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Minimum wattage charger for M5 Pro

M

moonscape

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Hi

I'm buying a MacBook Pro 16 inch M5 Pro, but I don't know which charger to buy.

My ideal charging setup would be to charge it overnight slowly (like I do with my phone at 5W), what is the lowest Wattage charger I could buy for this? It's mainly so the laptop battery doesn't get warm and degrade as much, but maybe if it charges too slowly it will degrade it faster since it's on much longer? please help 😛
 
JPack said:
20W charger will be fine.
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Oh ok, just to double check, this is when just closing the lid right? Dont want to manually shut it down all the time, and will this be better on the battery (vs like the 45 or 140w official charger)?
 
moonscape said:
Oh ok, just to double check, this is when just closing the lid right? Dont want to manually shut it down all the time, and will this be better on the battery (vs like the 45 or 140w official charger)?
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I don't think there will be any appreciable impact on battery health. The heat for MacBook is well spread out in the chassis.

When you're using MBP and plugged in, I'd suggest using whatever adapter came with it. This is to prevent unnecessarily dipping into the battery during high workloads. This needs to be used with the 80% charge limit in macOS 26.4.

If you use the battery and you really feel better slow charging overnight when the computer is sleeping, then use a 20W adapter.
 
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JPack said:
I don't think there will be any appreciable impact on battery health. The heat for MacBook is well spread out in the chassis.

When you're using MBP and plugged in, I'd suggest using whatever adapter came with it. This is to prevent unnecessarily dipping into the battery during high workloads. This needs to be used with the 80% charge limit in macOS 26.4.

If you use the battery and you really feel better slow charging overnight when the computer is sleeping, then use a 20W adapter.
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Thank you sm I think I'll buy an Ikea 20w charger then (their chargers are always really well designed electrically), do you think it'd charge when I'm just watching videos on the laptop? Or should I just buy the fast charger as well for that (the point isn't to save money, but to prolong the battery life lol)
 
moonscape said:
Thank you sm I think I'll buy an Ikea 20w charger then (their chargers are always really well designed electrically), do you think it'd charge when I'm just watching videos on the laptop? Or should I just buy the fast charger as well for that (the point isn't to save money, but to prolong the battery life lol)
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And I assume 5w wouldn't be enough lol
 
moonscape said:
Thank you sm I think I'll buy an Ikea 20w charger then (their chargers are always really well designed electrically), do you think it'd charge when I'm just watching videos on the laptop? Or should I just buy the fast charger as well for that (the point isn't to save money, but to prolong the battery life lol)
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Get the Apple charger if money isn't the issue. I think 85W or 96W charger is a good compromise in size and wattage as macOS will regulate the power flow. Plus, you can always add the longer duck-head extension cord, which can come in really handy.
 
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Keep your eye out for a 1W charger!
You don’t want to risk it!

Have you considered just never turning it on?? Because you wouldn’t want to discharge the battery too fast either!
 
erihp said:
Keep your eye out for a 1W charger!
You don’t want to risk it!

Have you considered just never turning it on?? Because you wouldn’t want to discharge the battery too fast either!
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wow thx hadn't thought about that
 
Bigwaff said:
Get the Apple charger if money isn't the issue. I think 85W or 96W charger is a good compromise in size and wattage as macOS will regulate the power flow. Plus, you can always add the longer duck-head extension cord, which can come in really handy.
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Thank you, do you think the 96w would degrade the battery faster than just a 20w one? I have also read that if the voltage of the Charger is too low the MacBook will have to step it up, which creates more heat anyway...

And do you think the 96w would charge it under load? having 2 chargers seems a little annoying
 
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moonscape said:
Thank you, do you think the 96w would degrade the battery faster than just a 20w one? I have also read that if the voltage of the Charger is too low the MacBook will have to step it up, which creates more heat anyway...

And do you think the 96w would charge it under load? having 2 chargers seems a little annoying
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You’re over thinking the whole thing in my opinion.
 
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moonscape said:
My ideal charging setup would be to charge it overnight slowly (like I do with my phone at 5W), what is the lowest Wattage charger I could buy for this? It's mainly so the laptop battery doesn't get warm and degrade as much, but maybe if it charges too slowly it will degrade it faster since it's on much longer? please help 😛
Click to expand...
I don’t understand the point of this exercise. Fast charging does introduce some additional heat to the battery due to the naturally higher flow of energy but the Macbook, and the battery and charging system, was designed with this in mind. Most of that heat is taken into account by the heatsink in the charger itself, hence the 140W is notably much larger than the 65W. You’re not going to see a marked change in battery health from using a higher wattage charger that would introduce minimal wear to the battery over a very, very long time. As in, you wouldn’t notice a detriment unless you were fast charging it for many years, by which point the battery health would naturally have depreciated from general use anyway.

Is this because of electricity costs or something? You want to trickle charge it to save money?
 
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Tessou said:
I don’t understand the point of this exercise. Fast charging does introduce some additional heat to the battery due to the naturally higher flow of energy but the Macbook, and the battery and charging system, was designed with this in mind. Most of that heat is taken into account by the heatsink in the charger itself, hence the 140W is notably much larger than the 65W. You’re not going to see a marked change in battery health from using a higher wattage charger that would introduce minimal wear to the battery over a very, very long time. As in, you wouldn’t notice a detriment unless you were fast charging it for many years, by which point the battery health would naturally have depreciated from general use anyway.

Is this because of electricity costs or something? You want to trickle charge it to save money?
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Thank you for the detailed reply 🙂

it's not to save electricity or money or anything, but I have a habit of only charging my phone with a 5w charger and wondered if I should do this with my new laptop as well, since my old HP ProBook (from 2019) has had it's battery degraded a lot from the stock charger (software says 70%), and I have to buy a charger anyway because EU moment
 
moonscape said:
do you think this would be better on the battery vs using the official 140w one?
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No. The Mac's power management controller determines the charge rate, not the charger. The charger only specifies the maximum possible charge rate.

In short, the Mac is responsible for selecting the actual charge rate.

moonscape said:
are there any benefits to going Even lower lol
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The benefits of a smaller charger are: smaller size, lower weight, and sometimes lower cost.
 
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JitteryJimmy said:
No. The Mac's power management controller determines the charge rate, not the charger. The charger only specifies the maximum possible charge rate.

In short, the Mac is responsible for selecting the actual charge rate.


The benefits of a smaller charger are: smaller size, lower weight, and sometimes lower cost.
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But if it has access to a higher wattage, won't it charge faster and decay the battery faster?
 
Remember that if you do need to charge it while you're using it, you need sufficient power to charge the battery at a faster rate than it is being used. With low-power chargers, it's possible for the battery to stay still, or even go down slowly, while plugged in, if the power it needs for work isn't sufficient.

moonscape said:
my old HP ProBook (from 2019) has had it's battery degraded a lot from the stock charger
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Time. Time degraded your battery. It's a 7 year old Intel PC. 70% after nearly 7 years is entirely within expectations, and nothing to do with the charger.
 
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