Good news for ASUS travelers: Kensington N3 tip works!

If you've been distraught by the poor-fitting #16 tip of the iGo Juice power adapter family, you've finally have another option for powering your ASUS on a plane or in a car: the Kensington 120W adapter.

After I bugged the Kensington PR department, they shipped me a unit to try with the N3 plug and it fits, quite snugly actually, in my ASUS VX2 Lamborghini!

Not only that, but the Kensington 120W is smaller and lighter than my iGo Juice and comes with a nice long cord on the notebook side and a short cord with a *two-prong* plug on the AC side!

I will be testing it on American to Paris tomorrow and will let you know how it does in the sky, but this is really good news for us ASUS zealots!

 

How could that work...I have both the juice (which is RIDICULOUSLY heavy) & I also have the Kensington 120....The Kensington tops out at 16v and the Asus adapter is 19v....so how are the two compatible (I have a w2p) I checked the specs on your machine and the adapter says 19v 4.74A....

could this damage the laptop (or is it just that the kensington will work but not charge the battery)

 

The Kensington adapter dosent top out at 16v O.O I have it powering my 19.5v Sony FE right now. The tip decides what voltage and amperage is supplied, I tried the N3 for my sony and It didnt work because it was to underpowered, They sent me the N27 tip and it worked brilliantly. Supplies my 19.5V 4.7A sony perfectly.

 

can i ask what you do for a living?
i ask that question because you seem to be always traveling from all your other posts.

 

Hey thats great, I saw one of those power supplies in the shop, they are seriously small, I just got back from a trip to Kazakhstan and with my W3J and spare batteries and the bag does get heavy, it would be great to shed some weight.

I would be keen to see how useful it is, it looks to small to be able to produce the goods. do you have mobilmeter? it would be great to see if there is any difference in charge rate between the Asus and Kensington power supplies, or any one running the Kensington Vs stock power supply, a quick charge is very useful even travelling business its hit or miss if your seat has a power supply.

Also does it get very hot?

 

The Kensington 120W does get pretty hot after an hour or so of use. I've been using it with my W3J for 6 months now, haven't had any problems really. The only downside is the "straight connector" sticking out the laptop. Unlike the "curved connector" on the stock adapter, this one sticks out about 1-1.5 inches .. could easily damage the laptop's power connector if the cord is clipped.

Cheers.

 

I just wanted to add that I've been using one of the Kensington power supplies for over a year and love it (I'm using it with an old Sony laptop at this point).

The only complaint I have is the smart tips -- it's just too hard to find a smart tip to work with any arbitrary laptop. I wanted to find one for my brother's Asus A8Jp and couldn't find one that worked. They have a guide thingy on their website but it only tracks a limited number of very common laptops. I've gotten several others to work, but it was just trial and error.

I've requested information on the specs for each of the smart tips they make (i.e. sizes, voltages, wattages, etc.) so it'd be easier to look up for non-listed laptops, but nothing so far.

 

its obvious that he must work for the CIA or other intelligence service.

 

hey do you also have the N3 tip?

 

The N1 tip that I use on my Toshiba outputs 14.7 volts. The N3 tip that fits the Asus VX2 outputs 18.6 volts. I was very surprised to discover this, because both the N1 and N3 tips have the same "green color dot" in the same location, which I thought represented the voltage. I was wrong.

The OEM adaptor for the Asus outputs 18.75 volts, although it says on the power supply that it's 19 volts. So I'm happy to verify that the N3 tip works with the Asus Lamborghini VX2 perfectly!

I'm disappointed in Kensington, one year ago they told me they didn't have any tips that would fit my Asus, yet the N3 smart-tip was included with the Kensington when I bought it two years ago.

 

Would this work for an Asus A8Jm? The input/output for the a8jm stock adapter is 100-240V, 1.5A/ 19V, 4.74A?

sbussinger, did u end up finding a tip?

Did anyone find the specs for the tips?

 

"The N1 tip that I use on my Toshiba outputs 14.7 volts. The N3 tip that fits the Asus VX2 outputs 18.6 volts. I was very surprised to discover this, because both the N1 and N3 tips have the same "green color dot" in the same location, which I thought represented the voltage. I was wrong."

Thanks very much for those hard facts (about voltage of the tips) which Kensington are incapable of providing.

I have a crazy theory as to how the voltage is selected by the tip. Like you say, the green dot is not the voltage selection - it shows where the plastic alignement ridge is, inside the tip.

There are 5 prongs in the unit (and I think an Earth connector along the inside). As we all know, a 5 digit binary number encodes upto 11111B i.e. numbers in the range 0 to 31. So if those 5 prongs deliver 1V, 2V, 4V, 8V, and 16V, then all the tip has to do is sum the prongs it wants, to deliver the defined voltage for that tip. So the N1 tip will sum the last 4 prongs, effectively giving 01111B or 15Volts.