Car charging (12V) to Macbook Pro Magsafe 2

[cdodsworth]

There seems to be numerous discussions (all of them old) about the best way to charge a new Macbook pro (2013 onwards) with magsafe 2 (T connector) in a car. However I cant seem to find the definitive answer or an up to date one.

Have a client that needs to supply all sales reps with compatible car chargers to their Macbook Pro using the cigarette lighter (12V)
Seems many of them on the market cant cope with the draw of the 85W that the power supply needs.

I have seen a few available like this one

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Magnetic-In-Car-Charger-MacBook-Display/dp/B00BJ97H7A#cu stomerReviews

or this one


http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009G1B22O/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creat ive=390957&creativeASIN=B009G1B22O&linkCode=as2&tag=jun0e-20&linkId=DOQ7Q332W25D IHND

The first one looks the best but I was wondering if anyone has experience of these or a better way to do this . There is talk of noisy 150W invertors etc but I am looking for a good solution.

P>S this is for the UK market
I also posted this on Apple discussions board but so far little response and Apple UK pre-sales have been useless !

thanks

 

[Gav2k]

I wouldn't recommend car chargers as there all cheap third party products. That said Kensington used to sell one but its limited to the u.s Apple Store. (Should say it's still an invertor you need to plug your charger into )

My advice will always be to install an invertor and use the correct adapter.

 

[joe-h2o]

I would also suggest an inverter - the 12V rail coming off a car's electrical system is pretty grotty as far as power goes, even with the inbuilt smoothing and so on. It'll be quite variable, prone to transient current and voltage spikes etc due to the nature of the power system in the car.

I wouldn't want to feed that sort of power right into an MBP's DC-in board even though the MBP has provision for cleaning it up, it does have limits; under normal conditions, the MBP is expecting clean power from the adapter brick that does the bulk of the cleanup work.

If you don't want an inverter, then another possibility is a custom voltage regulator circuit that takes in the car's 12V feed and provides a smoothed output for the MBP without the lossy DC>AC>DC conversion you'll be dealing with when using a traditional inverter.

 

[simonsi]

You can charge an MBP with the MBA 60w charger if the power drawer on the inverter is too great with the 85w, just takes a bit longer. The 85w is really specced for charging while in use (which shouldnt happen in a car).