WEBVTT

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If you've ever lost your phone charger, you know that while it can be annoying, it's typically not

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the end of the world as you can always pop down to the store, grab any cheapo hanging on the rack,

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and it'll do an adequate job of charging your phone's battery. But if you've ever lost your

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laptop charger, you know that that's an entirely different story. Replacement laptop chargers not

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only tend to be more expensive, but it's also a lot harder to find one that's gonna work correctly.

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So what gives? I mean, tons of people carrying their own laptops, so why haven't chargers been

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standardized in the same way? One big reason is that laptops have very different power requirements

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between them. Although this is true to phones to an extent, the difference is a lot more pronounced

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with laptops. You see, phones have different sized batteries and different rates of power

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consumption, but at the end of the day, they're nearly all built with battery efficiency in mind,

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as they're going to be used without being plugged into an outlet the overwhelming majority of the

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time. And even a relatively power hungry phone like a big gaming ROG phone isn't going to draw a

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massive amount of current from the wall when it is plugged in. But this is not the case with laptops.

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If you look at the variety of laptops on the market, you'll find lightweight models built with

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power sipping processors designed for portability that might only require a 40 watt or so charger.

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However, you can also buy a beefy gaming laptop that can't even get an hour of battery life

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under load and needs two power bricks that push a total of almost 500 watts. So you can see right

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away they have different power needs and in either case, it's significantly more power than the vast

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majority of phones would draw from an outlet. This also means that laptop manufacturers want to have

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more control over exactly what charger their customers are using. If you buy a third-party

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replacement charger for your phone, the worst that would happen is probably that your phone

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charges more slowly. That is, as long as the charger is built to speckiness and a piece of junk

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that's going to start a fire. However, an underpowered laptop charger could become easily

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overloaded, meaning that your components could throttle and hurt your performance or start to

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drain your battery, defeating the point of even having a charger in the first place.

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So it's not surprising that one company's chargers usually don't work in another company's

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laptops. And oftentimes they won't even fit as the laptop maker's lack of incentive to

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standardize chargers means that the actual connectors or tips that plug into the system

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can vary greatly. And of course, it doesn't help consumers that manufacturers can make a healthy

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profit selling their own replacement chargers, as there often isn't an easily accessible replacement

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from a third party that functions correctly. But despite the usual corporate greed, it does appear

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that the game is changing a little bit, with new revisions of USB being able to deliver larger

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amounts of power, typically through a USB-C port. We may see a bit more standardization in the future,

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at least in the laptop connector, if not in the bricks themselves. And you can also make the

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argument that certain proprietary technologies manufacturers push are actually helpful, such

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as Apple's MagSafe connector, which allows the charging cord to stick to your laptop magnetically.

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So if it gets yanked out, the chances anything will get damaged are far lower than they would be

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with many other laptop connectors. So given all this, my advice to you is to hold on to your

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laptop charger. The good news is those power bricks, although bulky, are a little easier to

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keep track of than tiny phone chargers or AirPods. I think one of mine went down the

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garbator. So thanks for watching guys. If you liked this video, hit thumbs up, get subscribed,

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and be sure to hit us up in the comment section with your suggestions for topics that we should cover

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in the future.