Power Anywhere – Keeping Laptops Powered On The Go
In today’s world, the vast majority of people turn to their laptops when they need to get work done. After all, they’re powerful enough for real work, and portable enough to go with you, wherever you want to go! But sometimes the place you want to go may be a bit farther from the wall plug than your cord can reach.
No worries! Whether you’re wondering how to charge your laptop in your car, or looking for a way to charge a laptop with your power bank, this is the article you’re looking for.
TLDR? These are the device you need
Need to charge a laptop in the car?
This high-powered car charger can charge a laptop and up to two other devices at once using the round port on your car.
Frequent Flyer?
Anker has been my go-to company for charging gear for years! If you want to charge a laptop with a power bank, this one is the one to buy.
Going off the grid for a long while?
Jackery sets the standard when it comes to longer-term power solutions for campers. The set pictured above is one of the smaller solar generators in their line and will keep your laptop powered easily. But if you want to power everything, you might want to go bigger.
One of my first forays into working off-the-grid was going camping with my family at First Landing National Park in Virginia. We planned on staying for a couple of weeks. We ended up at a site without a plug, but we’ve managed to keep up our normal work hours thanks to a little preparation and a lot of trial and error.
Charge your laptop with a high-wattage car charger
What just works:
WOTOBEUS 95W USB C Charger
If you've every tried to work from the passenger seat during an 8-hour road trip, you'll appreciate how this car charger can keep your battery topped up. Alternatively, it's worth noting that it can also charge a Nintendo Switch. Just saying.
Power Delivery (PD) car chargers are the easiest and most cost-effective way to charge a laptop in your car while it’s running. Just be aware that whether or not a specific car charger will work for your particular laptop depends on a couple of things.
- Your laptop must accept USB-C charging.
- Your charger needs to be capable of providing enough watts of power.
The vast majority of USB car chargers cannot provide the power needed to charge a laptop.
While there are laptops out there that can charge using a 30-watt charger, most laptops require a minimum of 45 watts to charge. Higher wattage outputs can charge them faster, while lower wattages will usually fail to charge them at all.
With that in mind, there are a lot of car chargers that seem like they might be able to provide enough power. Take, for instance, Anker’s PowerDrive+ III Duo with Power Delivery (not linked on purpose). It is listed as a 48W USB-C charger, which looks like it has enough power to provide the 45W needed. However, that 48W is split between the two ports on the charger. One maxes out at 30W and the other at 18W, both of which fall short of the 45W necessary. I was definitely disappointed when I learned that particular lesson.
Instead, you need a charger that has a 45W minimum on a single USB-C port. This one from GOUNULI does the trick with an unbelievable single port output of 140W, while this one from WOTOBEUS is the one I have in my car, with a single port output of 65W, which is plenty for most people.
Use a Power Bank to stay charged at the airport
What just works:
Anker Prime Power Bank
Baseus Power Bank
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140W Single-Port Output
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65 W Single-Port Output
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$79.99
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As much as I love a good road trip, not all travel is done in cars. Planes, trains, and all-day bus rides all require a different way to keep your laptop powered, especially when all the outlets are out of order or taken.
The best solution I’ve found is to get a power bank.
Power banks are portable battery packs capable of charging electronics when you’re away from an outlet. They come in a wide variety of sizes ranging from tiny 2000mah batteries that can barely charge a smartphone once all the way up to massive packs that can jumpstart a car. (I have one that I keep in my car)
As with car chargers, not all power banks are actually capable of charging a laptop. Those that can use two general strategies. Either they have a USB-C port with a high enough wattage for laptops, or they integrate an inverter to give it an actual wall plug.
Inverters are great in some cases, but their size and inefficiency mean they aren’t the most portable solution. If you plan on traveling with a power bank, I suggest getting one that uses USB-C. Not only are they physically smaller, but they’re also more efficient.
