What are the minimal power adapter specs needed to charge the laptop (slowly)? E.g. will a 20W PD charger work?
Welcome to the forum.
When you say charge slowly, do you mean while the laptop is turned on or off?
If I recall, a 20W PD should charge slowly while the laptop is off.
While the laptop is on, it depends on the current power draw of the system. I don’t know how low you can get it if you do extreme power saving, and minimal screen brightness.
My question is about what the charging circuit needs to function. I assume the internal battery is either 7.2V or 10.8V nominal (2S or 3S LiPO) and a 20W charger typ only outputs 9V max so regardless of wattage it may not be a high enough voltage to charge the cells (even in 2S they need 8.4V if they’re std LiPO).
I’m also wondering whether PD is required or whether IQ works too. Why is this not simply listed in the specs? Or am I just not seeing it?
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Looks like you can get power usage pretty low. If the number are accurate / there aren’t any unaccounted losses, then it seems you could maybe charge from 20W PD while in use. It would be extremely slow though.
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Ah. If I recall, the Framework-13 will actually charge from 5v! As long as it’s USB PD, it will charge while off. 5, 9, 12, 15, 20v. Some early units did have a bug with 15v, but other voltages still worked for those units.
PD is required.
What’s IQ? I don’t really recognize it. Some Anker chargers have branding similar to IQ, I think. But’s that’s just a marketing term, not a standard.
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The internal battery is 4S of a special high voltage chemistry, which results in 15.4v nominal for the 55 wh battery and 15.48v nominal for the 61 wh battery.
The Framework laptop includes internal voltage conversion that allows it to charge from sources ranging from 5v to 20v (up to 48v on the 16" model).
PD is required for fast charging (although IIRC it will charge very slowly at 5v without PD).
What exactly is IQ? I’ve mainly seen that as a marketing term that Anker uses to mean a charger supports multiple charging standards (usually including PD).
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I just checked IQ: doesn’t work, even with a charger that can deliver 12V. So it requires PD. I found a 20W charger, need to stop hammering the laptop to see whether the battery % increases eventually 
. My quest is for a small travel charger, charging overnight is fine, heck 61Wh battery → 3hrs @ 20W (realistically probably 4hrs since it’s slower going at the end). I guess this also interesting if using something like a 47W PD charger for laptop and phone at the same time 'cause with that the laptop would get 27W and the phone 20W…
What is this IQ charger? Like brand, model.
That’s not a standard I recognize. Proprietary maybe? Or marketing term, not a standard. Some Anker chargers use the term IQ or “PIQ”.
I got confused and meant Qi / Quick Charge / Fast Charge … the USB-A fast charge protocols that can negotiate up to 12V, I believe. I have a 100W charger that can do 12V/3A over USB-A but the FW13 stays at 5V and draws 0.8-0.9A which, if it goes into the battery, would indeed provide a slow charge. But the bottom line is that PowerDelivery (PD) really is required for a meaningful charge… Thanks for all the info, it’s very appreciated!
How small are you looking for? Anker makes some really compact PD chargers.
In fact, the numbers you mention sounds like this one https://www.amazon.com/Anker-Charger-Compact-Foldable-Included/dp/B0BDKCBJ95
That should work. And it says it can do 45W if you’re only using a single port.
But yeah, you want one that says USB PD. There are several proprietary fast charge protocols. Qualcomm’s one is on a lot of devices and chargers. It became popular because USB was slow in creating an official fast charging standard that was fast enough. But now that very fast USB PD exists, the proprietary protocols are likely to slowly die off.
Yup, that 47W is what I’m considering. I have a Minix 65W which is awesome and has exchangeable plugs. The Anker 47W would be smaller and lighter (the 65W is heavy for its size!) A 30W is probably not enough for laptop+phone and less convenient 'cause single output. Although I could charge the phone via the laptop (overnight).
Right now I’m sitting here typing replies and browsing amazon for chargers hooked up to a 20W PD charger and the battery is slowly going down. I’m running a funky Linux distro (garuda-hyprland) where I haven’t dug deep into the power saving so it’s possible that light work @20W is possible once optimized… But other than in an emergency, 20W seems insufficient.
If you haven’t seen, there are some threads around with linux power saving methods.
It’s nice that we have a lot of users on different distros, so quite a few threads to pull info from. Can’t say I’ve seen garuda-hyprland mentioned though.
LOL! It’s not really released yet… Garuda is an Arch Linux based distro that is relatively similar to Manjaro but has more unusual desktop environments. Hyprland is a tiling window manager for Wayland. Very hardcore/niche stuff…
My t480s runs perfectly happy on 20w so I’d hope a much newer more efficient device would too.
The framework has buck-boost charging circuitry (as most pd powered laptops these days do, gone are the days of buck only) so if the ec would let it it could also run off 5a of 5v but there isn’t really a negotiating standard for that.
IIRC there was one generation of framework that had different mosfets than intended (component shortage and all that) in the buck/boost converter and was not capable of 15v pd.
If you’re looking for the smallest decent watt charger, the Anker 715 is among the smallest I’ve seen. Similar in size to the 47W charger previously linked but pushes 65W. Only one USB port though, which I understand could potentially be a sticking point.
The minimum I’ve used with my Batch 1 11th Gen FW13 is a 25Watt Samsung charger that come with my Note 20 Ultra.
I’ve also used a 30Watt MacBook Air Charger that came with my daughters Last Intel Version MacBook Air.
Any lower wattages don’t really work well, even with the computer shut down.
Tested a 15 Watt charger, once, and didn’t charge fully, even overnight.
@TvE I own this unit and can vouch for it working. Your battery may drain if you are charging two devices while also putting the laptop under heavy load.
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A little bit a tangent but related to “small power supplies”: why, oh why, does the FW power brick have a three prong cord? Is it not double insulated??? And why, oh why, is the power cable shipped with it (at least to the US) three times as big as the power brick itself? And why is the USB-C cable that comes with it thick and stiff?
Fortunately there are remedies, like:
Of course Amazon.com … - BTW: your fault if you buy & use this! Also it may not fit due to the size of the brick. If you’re not in the US no worries, they have alternates for other countries. And if you think that the ground somehow connects through to your laptop that’s not what my multimeter indicates, but I may have not stuck the probe into the USB-C connector correctly…
I think you’re the first person I’ve seen that is unhappy that the FW power supply is grounded. I have seen people say that they’ve experienced some laptops give the sensation of an electric buzzing / tinging & that a grounded power supply stops it. Grounded laptop power supplies seem relatively rare. Personally, I’m glad FW has it.
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Do you have any indication that your laptop is in any way grounded? There doesn’t seem to be any continuity between the ground prong and the USB-C cable. Maybe there’s a 1MOhm resistor, I didn’t check for that.
(I’m actually more annoyed at the size and clunkyness of the power cord. It completely defeats the purpose of a small brick. In fact, with the larger old-style laptop bricks it’s easier to wrap the whole thing into a neat package…)