Charging your laptop with a Power Bank

The possibility to charge your laptop anywhere, anytime, gives you the freedom to work and travel, without worrying about your battery dying. Xtorm has different Power Banks which, together with the right adapter and cable, offer you that freedom. But which option is best for you? And how many times can you charge your laptop using a Power Bank?

Charging through the USB-C output port

These days, new laptops usually have a USB-C PD (Power Delivery) or Thunderbolt-3 port which can also be used to charge the laptop. Our XB3 and XB4 Power Banks are especially designed to charge your USB-C PD laptop, wherever you are.

We have several Power Banks that are capable of charging your laptop, variating between 45 Watts and 140 Watts. Which one is best suited for you, depends on the power demand of your laptop. An easy way to check this, is to look at the wall charger that came with your laptop, this will have the Wattage listed on it.




How often can I actually charge my laptop?

This depends on different things; the capacity of the Power Bank, the battery size of your laptop and the way you charge it. To explain things as best we can, we need to get a bit more technical.

To calculate how many times a specific Power Bank can recharge a laptop, you have to match the capacity of the Power Bank to the battery size of the laptop. The best way to compare battery sizes, is to use Wh (Watt-hour).

The use of Wh might seem strange, because usually the capacity of a Power Bank is shown in mAh. That is because until recently, most of the Power Banks were designed to only charge smartphones and the capacity of a smartphone is always shown in mAh, so it made sense. With the new technology and more powerful Power Banks that are able to charge your laptop, mAh is no longer sufficient.

What is Wh and how do you use it?

For example; the 2018 MacBook Pro 13 inch has a 5200mAh battery. When you compare this with the latest smartphones, which have a minimal capacity of 4500mAh, the laptop-battery seems relatively small. You might even think you can charge that MacBook almost 2 times with a 10.000mAh Power Bank. Unfortunately, that is not the case because of the slight difference in voltage between the laptop- and smartphone batteries. Converting mAh to Wh helps you with this.

To make it easier, Xtorm Power Banks list the Wh-rating on the packaging and in the specifications. To find out the Wh capacity of your specific laptop, you can look it up in the manual or find it online. You can also calculate it yourself by multiplying the (m)Ah capacity of the battery with the voltage. (Ah x V = Wh).



Let’s be practical!

If we use the previous example: how many times can a 10.000mAh Power Bank, of another brand, charge a 2018 MacBook Pro theoretically? For this, we need to calculate the Wh of the Power Bank.

First, we need to convert 10.000mAh to Ah. The ‘m’ stands for ‘mili’, so we simply divide 10.000 by 1.000 and get 10Ah. Next, we multiply the number of Ah with the voltage of the Power Bank. A typical 10.000mAh Power Bank has a voltage of 3.7V.

This leads to the following calculation: 10Ah x 3,7V = 37 Wh.

If we contrast this to the 58Wh battery of the MacBook Pro, it turns out a 10.000mAh Power Bank can charge the laptop approximately 0.6 times. (Divide 37 by 58).

This calculation can be applied to every combination of laptops and Power Banks. At Xtorm we have a matching Power Bank for everyone; whatever device you want to re-energise!

It’s not something that’s very easy to understand at first, but once you do it makes navigating the battery and Power Bank landscape a whole lot easier. Now you know not to be fooled by mAh when it comes to charging your laptop!

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