Experience with 16" MBP and 3rd Party Chargers

[chefwong]

My Anker 100W, Ravpower 90W, Ravpower tiny cube 60W all work fine with my Dell XPS.
The Ravs are my primary chargers in my bag for size/portability/ 3 device charging@ times. One device when tethered to a laptop...



I'll have to play with the many cables/above chargers and see what the offendee is, but my MBP 16" seems to be finicky....
I was messing around with all 3 yesterday and ended up scrounging around for the OE charger, which did the trick.
I have used all the above chargers with my MBP16 but for whatever reason, it was throwing a fit yesterday. Either I was getting no charge, or it appeared via OSX battery was not charging but the power was being detected and running over PD, even though I noticed the battery draining even while under this state. I did do a reset SMC while tinkering with all the above chargers and no major changes, until I plugged the OE in

Anyone experience something similar on the pickiness of chargers....with your MBP

 

[robvas]

I use my Apple charger for all my usb-c devices

 

[Codeline]

Same here only apple chargers

 

[chefwong]

Turns out it was not the charger but the cable.....
I grabbed my other cables and it works as it has in the past.

The Monoprice cable, which is a good 12 feet that works just fine for the IPP and is 5A rated, is the culprit. Meets all the specs...but someone it won't work with said chargers. Now I need to grab that OE charger and use this cable just for my clarity on. I'm prettu sure I have used this cable on my Dell XPS , which does complain about a slow charge, but that's just because the BIOS wants to see the OE 130W charger

 

[jerryk]

USB-C Cables need to be certified for 100W. These are chipped and length limited for 100W. Without meeting these requirements USB cables are limited to 60 W of Power Delivery, regardless of the charger. USB-C chargers, devices, and cables are not dumb. They negotiate the maximum amount of the power that can be sent to a device.

 

[chefwong]

Jerryk. Sure well aware that the charger (does a negotiation with the device0. Wasn't aware the cables were -chipped-.

Of to do a read.....I have a few of these Monoprice ones. They are at least 2-3 years old , only ones that came in 3M back when I was shopping for longer cords to use. And I believe I have used these same cables in the past and have looked at the charge rate.....and it seemed to be at full capacity.

Bearing yesterdays blip, going to confirm if it's the cable or not. And or just with my MBP 16 that it won't play well.

 

[jerryk]

Jerryk. Sure well aware that the charger (does a negotiation with the device0. Wasn't aware the cables were -chipped-.

Of to do a read.....I have a few of these Monoprice ones. They are at least 2-3 years old , only ones that came in 3M back when I was shopping for longer cords to use. And I believe I have used these same cables in the past and have looked at the charge rate.....and it seemed to be at full capacity.

Bearing yesterdays blip, going to confirm if it's the cable or not. And or just with my MBP 16 that it won't play well.

This required for e-marking is in later revision of the USB-C spec. It is entirely possible at the time you bought those cables this requirement was not active or not heavily used. But for Power Delivery to work at 100W all parts (device, power supply, and cable) must meet the latest rev implemented by any device. If not they fall back to the 60W charging.

To avoid this only get cables and power supply/chargers that state they support 100W Power Delivery.

Here are some more resources with more information.

https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/euxyfa

Also, this link from Apple tells how to read which of their cables are e-marked and good for 100W. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201700

If you want to understand the details start here and expect a deep dive.

 

[jerryk]

deleted

 

[chefwong]

Indeed it was the cable. I dunno if the negotiation between the MBP/cable/charger is more picky on certain cables...

Anker cable - Fine
Uni cable - Fine
Nekteck Cable (isf certified) - Fine
None have E Markers AFAIK as I went through all 3 item spec listings.

The Monoprice one (oldest cables in my stash and was 5ah rated), just won't charge/connect at all with my MBP.
It however, does charge fine with the same usb charger and my Dell XPS.

 

[jerryk]

Indeed it was the cable. I dunno if the negotiation between the MBP/cable/charger is more picky on certain cables...

Anker cable - Fine
Uni cable - Fine
Nekteck Cable (isf certified) - Fine
None have E Markers AFAIK as I went through all 3 item spec listings.

The Monoprice one (oldest cables in my stash and was 5ah rated), just won't charge/connect at all with my MBP.
It however, does charge fine with the same usb charger and my Dell XPS.

Could be the MBP is being pickier. But, the spec is pretty clear as to what is expected.

Glad you got it figured out.

 

[gavin-t]

Thanks jerryk for your answers in this thread.

I too bought a 3rd party 100w charger and an anker USBC hub. I made sure everything was spec'd to 100w charging for my MBP. But it wasn't working...

I also added a .5m USBC male to female cable between the USBC hub and my MBP. I failed to read all the fine-print and that was throttling the power to 60w... annoying...

Anyway - thanks for the insight, what was a bugbear is solved.