61W Charger with the 15" TouchBar MBP

[Batman89]

Will the 61W Charger not charge the 15" TouchBar MBP at all, or will it just be a slower charge?

I'm planning on getting a second charger for my office, so I don't really care if the 15" is "slow" to charge with a 61W charger since it's going to be connected to it all day anyway.

Was thinking about it since the the 61W charger is cheaper and more compact than the 87W one that comes with the laptop.

 

[Brookzy]

It will charge, just slower. It should accept the full 61W, so it won't be that much slower.

 

[gwang73]

I travel with the 61w adapter with my old 15" and new 2016 15" without any issues.
Charges a little slower but not really noticeable.

 

[pshifrin]

I believe, however, that if you are maxing the processor and dgpu at the same time, ie 4k render, and the computer needs to draw more than 61w, it will make up the difference from the battery. So in this scenario, your battery will actually be discharging. In normal usage, keeping the total draw under 61, you'll be fine.

 

[powerocool]

Totally fine. You can even charge with a 5V 2.4A (12W) charger if you like. It will just be slower. Your system typically uses about 10-15 Watt when doing light tasks.

CoconutBattery is a great tool to learn more about what your system is doing.
http://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/

 

[powerocool]

I also recommend this Xiaomi 20000mAh power bank. It outputs at 5.1V 3.6Amp = 18W. Higher than most other power banks including Anker's PowerCore+ 20100

https://www.amazon.com/Xiaomi-Power...8-2&tag=earthvillage-20&keywords=xiaomi+20000

 

[emailnotebox]

Works most of the times, except in particular situations that demands very high processing power from the laptop. Whenever I run apps like Final Cut Pro that utilizes all four cores (+ hyper threading) and dGPU, using 61W leads to battery drain despite the adapter being plugged. In these situations, charging from 61W adapter couldn't catch up with power being spent (and battery drain is very noticeable under heavy load, like -1% every 2 mins with 61w plugged). Other times when I am working on spreadsheets, word doc, and browsing, I actually see battery charging up not merely maintaining its level.

 

[garyleecn]

I also recommend this Xiaomi 20000mAh power bank. It outputs at 5.1V 3.6Amp = 18W. Higher than most other power banks including Anker's PowerCore+ 20100

https://www.amazon.com/Xiaomi-Power...8-2&tag=earthvillage-20&keywords=xiaomi+20000

does it reach 18w when charging MacBooks?
some batteries just don't reach it's maximum when charging MacBook.

 

[Cvx5832]

On my 13" TB even the 29W charger from the MacBook 12 works pretty well. Not slow at all unless you're in a real hurry.

The only time I've seen it discharge (with corresponding "not charging" warning) was during the first hour of being powered up, presumably because of some background process.

Nice not having to need to move the charger. I bought an extra charger for my MB 12 so now I've got 3. I keep the 61W at the office and the other 2 in the bedroom and living room.

And the ambidextrous charger setup is more useful than I thought!

 

[xraydoc]

I charged my '16 13" MBP with my wife's 29w MacBook charger last night. I left the computer plugged in over night to charge, so I wasn't concerned about speed. Worked just fine.

If I was using the computer at the same time, I could see where there potentially wouldn't be enough power from the AC adapter to both power the computer and charge the battery, but certainly not an issue when the computer is sleeping.

May even keep the 29w adapter in my laptop bag to keep the weight down versus the 61w model (since generally I'm not charging and using at same time). I'll try it for a few days and see if it could suffice.

Edit: I've got my 13" open and on with the 29w adapter plugged in and Coconut Battery is reporting "Charging with 15.18 watts". So looks like it could slowly charge the battery on the 13" while in use, but probably not with a high CPU/GPU load.