Hacker News Reader

Comment by stefan_ | Hacker News Reader

Ironically, the best USB-C charger for something like a phone (laptops come with chargers, anyway) I've found is simply the Raspberry Pi 4 USB-C charger - very cheap ($10), small, plenty power (15W), fixed cable and no fucking blue Anker LED that can illuminate your bedroom.

View on HN

You know, I thought that until I started to test it.

I have a Kill-A-Watt for rough measurements and the pi4 charger is slower than my GPD Pocket or ipad pro charger. It does pull 14W or so sometimes, but there's a big limiting factor, it's only 5V. The ipad charger does 5V/9V on USB-PD and the pocket does 5V/9V/12V. So if the cable wears at all, you won't be getting the full rated power due to voltage drop. It's like trying to use a plastic mixer straw to drink a beverage vs a regular one.

I already have a portapow meter for measuring USB-A stuff including watching quickcharge 2.0 stuff boost the voltage on the line. Proper USB-C meter/tester comes this week, then I intend to writeup findings on cables/chargers.

For your bedroom you'd really want an old 5W charger. Why turbo charge and put permanent strain on your battery when anything that takes 6+ hours will do.

Apparently (with iPhones at least) you shouldn’t have to worry about that anymore.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/can-ios-13s-optimized-battery-...

Charging slower is always better for lion based batteries. Period

For battery lifetime -- also charging to lower voltage and stopping discharging at higher voltage. Cathode will stay intact longer this way and metallic lithium has less chance on plating the anode.

There's an Android app for that (if the device is rooted)

https://f-droid.org/app/com.slash.batterychargelimit

If it's a good quality charger it shouldn't be feeding the battery enough power to impact its lifetime.

The "charger" in this case is built into the phone, the thing we call a "charger" is really just a power supply for the actual charge controller.

A phone will charge as rapidly as it can without undue risk to the battery's longevity. But, it's still a trade-off. If you charged slower, you would decrease risk to longevity.

But when you to bed, your phone doesn't know that rapid charging convenience doesn't matter. So it will still make the same trade-off. If you use a less-powerful charger, you can force it to take its time in charging.

> But when you to bed, your phone doesn't know that rapid charging convenience doesn't matter

iPhones now know that you're going to bed and adjusts the charging to match https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210512

I believe some Android phones have had the same feature for years now, dunno about the base android OS

That is controlled in the phone, not in the charger.

While charging circuits are much smarter now, and the difference might be minimal, you want lower charging currents to minimize the amount of damage that is done to the materials in the battery. It is universal that higher charge rates cause more damage to the crystal structure that holds the lithium ions.

Does this mean using one of the bigger brick 15in MacBook Pro charger on a 11in MacBook (both USB c) is bad for the smaller MacBooks charger? My gf always uses mind when she can’t find hers...

That isn't a problem at all, a charging circuit will be designed to only take as much power as the device can receive.

Monoprice has a really nice line of multi-port chargers called "Obsidian" whose feature list includes "no lights"

In particular, the 60W USB-C + 3x12W USB-A brick is really nice.

I bought a roll of cheap 5% window tint and put it over all device LEDs. It makes it dim enough to not impact sleep but still visible.

If you don't want to see the LED you can cover it with electrical tape.

My preferred alternative to electrical tape is a piece of aluminum foil stuck on with painter's masking tape. Aluminum foil (or any metal) is really excellent at blocking all the light, and painter's tape doesn't leave residue.

If you're not worried about residue, you can get aluminum foil tape, which is quite handy for other household repairs as well.

Gaff tape.

Gaffers tape is the holy grail IMHO. So many good uses for it.

I used to run a Dell UltraSharp 3008WFP. A great monitor for the time, but the power LED was so damn bright that black electrical tape didn't fully extinguish it.

The official Google charger (18W) is good, albeit about double the price. It's one of very few wall chargers that will power a FLIR Duo Pro camera without it boot looping. It's very picky about voltage and conks out if there's any droop. Most of Anker's products don't work, though some of the power banks are fine.

I use a dark, but not black, colored electrical tape to kill the brightness of any leds in my bedroom, or that I take with me when I travel. Black will kill the light entirely, but other colors will permit you to see the state of the led underneath.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com