1810TZ Charger rate results

Done some testing of chargers and charge rates. My non scientific findings as follows.

Battery start capacity 91.3%.

After 19 minute charge time -

Using 70watt charger :

Off 98%
On low power 98%
On full power 97%

Using 30watt charger :

Off 98%
On low power 97.5%
On full power 94.5%

To conclude the larger charger mostly maintains charge rate regardless of load on the computer.

The standard 30w charger maintains its charge rate on normal use, yet go to 100% CPU and charge rate drops by around 50%. It possible this could be far worse with an external USB HDD attached, 3G dongle and so on.

It seems that the computer can consume a little more than the 30w charger can output, but only of use in extreme circumstances.

Even with a larger charger the charge rate may drop if you had the computer consuming excessive levels of power, not sure what point this may occur.

Additionally batterymon charge rate indicator did not support the real world test.

 

Thanks to whoever picked me up on calling it a charger. Lets call it a mains adapter or a powersupply.

Clearly if a laptop can require 30W to run hard, and can also need 20 - 30w to charge a 30w supply cannot let it do both

The internal circuitry will support the operating need first and charge the battery with whatever power is left.. So it is likely that using the laptop while charging it will see it take longer to charge than not using it.

The only way to be sure what the maximum charge rate allowed is is to try it, and for the record some laptops (Certainly Lenovo, Dell etc where the power supply has a thin 'data' centre pin) can interrogate the charger, decide if it is or claims to be original and the BIOS will then report 30W power available or 60w power available to the power control circuits and ACPI. I have not seen the extra pin on an ACER yet but they do other cunning things instead.


I did originally say this slightly shorter to LaraMichaels

" Re: can I get a faster charger for my 1810TZ?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It looks like the original charger is a 30W type so charging would take 2 -3 hours.

Acer list a 65w charger on their shop page for the 1810T... http://store.acer-euro.com/home/powe...=3&i=82&si=160

Doesn't guarantee it will charge faster, but should allow a 2 hour charge even with the laptop on. . .


Your test is interesting.
On my 5942G charging a switched off laptop initially takes 40W, dropping to 35W at 80% and 25% above 90%
Running the laptop takes anything from 16W to 51W

Acer supply a 90W adapter to accomodate both

 

Hi decworld,

This is super interesting, many thanks! If I understand BruBoo's comment at the bottom of his post correctly, then numbers could look really different depending on how charged the battery is at the beginning of the test, correct?

Is that what you meant, BruBoo? If so, it would be really interesting if someone with access to both the 30W and a more powerful charger would reproduce decworld's test starting with an emptier battery (eg, at 0% or 30%). Would the numbers reported by decworld look different?

By the way, this forum is great, thank you for posting! : )

~l

 

Yes, A good DIY test would be to start with a fully empty battery, laptop off or on and see how many % you could get up to in 30 mins in each case.

If anyone want to repeat the test I used a mains power meter to look at the total power drawn from the mains. (would stress mine is an i5 /HD5650 not an 1810TZ but the same principles may apply)

First I measured with the laptop off and the battery empty. 40W
then having measured idle Watts with the battery full (17W)
I could swap to charging with windows at desktop idle (57W) and watch the battery gauge. did enough to stop it indexing /defragging/screensaving etc.
Other chargeing power readings done by Subtraction of the 17W with final 100% charge seeing the total back to only 17W.

The reduction of power as the battery charges is entirely expected - common in most fast charger designs.

The implication is that the first 80% of charge is where the adapter rating will matter most if charging with the laptop inuse.

The second implication is that only by charging an empty battery while running 3Dmark benchmarks could I get near to hitting the 90W the adapter was rated at. (our lucky (?) i7 owners seemingly hit 130W+ at this point if they don't get throttled first) Playing a blu ray disk took 31W so clearly a 30W adapter would not be enough for my system, but some makers might have tried to get away with a 60W adapter to save 10cents.

For pedants the idle consumption of the adapter was 6W so all 'power used' readings might be argued to be inflated by 6W plus 10% for adapter inefficiency. However measuring total system mains power input is the standard approach used by most PC mags

 

Hi,

I think my test was limited and dependant on the battery meter been accurate.

A full charge/discharge test would be good, but based on charge and discharge time this will take a couple of days of someone's time.

Regards.
Dec

 

Actually you only need the meter to be consistent

I think the real issue here is that the charge rate is not going to be improvable unless recharging occurs during gaming or DVD watching.

If so a more powerful adapter is cheaper than a second battery and may be worthwhile