Beware of gaming laptop manufacturers who push USB-C chargers. While the tiny gallium nitride (GaN) units are called replacements for the large pod power blocks typically included in these laptops, you’re often forgoing the Switch.
To see how much performance you leave behind, 45seconds.com decided to test a gaming laptop with the two popular GaN charger rates you’ll encounter: 60W and 100W.
What is a gallium nitride charger?
GaN chargers are manufactured using gallium nitride, which is more efficient than conventional silicon-based chargers, allowing manufacturers to significantly reduce the size and weight of the units. It started out as an expensive and rare technique, but it has become very affordable in recent times.
Gallium nitride helps chargers reach a small size with a relatively high power output.
Chargeur USB-C vs. baril
Almost all GaN chargers available today use the familiar USB-C port and USB-Power Delivery (PD) charging rates. Currently, USB-PD is 100W, but new specifications will bring it to 240W in the near future. For now, however, any familiar Canon gaming laptop will be powered by the circular DC input socket, as all gaming laptops require far more than current USB-C chargers. 100W can deliver.
However, many gaming laptops also offer the ability to charge from a USB-C port. The idea is that you can charge from USB-C if you forget your regular charger or decide to lose weight on the road. But there is a middle ground.
How we tested
The platform we agreed to test with is the premium Asus ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition. This 5.1-pound laptop features a full AMD setup, with an eight-core Ryzen 9 5900HX processor, a Radeon RX 6800M GPU, and a 15.6-inch 300Hz board. 280 watts (7 x 3.25 x 1.5 inches) comic power supply from your laptop, and you can understand why Asus tells you, “For everyday activities like web browsing and video streaming, you can work on an even smaller 100W USB-C adapter and travel lighter with Only one charger for your laptop and phone.
Gordon Mah AungThe original Asus 280W brick for ROG Strix G15 Advantage is a giant.
For the USB-C chargers, we used the RavPower single port USB-C 61W charger. Although our old version is white, it looks identical to the black version which you can still find on the RavPower website. The second USB-C power unit is the Aukey Omnia Mix4 (PA-B7), a 100W charger. None of the chargers come with a high-powered USB-C cable, which is a painful situation in and of itself.
We tested using the original 6-foot Apple USB-C cable that came with MacBook Pro 15 laptops. For our testing, we simply scored ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition performance under three tasks:
- Heavy GPU, 3DMark Time Spy Extreme from UL
- Heavy Duty Processor, Using Maxon Cinebench R20
- Lightweight CPU, using WebXPRT 3 core technologies in Microsoft Edge
We tested the original Asus 280-watt power unit, as well as the 100-watt and 61-watt USB-C chargers, and also added the battery-powered laptop notch. Note that when powered by battery or a USB-C power brick, the ROG Strix G15 will exclude us from its “Turbo” performance profile. To try to strike the balance, we tested the laptop using the original 280W charger in its performance profile.
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Chargeur USB-C RAV 61W
The good news: For a CPU-limited test like browsing the web, performance is basically unchanged no matter how the laptop is running. Even the CPU-hungry Cinebench R20 changes the needle 3% from the original charger to a USB-C charger.
Where performance drops from cliff to river when you move the GPU. For example, you can see the huge disparity in performance in 3DMark Time Spy Graphics. The laptop sees a 47% decrease in performance when switching from a 280W charger to a 100 or 61W charger.
IDGGPU performance suffers the most by choosing a smaller and lighter USB-C charger. Longer bars are better.
The other thing you should consider is the ability to use and charge your laptop at the same time. Laptop chargers are often sized to allow you to do both at the same time. By leaving an OEM charger behind it breaks this design.
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Aukey PA-B7 Charger 100W USB-C
In the table below, you can see the battery charge rate while running the same workloads as above: WebXPRT 3 for light load, Cinebench R20 for heavy CPU load, and 3DMark Time Spy Extreme for heavy GPU load.
With the original 280W charger, the battery will continue to charge no matter what is done. Obviously, the more difficult the charging work, the slower the battery charge.
By switching to the 100W charger, light and heavy duty on the processor will slowly charge the battery. GPU-intensive tasks, even with top-of-the-line performance, will barely conserve battery charge
The 61W USB-C charger essentially drains your battery no matter the task. Even light cruising would reduce battery life. If you’re considering small 61W or even smaller chargers, you should expect to do nothing or charge your laptop off or on standby.
IDGThe 61W mini charger drains the battery even while browsing the web.
This all adds up to the degraded graphics performance over USB-C, as well as the fun of seeing the battery run out during use. If this all sounds like a deal breaker to you, we can find out.
One thing we want to make clear is the biggest advantages of small GaN chargers. Obviously, losing weight is important, but the other factor is weight. For comparison, here’s the weight of the original charger – without the included wall cord – compared to the 100W Aukey and 61W RAV Power Charger. For reference, we also added the weight of the Coke Lite can.
The graph shows the weight in grams. These 454 grams weigh about 1 pound. The original Asus 280 brick grows roughly 2lbs, more if you include the wall cable.
Well, if you can shed 2 pounds off your shoulder, wait in line for an hour at the airport, we get that. Just be aware that you give up a lot of gaming performance with this choice, plus the ability to use your laptop and charge the battery quickly at the same time.
We also draw your attention to the fact that paying a premium for a fast gaming laptop and then not getting gaming performance on the go – which is the reason you bought a gaming laptop – wasn’t. Maybe that doesn’t make sense either.
IDGWhile you lose a lot of performance for graphics and charging rates, there’s no denying that the huge weight savings go into GaN USB-C chargers.
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