External power bricks or AC adapters for gaming laptops are getting kind of chonky

[Redaktion]

A super-thin and sleek gaming laptop can only be as portable as the AC adapter that comes with it. With the power-hungry Intel Alder Lake-H series, GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, and RTX 3080 Ti now available, potential buyers will want to prepare for the accompanying bulky power bricks.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/External-power-bricks-or-AC-adapters-for-gaming-laptops-are-getting-kind-of-chonky.605714.0.html

[phila_delphia]

True words! Plus: Sometimes the cables of sid bricks, that lead from the PSU to the notebook are so short, that you will have to place them on the table next to your system...

Much room for improvement!

All the best!

phil

[Peto]

That's good it has to be .. you want tons of wats so it needs to be chunky...
Ans I like that ! Then  adapter is proper robust and quality and will last !

[SimonAB]

I wonder how a 240W USB C PD charger would look like. Even with GaN. Anyway with standard charger for everything you might not even need to transport your charger with you as you can have another one left where you're going (not always the case of course).

[Daniel Spisak]

The SlimQ folks made a 240W GaN power brick for laptops that does 240W via DC and 100W via USB-PD. I've been using it for my MBP and my Alienware m15 laptop with great success.

They also now have an indiegogo campaign for an updated version of the 240W charger that does PD 3.0 so you can get the full power over USB as well.

(cant add the link due to new user, but if you google search you can find it)

[Valantar]

What an odd take - gaming laptops have been using massive power bricks for years, and bricks in the 240+W range is nothing new. Have people forgotten those 330W Dell/Alienware bricks weighing well above 1kg?

In general, the current trend is the opposite of what this article describes - for any given power output, bricks are shrinking (mostly due to GaN, but they shrunk before that due to better efficiency too). What the author might be noticing is a proliferation of higher powered laptops, especially in smaller form factors, which necessitates higher output power bricks and highlights the contrast to the relatively small laptops (rather than the 3kg+ gaming laptops of yore). But describing this as "power bricks are getting huge" is a weird framing that implies a wrong causal order. Saying "laptops are requiring larger power bricks" would be far more accurate.