My first ever power bank for a laptop was the Anker Powercore III Elite 26K 87W, which impressed me, but also convinced me that Anker needed to work on its naming schemes. I’ve had a few other power banks since then, but I’ve yet to find a brand that does as good of a job with them as Anker. (Update: I like Baseus pretty well, too!)
Their current offering is the much better-named Anker Prime Power Bank, which features a smart display to let you get a better picture of how much power you’re using, but has fewer ports and less capacity than the old Powercore III Elite 26K. Both are excellent batteries, and either will make sure you have power to spare between wall plugs.
Go off-grid for days with a portable power station
What just works:
Jackery Power Stations (See full collection)
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Light-weight and simple
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Expandable Power
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Go Off-Grid Longer
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$299.99
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$999.00
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Power Banks are great for days spent transiting from one airport to another, but if you plan on being away from the wall for longer than a day or two, you’re going to need something more substantial. That’s where Power Stations come in. Jackery power stations have long been viewed as some of the best options for portable power, and I highly recommend sticking with them if you want a high-quality, easy-to-use power station.
Power Stations are pretty much a larger version of a power bank, in that they have a large battery and some number of ports. Most of them will include USB ports and an inverter with one or more outlets. The biggest difference is that Power Stations will often also work as portable solar generators, using a solar panel to give you access to electricity even when you’re off-grid for a longer period of time. I absolutely love this.
There was a time in my life when I lived completely off-grid, in a handmade house in a tropical rainforest. We used solar panels for all of our electricity, but the panels were large and bolted to our roof. The ability to do the same while on the road is amazing!
Of course, if you don’t have time to wait for the sun to come out, power stations can also be charged through wall plugs or car charging ports as well, and there are even some portable wind turbines that can charge a power station as well! (Jackery’s version was unveiled at CES 2023, but isn’t available for purchase yet.)
Which specific power station you choose largely depends on how much you are trying to power, and how easily you can do without if you happen to run out.
If all you’re charging is phones and computers, a smaller power station and a single solar panel could be plenty. However, power stations are also useful for all sorts of things like providing lighting solutions, running a small fridge cooler, heating water for coffee, and more! Before you buy a power station, carefully consider what you’ll be running on it, and choose accordingly.
Get an Inverter to charge your laptop in the car
What just works:
BESTEK 300 Watt Inverter
Inverters have one main job: changing DC power to AC power. This 300Watt inverter may not have a lot of bells and whistles, but it does do that, and it does it well. The inverter maxes out at 300 watts, but be careful to keep it under 150 watts while using the cigarette lighter port, as depending on your car, you can blow a fuse if you try to power too much at once. (Experience)
Welcome to the wide world of inverters!
Inverters promise to let you plug in all sorts of household devices to your car, just like you would at home, but how that plays out in the real world depends a whole lot on which sort of devices you want to plug in and what kind of setup you have. There are tons of options in this space, so I’ll break it down into a few different sections.
Pure Sine Wave vs Modified Sine Wave
Inverters can be broken down into two major groups. They will either be “Pure Sine Wave” or “Modified Sine Wave” inverters. If you’re new to inverters and how they work, those terms probably don’t mean much of anything to you at all, but making sure your inverter is a pure sine wave inverter can be the difference between something that works for you and something that lowers the life-span of your electronics or flat out won’t work.
On our first long-term camping trip, when we were starting to look into how to keep our laptops charged, I just grabbed the first inverter I saw at Walmart, thinking it would probably be enough to get the job done. And it might have been enough, if not for one thing. My wife’s laptop screen flashes off and back on again whenever it gets or loses power through the USB-C port since that port doubles as an external display port. That’s fine, usually, but because of the way a modified sine wave inverter works there is a short period of time when the inverter stops providing power. This caused her laptop to continuously cycle the screen off and on again, making it impossible to use while plugged in.
My laptop happily accepted the power and charged fine. Even so, in the long run, it’s not a great idea to use modified sine wave inverters for running advanced electronics, since the fluctuations in power have been known to significantly shorten the lifespan of many devices. It probably won’t hurt the computer itself, but it could cause problems with the charger that’s plugged into it.
