Charging a Chromebook

I bought a Anker PowerCore II 20000 Portable Charger for my Chromebook (to use while camping) however the cable is not a suitable fit for the chromebook. Just wondering what type of connection/adapter I would need to charge it?
Thanks very much

Hi @Chris_Canty , which particular make/model of Chromebook do you have?

In general Chromebook and Anker don’t overlap as most Chromebook use a round 19V not the rectangular 5V 2A of USB. This is because Chromebooks came out of the laptop approach is a big screen and full keyboard and trackpad and tend to extend battery life via a weaker processor, but still have large battery to give a full typical day for say a student. For example my Chromebook is a Toshiba Chromebook 2 with a 44Wh battery. To recharge it in a reasonably short time it has a 19V 2.37A so 45W round-pin laptop charger, so you see it would recharge the Chromebook in about an hour.

Those Chromebook which do use USB are USB-PD and then you need USB-C cable and then either plug in the battery early and then your 20000 will recharge it slowly, or get the Powercore 26800 PD version. Chromebooks with USB-PD are more wanting say a Profile 2 30W or Profile 3 60W. Your Powercore 20000 is a probably a 10W output so you see the problem in terms of speed. Then the 20000 is likely a 74Wh (3.7x20000) so for a typical Chromebook it would do 1.5 recharges, so you’re not going to get many recharges. USB-PD requires USB-C cables to drive the higher Watts.

For camping I recommend a small tablet like a 8" size from Lenovo, Dell, Asus, etc they would be a good fit for a Powercore 20000. The smaller tablets are more typically only needing 2A 5V 10W input and batteries around the 16Wh so the Powercore 20000 would do around 4 recharges.

So its not just port shape, its everything including total power demands and capacity. Fundamentally, a Chromebook is the wrong product for camping.

Or if you are like me and you already own the Chromebook and don’t want to fork out money for another device you can use a small inverter and charge it off your trailer battery or your car battery in the time and power consumption that it would take to watch a movie and then have another 10 hours of Chromebook time. This works for s anyway. Of course if you are hiking it will be a bit heavy :dizzy_face:
BTW you are camping, the original 10 hours should be lots for a few days, catch some fish,drink some beers, hike some trails. Enjoy life :evergreen_tree:

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I hear you on that brother…:thumbsup:

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There’s different type of “camping”

Car camping

Backpacking aka “thru hiking”

This is me!

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very nice and very true, how were the mosquitoes, or is that just a fly and the tent is inside? That was me 30 years ago and now I am too old to crawl off the ground and spoiled rotten! I still however prefer to camp without hookups.

this was me back then

and now

There was always one constant though

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Its a Toshiba 2 chromebook, thanks!

I’ll be gone for about a month - bikepacking to be more precise.

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Thanks. Yes, I have the Toshiba Chromebook 2 as well. So no real options then?

These are your options:

  • give preference to using at night / darker and minimise the brightness so battery lasts longer.
  • limit your use of it to make it last longer.
  • buy a car inverter and use it as much as you’re in a running car. This is cheapest non free option.
  • use any indoors times like in pubs, this is free.

There are non Anker portable power Banks which will output DC of 19V but they are expensive and the still basic issue a smaller battery can’t do many recharges.

You have my best advice if you want to use a device for a many hours, which is to use a mobile or small tablet which both lasts longer and recharges off USB so off Powercore and Solar. A small tablet will fully recharge off most Anker products like off 21W solar panel, and go for as large a Powercore will give you a fair duration.

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Some solid tips there based on the device mentioned :thumbsup:

A month? A month off grid away from a car away from power?

For a month:

  • if you are with a car then it can recharge your Chromebook in an hour or so of the engine running.
  • if you’re passing civilisation periodically then connect to their wall sockets
  • if you’re really off grid for a very long time then use solar panels and a phone or smaller tablet. I have a smaller mobile and can store 64GB off internal SD card and I recoded videos to be 400MB/hour so lots of videos to watch. Solar will recharge a smaller mobile in an hour or two, tablets take longer.
  • if you are spending a few days at a time away from civilisation then carry a Powercore as it’s lighter and less reliance on sunshine.

Given you’re packing a Chromebook I don’t think you’re backpacking and so you’re likely near mains power as in a car or a powered building often enough.

Thanks all for suggestions!

@Chris_Canty what did you wind up doing about this? Just curious.