c that has the same kind of risks as the magnetic-connector things.
(So here it looks like it can negotiate 20V 3A and then buck-down one output to 5V … the other case I’m less sure about, looks almost like it’s negotiating 9V and then bucking-down the laptop side to 5V 2A, but at 9V that’s more than 3A in, so more likely it’s negotiating 20V 2A and bucking-down to 9v 3A for the phone, and telling the laptop it can have 0.5A? hmm…)
With the description displayed, I think it’s safe for @arca9 to use the “cable”.
From what I understand, it has 3 “negotiators” capable of negotiation PD both upstream and downstream, and a DC-DC (likely buck) converter.
When a 100W or 60W adapter is connected. The high powered device will get up to 20V3A(if nothing is connected to the other output), lower if the otherport is connected to a smartphone or tablet, the first device will keep 20V passthrough but negotiate a lower current such as 2.5, 2.25A, and the second device will be DC-DC’d to 5~12V.
When a 140W adapter and two 20V devices are connected, the “cable” will negotiate 28V5A and DC-DC the output to 20V3A per channel with 140-120=20W headroom for energy loss in the DC-DC converter, the two output is connected in parallel, if one device is overloaded it’ll turn off the channel in the output port, DC-DC likely unaffected.
When a 140W adapter, a 20V device and a lower-powered device is connected, it’ll negotiate 20V 5A from the adapter and passtrough up to 3A to the 20V device, the other device will get 5~12V same as the first situation.
If it’s very advanced and has two DC-DC converters, it can connect two devices with different voltages and request 28V5A from the adapter. However in the picture it’s likely too small to do that
