can I get a faster charger for my 1810TZ?

Hello,

I own a wonderful 1810TZ, which is a great machine. However, the extremely slow speed at which the battery charges greatly reduces its usefulness for me.

Is it possible to get a faster charger that will not toast my computer and/or me ?

Please don't insult me for asking this question, if I thought this was obviously a safe move I wouldn't be asking about it. : )

best

~lara

 

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/pow...-adapter-(65w).html?s=11&l=en&p=3&i=82&si=160

Doesn't guarantee it will charge faster, but should allow a 2 hour charge even with the laptop on. . . maybe someone else has tried this ?

 

You can, just make sure it outputs the same voltage, I think its 20 volts. The original charger outputs 1.5A. If you get a 3A one it will charge twice as fast.

 

Hi! Thank you so much for your great help. That charger looks terrific! This was the only problem I had with this laptop.

Bye!
~lara

 

First of all, it is not "charger" it is power supply.

The battery charging circuit is inside of the laptop. If it is designed to pull in 1.5A @ 20V it will most likely do just that no matter what power supply you would use. It is very unlikely that the charging circuit is designed to "detect" how much the power supply can provide and use more amps and charge faster.

One option is to find/buy standalone battery charger that can charge it outside of the laptop.
It is also possible that the battery may charge faster if the laptop is switched off.

 

Or you can find faster charger at some famous E-Commerce sites, such amzazon, buy.com. But the fast charger is not good for your battery.

 

Hi bluehope,

Which charger are you referring to? Is it the same Acer 65W model that BruBoo linked to?

thanks
~lara

 

Can't "fast charge" the battery. The laptop itself charges the battery slow to prevent the cells from heating up.

 

I tried an 85w and a 90w charger, neither charged the battery any faster. The only thing I guess is that when the comp is charging and in heavy use the 30w standard charger may not be enough and so the charge rate drop below optimal.

 

Lara, he was talking about external "charging stations" where you remove the battery from your laptop and plug it into charging station. They sometimes can charge the batteries faster and they are popular in enterprise environments where many people use the same laptop type and just exchange the batteries with the charged ones.

Try searching Amazon for acer external battery charger. Sorry I cant post a link, still working on my 15 posts .

 

Hi 0xDEADBEEF,

Ha, I see! Many thanks, I will look into one of those. I guess that would be useful if I got a second battery, that way I could always keep the charged one in the laptop and (while using the laptop) more quickly charge the depleted one using the external charger. Though this setup does require carrying around one more battery around than I currently do.

bye
~l

 

Hi decworld,

Thank you so much, this is really useful to know. Is it by any chance easy for you to check whether while the computer is in use battery charging with one of the more powerful chargers is faster? (Ie, if using a higher wattage charger makes

charging time while the computer is in use == charging time while computer is off

? I am now testing with my standard 30W adapter whether there is a noticeable difference between charging with computer on vs charging with computer off. Of course, only if this is really easy and convenient for you to do.

Bye!

~lara

 

Hi,

I found that regardless of the consumption of the computer the charge rate using the 30w charger remained the same.

The problem is the charge rate by batterymon is an estimate only.

When charging it is using around 17w to charge, and with everything going full wack on the computer it consumes 20w, so thats 37w total.

Either the charge rate is reducing (i think unlikely) or the power supply is capable of greater capacity than stated.

Regards

 

Still, faster charging would be cool.

 

UPDATE :

Connected to 85w charger.

AT idle device was charging at 13w.

At 100% CPU device was charging at 7w.

So it seems that if the computer was off the battery would charge faster, but connecting a more powerful charger has no effect.

 

Maybe someone has the time to do a full charge with comp on and then off to get a good benchmark as to the benefit of turning the device off during the need for a fast charge.