Wattage (W)
The other concern about inverters is how much energy they need to run. Inverters come in a range of sizes, from small 50W inverters to large 5000W inverters. Or larger! But your car can only put out so many watts of energy.
Our van has a notice above the charging port that we should limit the draw to 120W. That’s fine for us since both our laptops together still draw less than that. But if we charge much more than that we could easily overdraw that with our inverter since it is rated at 300W. If that happened the fuse for the car’s power port would blow out and we wouldn’t be able to charge anything with the charging ports until we replaced the fuse. There’s a little wiggle room on that, though. Our car has a 15 amp fuse in the box, which means the fuse won’t blow until we try pulling more than 180W. Still, it’s best not to push it.
Your car could be different. It’s important to figure out how much you need to be able to charge, how much power your car can provide, and size your inverter appropriately. And if you do draw too much power, or another problem comes up, getting it fixed is usually a simple process.
If you absolutely need more wattage than your car’s port can handle, many inverters will come with thicker cords that you can use to connect the inverter directly to your car’s battery, or to a solar power system’s fuse box, if you have one. However, installing one of these larger inverters is a bit more of a hassle.
Why should I choose an inverter?
There are a lot of junky inverters out there, which makes it difficult to choose one that works the way you need it to, but inverters have a couple of distinct advantages that make them worth considering. The main one is that you can charge a huge variety of things using inverters.
An inverter’s main purpose is to take power from a battery, like the one in your car or on a portable solar power system, and change it into power that can be used by most electronics. Inverters that have high wattage ratings use thicker, more durable materials so they can pull more electricity from those batteries quickly without breaking the inverter.
This is great if you plan on setting up somewhere off the grid for a longer amount of time and have the batteries for it. But for most people, an inverter is impractical.
Choose a USB-C charger for your home or hotel
What just works:
ANKER Nano II and a quality USB-C Cable
Nearly all of my charging gear is made by Anker, and for good reason! This pocketable charger can charge up to 3 devices at once, or function as a laptop charger with its 65W USB-C port. That port can't provide the full 65W if the other ports are also in use, but it's still a really nifty trick for something so compact.
As fun as it is to spend time off-grid, I’ve found that even when I’m visiting a place with a wall plug, I still need the right gear if I want to keep my laptop topped off.
Many modern laptop brands allow you to charge your computer via one of the USB-C ports. Not every laptop has this, but it’s a feature that is becoming more and more common. If yours is one, a USB-C charger can save you space in your luggage, as well as provide you with additional charging options!
However, not just any USB charger will work. You’ll need one that has a high enough output wattage for laptops. Typically, that means finding one that output a minimum of 45 watts of power, though a lot of modern chargers can do more than that.
A gallium nitride (GaN) charger, like this one from Anker, is going to be your best bet for finding a powerful enough charger that won’t take up too much space in your bag.
If your specific “anywhere” includes time overseas, it’s also worth investing in a good global adapter so you can still plug your charger into the wall when the plug looks completely different.
I personally like the blocky global adapters that have USB ports on the side, like this one on Amazon. It’s a bit different from the one I have, but then again, I bought mine nearly half a decade ago. It has a higher wattage than mine, and looks a lot more durable. One of these will work great in most places. So far, the only country I’ve had to buy a different adapter for has been South Africa, because they have their very own shape of plug.
Most modern laptop chargers feature wide-voltage inputs (100v-220v), so you don’t typically need an inverter, just a plug adapter. But if you plan on charging something else, like a hair dryer, be sure to check its voltage before plugging it in!
Go almost anywhere with a plug and stay charged up with ease. This travel adapter features 61W of power spread across 3 USB-A and one USB-C PD ports. Plus, it has a universal plug outlet for anything else you need to plug in.
In today’s world where many people can work from anywhere they want, keeping devices topped up while traveling can be a serious business. I hope that what I’ve written here helps you to get the chance to get outside and explore the world around you.
Also, check out this checklist of what to look for when getting a charger
