Stop packing your laptop charger. Bring this one instead
That line of thinking is sort of outdated. You still need a laptop charger on the road. You just need a better one.
I recently recapped ten travel gadgets that I either bring on business trips or recommend to others, including this $65 Ugreen 160W Nexode Pro GaN charger. I’ve purchased these chargers for my sons as backup chargers, but their real strength is their versatility. They have enough juice to keep laptops, phones, and even a tablet all powered up at the same time. Even if the laptop comes with a proprietary barrel charger (like Lenovo’s latest IdeaPad does), the vast majority can also charge via USB-C.
Increasingly, the idea that you need to bring your laptop charger feels like a myth ready to be busted. It’s a little like 2019, when you stopped needing to pay for a third-party antivirus solution, when Microsoft Defender became good enough to protect your PC on its own. Until then, buying an annual antivirus or antimalware subscription wasn’t just a habit, but a necessity. It’s not now.
Mark Hachman / Foundry
To be fair, there are some cases where you’ll absolutely need to stuff your laptop’s power brick in your bag. Gaming laptops can be charged via USB-C, but not at the power levels needed to keep the CPU and GPU running at full power during a prolonged gaming session. I can’t guarantee that even a 240W GaN charger powering a laptop’s 240W Thunderbolt 5 port will be enough to sustain a high-end laptop at peak performance. At that point, you’ll be pulling power from both the charger and the laptop’s battery, slowly draining it.
Still, I’m having trouble justifying why I keep bringing the OEM charger along. As a security blanket? Maybe. But it’s just extra weight, and a multipurpose GaN charger simply does more.
Is a GaN charger the perfect solution? Not quite
There’s still one reason I keep a travel power strip handy: the cord length. GaN chargers are basically a “wall-wart” transformer with a plug directly attached, plopping down like a big, ungainly bar of soap on a power strip or wall socket.
