Hi all,
I was wondering what’s the min. required wattage of the power supply for the FW12.
On their website, FW mentions 60W. Since I’m planning to buy a new power supply with multiple ports, would less than 60W also be sufficient, given that power supplies with multiple ports don’t have full capacity when charging multiple devices?
I would appreciate any feedback.
Thanks!
If you don’t care that it charges fast and you aren’t pushing the laptop very hard, you can get by with lower wattage.
I regularly use a 45W power adapter, and it works just fine. For light use (browsing, typing in a word processor, watching a video), I could probably get by with even less, but I’ve never tested to see how low I could use.
There is a community spreadsheed for the FW12 specifically: Framework 12 USB-C Charging data - Google Sheets
Source: https://community.frame.work/t/framework-12-usb-charging-database-your-help-needed
Personally use the Anker Nano World Travel adapter when travelling internationally - for it’s small footprint and versatility - which only provides 20W. It does work without a problem.
Generally use 45W or more everyday though.
There is no strict minimum wattage for the FW12 to accept input power over USB-C. The only requirement that I have noticed is that it must be 9V or above, it will not take 5V, basically it’ll ignore that a 5V source is plugged in.
All high-power chargers and most modern smartphone chargers will have >5V modes, so this is mostly okay. Even my powerbank, which has a 9V 2A (=18W) mode, works with the FW12–and although it doesn’t charge the battery directly, it does extend overall battery life since the system always prefers to draw power from external sources.
Obviously it is still possible for the laptop itself to charge other devices over 5V.
Thank you all for the provided the information.
I will have a look at all in detail and then decide which charger to get or are there any recommendations?
FL12, like other Framework Laptops, requires a USB Power Delivery charger. Although 5V3A is a PD rating, most if not all chargers have at least a higher rating like 9V2A the laptop will choose that and most 5V chargers don’t support PD protocol. It’s possible to use 5V3A PD under very specific condition like this example.
FL12 is likely using the same NVDC topology like FL13 shown here, the bypass is not enabled. The battery and the system rail are connected in parallel, downstream of the buck-boost, so there’s no “prefer”. It’s more like two water tubes one input the other output with the battery as the water tank in between.
Note: this is supplementary information not nitpicking your comment
If you have a PD charger for your smartphone it could be enough for the FL12. If you are looking for a newer one, 35W and over will charge the laptop while gaming, 60W and above will charge the battery at or near full speed. Make sure to read the voltage and current as well as wattage as some smartphone chargers use both proprietary protocol for its smartphone and PD protocol for other devices, the power for the latter is likely smaller.
I don’t have an FL12 but I have an FL13, according to my testing it supports 9V2A, 9V2.22A, 12V1.67A, 12V3A, 12V5A(very rare charger rating but works) 15V3A, 20V3A, 20V3.25A, 20V5A. The less powerful FL12 can negotiate 100W but draws at a lower wattage, which is normal. Using a low wattage charger will discharge the battery at high workload but won’t cause any malfunction.
There certainly still is prefer, there just isn’t “use exclusively”. As long as the buck/boost converter from the input can hold it’s output voltage above the battery 100% of the current drawn will come from there. As soon as it dips (because it reached the input current limit or transienst so fast it can’t keep up…) the battery will provide the rest.