Is non-apple magsafe adaptor a problem?

[emir]

Hey everyone,

I bought a mid 2010 i5, 15" Macbook Pro from the United States about 13 months ago and i am very happy about it, also i live in Turkey.

Thing is the L shaped magsafe adaptor started not to charge my laptop sometimes and i had to play with the angle of the chord where the cable connected to the magnet adapter itself and it charged when it wanted to. Above all that the magnet part got really hot you couldn't touch it. Obvious signs of a problem inside the chord, probably chord was teared inside.

This went on for about 2 months and then one day it didn't charge whatever the hell i did. Since the global warranty was up i asked apple store how much was a new magsafe adaptor, they told me it was 170$.

I decided to buy a new one after seeing a friend's magsafe would charge my laptop. But before i did i decided going to a local notebook service. They had a magsafe adaptor which was not made by apple and was not L shaped and plastic at the magnet end unlike the L shaped metal one Apple originally gave me. We tried it there and it worked. Also it was only 50$ . So i bought it, but i have concerns since it's not Apple branded and original. It charges the laptop flawlessly with no heat nor contact issues. It's shape is the same shape Apple used in 2009 Macbook Pro's. I mean not L Shaped.

Would this be any problem to my Macbook in the future? There are obvious differences between the two.

First off the power brick of this non-Apple one is much lighter
Also all parts are plastic in this one

However it works great.

Thank you for your answers and sincerely

Emir

 

[awer25]

If the wattage matches up (85w, 60w, etc) and it charges ok, then it's fine.

 

[lindstedt56]

Your not going to ruin your laptop but they are not made as well as the apple ones.

 

[GGJstudios]

I wouldn't trust or recommend any battery or charger that didn't come from Apple. There have been too many complaints of problems with 3rd party products. It's not worth the risk of damaging your MBP and not being covered by warranty or AppleCare, no matter how small that risk might be.

 

[Mal]

I wouldn't trust or recommend any battery or charger that didn't come from Apple. There have been too many complaints of problems with 3rd party products. It's not worth the risk of damaging your MBP and not being covered by warranty or AppleCare, no matter how small that risk might be.

Yep. Especially since the MagSafe connector has not been licensed by Apple to anyone, so there are only two options: reverse engineering (not something I'd trust my computer to, not with the power adaptor), or cutting off the ends of Apple adaptors and splicing them onto your own cables (still sketchy). Stick with the Apple parts for this one.

jW

 

[adcx64]

I wouldn't trust or recommend any battery or charger that didn't come from Apple. There have been too many complaints of problems with 3rd party products. It's not worth the risk of damaging your MBP and not being covered by warranty or AppleCare, no matter how small that risk might be.

Exactly. You never know the quality of those 3rd party chargers!

 

[fattire357]

It's a bit of a paranoid point but if your power adapter doesn't handle power fluctuations well and passes on extreme voltages to your MBP, then you can get system instability, or worse, damage.

Entirely theoretical since you first need to have a power source that fluctuates to begin with... and the assumption that your new adapter fails at deal with it.