Question about buying Universal Charger for Laptop

Hello. My niece has a laptop DELL Latitude D630. Unfortunately, his charger burn these days. So now we decided to buy a universal charger to be able to used with other machines at home. The question is what I should have the characteristics to look. Features written in the old charger are voltage - 19.5V, a current - 4.62A. I watched several charging voltages with 18,19, 20V, but no such right to 19.5V. Furthermore, the different voltages has a maximum amperage they submit. What should be the value of the electricity which should to look for - more, less or just 4.62A? Thanks in advance for your answers.

 

It depends on how the charger works.

Anything that provides less then 4.62 A is not going to work well. You are going to end up trying to draw more power then the charger can provide and the laptop will shut down.

On the other hand if the source isn't current controlled (i.e you can't select a specific current value) there is the chance that you could draw too much Amps and cause some damage to your parts. I really doubt you can get good current control in a sub $50 power supply. If your computer is smart enough to control its power draw, it might be fine. If your computer isn't smart enough to control how much amps it draws, then it might be better to provide less amps if you aren't gaming (i.e using a lot of power). Still if you do something intensive it will probably just shut down from not being able to draw enough power. I don't know enough about computer power draw to help you there. I don't know if a computer will draw more amps then it is rated for.

The reason you get different max amps at different voltages is simple. Your PSU has a maximum wattage it can provide (it probably tells you what this is). Watts = I*V = Amps*Voltage. Your laptop requires 90.9 Watts, so at least a 100 watt PSU is required to power it. Make sure your PSU has that many watts.

You need 19.5 Volts to power your laptop right. You might damage some components with more or less. You can take the risk if you want. I wouldn't recommend long term powering a laptop without the correct voltage.

I would recommend getting a new PSU if you can't get the right voltage from that one. I bet you can get an OEM one for like sub $20 on eBay. If you need universal, look for one which can adjust voltage by +/-0.5 and not +/- 1. Not getting the correct voltage is bad for any long term PSU and is going to kill life of your components.

 

Try this particular one, I have two and one is over 2 years old already.

120W Universal AC Power Adapter/Charger for Dell Laptop | eBay

 

Hello, Stan, Dell uses proprietary chargers(a eeprom that communicates with the laptop's BIOS) on their machines so you'll need a Dell charger.

Cheers