If anyone in Brisbane wants to borrow 2 surface pro chargers, they're sitting idly in my home office, not real handy for my work trip to Melbourne…
While looking for a cheap option to juice up my surface pro, I came across this markdown at Harvey Norman. Still seem to be plenty of stock around the place, I picked one up in Nunawading.
12V, 2.58A, 35W, 1.5m
Agree about proprietary connectors.
Ebay price is dearer if search for Pro 4 supply - which seems the same?
Careful with the ebay one's… Literally fried my Surface 3.
How on earth was that!? Surface susceptible to shorted pins? Not something I would expect to be possible, unless you plugged into a 24V outlet.
Jeez I hate proprietary connectors.
I really like the Surface connector - I much prefer the magnetically-attached design to Type C. Ideally all future Surfaces will have both a magnetic connector and Type C charging.
The magnetic connector is a lot quicker to attach, and protects the port from damage if the wire is tripped over or pulled by accident, which I have experienced a number of times.
Not much stock around Brissie.
Luckily have a small inverter in the car, so use it with SP4 mains power pack. $149 $39 saved!
Work on surface book?
No , 35W is too little for Surface book - won't match the included charger capacity, this will be perfect for i5 Surface Pros
Don't buy it, its not going to work well for you.
Need 15 volts to charge a Surface… this is only 12.
more likely "12V" is actually the nominal input voltage.
My SP4 came with a 12V 2.58A power brick and my SP6 came with a 15V 2.58A power brick.
Clearly states this is for SP3/4 which only require 12V.
On the product website it also shows that it works with the Surface laptop. I've ordered one - going to use it on the kids SP3s for holiday roadtrips and hopefully my Laptop 2.
Thanks for the heads up - I had been looking for one, was a little cautious of the ebay cheapies, but the store ones were a bit too expensive.
I wish they had a surface port cable to a normal usb (like charging a phone). This is a pain in the ass. Can anyone that owns one recommend how to charge on a plane
Literally just received my J-Go Tech Surface Connect to USB-C connector in the mail today…
Tried it with my Xiaomi Powerbank Pro 3 (which I bought particularly for this) and it did not work at first but tried four times after and it worked perfectly. Despite what the reviews say, the build quality is nowhere near as good as the OEM MS charger but apparently each unit is tested before they send them out and it does work so time will tell.
FYI, the original Surface Connect to USB-C dongle (linked by @m9 above) will not charge the Surface Pro 4. I could not bring myself to try the Aliexpress cables but if someone has and it works flawlessly I'd like to know about it!
I had a dead Surface Pro charger so I snipped the cable and bought a PD trigger board, set it to 15V, and soldered the cable to it.
Plugged into a Xiaomi Power Bank 3 Pro, it charges and powers my i7 SurfaceBook with dGPU, drawing 38.3W max with:
- Battery at 55% and charging
- Running Prime95 to stress the CPU
- Brightness at max
- Integrated Intel GPU at 100%
- nVidia dGPU unused
The moment I also run FurMark to stress the nVidia dGPU as well (instead of the Intel GPU), the battery % slowly drops but the power draw remains at 38W (~14.82V, 2.57A).
When I connect the official 60W mains charger, power draw at the wall is 64W (at 90% efficiency, that would be 57W into the laptop) with the dGPU running. The battery does charge, but sloowly.
@eug: Good info.
Different models have different voltage requirements (12/15V), & required wattage. So check first before causing damage.
After a quick search… Some useful info on suitable powerbank, cables & voltage requirements (Amazon US links)
@INFIDEL: That overly complicates it. All Surface devices that use the Surface connector (so Surface Pro 3 onwards, Surface Book 1 and 2, Surface Laptop, Surface Go) work with 15V.
Wattage only matters if you're actively using the device, and it's a more powerful SKU (e.g. Surface Book with dGPU running at 100% utilization).
@eug: Was just editing… (& learning)
Different models are supplied with different voltage supplies (12/15V) although all devices since Surface Pro 3 accept between 11V -> 16V. https://dancharblog.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/surface-book-pr…
So 15V it is👍
PD trigger board looks nice & useful incorporated in USB-C charging cable.
PD trigger board looks nice & useful incorporated in USB-C charging cable.
Yup! If you're handy you can even replace the DC power jack in a normal 19/20V laptop with a Type-C PD trigger board on the 20V setting.
Thanks mate :) Wanted a type-A usb, but purchased the type-c instead. Ill figure something out.
Wanted a type-A usb,
Hmm, I don't think that's possible. Type-A means you'd have to use a QuickCharge charger rather than a USB-PD charger. The highest power you can get out of a QC 4.0 charger is 18W (9V 2A), which is too low a voltage for the Surface.
This is a pain in the ass.
Or arse. Are you septic?
Still too much.
from $10 local stock on eBay. Jeez I hate proprietary connectors.
https://www.ebay.com.au/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=Surface+Pr…