Experience with 30W PD Charger?

Framework Laptop 13
1

Hi,

I am looking for a way to keep my charger plugged in on my desk, but charge as slowly as possible, so that I can keep the battery cycles to a minimum and at the same time being able to conveniently unplug my charger and use it to charge something else without having my laptop shut down (which would be the case if I disconnected the battery).

How slowly does a 30W PD charger charge the laptop? I only use the laptop for web browsing and office work (Excel,Word) and the odd YouTube video here and there, so I am expecting 30W should be enough to at least not have the battery drain, but charge slowly instead.

2 Likes
2

I have used a MacBook Air charger while operating the screen and watching recorded video it does continue to charge, but slowly.
I believe this one is rated for 30 watts.

Going to a 45 watt Samsung charger showed a noticeable increase in charging speed while doing the same things.

With anything lower, it seems to trickle charge when off. Probably wouldn’t try to use anything lower than 25 Watts.
A 20 watt charger did boost the battery when the computer was shutdown, but it wasn’t fully charged even after 6 hours.

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3

Hi, do you have any update on this, does it change just fine or do I have to use more powerful charger?
That’s for the reply.

4

The default charger you can select at checkout is 60 watts, so for day-to-day use, going below that isn’t an awesome idea, but can be done. I personally use a 100 watt brick for my Framework, but generally staying above 60 watts and using a quality charger (GaN would be good), is all you really need to worry about.

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One of the early BIOS updates for the 11th Gen FW13 was to set a charging limit.

The is probably included in most recent computers.

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Hey so yes I used a 30W PD charger for school (which was more portable) and a 60W one at home. The 30W one is good enough for slow charging and usage for light workloads like browsing, media consumption and typical office work (Word, Excel,PPT), but it won’t work for gaming and if you stress the CPU too much it can sometimes throttle. But when you require portability (I just use the 30W for my phone and for my FW) then it definitely does the job.

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Battery charges at 1C max, on a fw13 you have either a 55 or 61Wh battery. A little bit of math and you have your answer. This assumes your laptop is off. At idle IIRC my 7840u uses ~7w win11.