Recently purchased powercore+ 26800 and I am very impressed with the quality…everything was fine until I tried to charge my lenovo Yoga 3 laptop, guess what, no way !!! screaming and fuming (to say the least).The yoga doesnt even recognize the device is connected let alone take a charge !!! I am sure is not the battery pack as it works fine with everything else. Do any of you guys know if these laptops can take a charge off DC battery bank ?
Any advice would be of use…many thanks guys
Yoga 3 and powercore 26800
Unfortunately, it looks like the Yoga 3 requires a 20V input, which the PowerCore (and most USB chargers) only supply 5V. So while the Yoga 3 charger may look like a normal USB charger, the Yoga 3 actually has unique power requirements outside of the normal USB specs. I found the following details on the Lenovo forums.
Can I charge the Yoga 3 Pro with any USB charger?
No. The Yoga 3 Pro requires 2A at 20V, which is what the provided 40W Lenovo AC adapter supplies.
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Looking at the sticker of the PSU you see it has 2 output types, the 20V 2A and more regular USB 5.2V 2A. I expect that is why they gave it a USB socket. It would sense it was connecting to a Yoga 3 and move up.
I compared with USB-PD and its not a match so it appears Lenovo proprietary but that’s where I stopped digging.
So any annoyance would be to Lenovo for using proprietary energy output types so that the likes of Anker don’t have a business model to support.
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Many thanks for the replies here is who my conversation went with Lenovo;
Please can you advise as to why this laptop cannot be charged by an external battery ?
Or how I can charge it via dc power ?
thank you
Thank you for contacting Lenovo,
The computer was designed to be charged using the supplied charger, We cannot guarantee compatibility with third party devices. Although most laptops are generic, we have not tested this ourselves I’m afraid.
Hi Mathew (Lenovo)
Thank you for your quick response, not really the answer I wanted to hear, do you think someone could actually check to see if these laptops can actually be charged via a battery pack as I am sure you are aware that many people on various forums are complaining about this issue.
I apologise for the difficulties you are currently experiencing. Unfortunately as this is a 3rd party device we would not test it. As another option I can only suggest you may be able to contact the battery pack manufactures and see if they have another solution for you.
As you can see they dont seem bothered and cant offer any constructive advice ie what the charging requirement are!!!
I would rather change the laptop than my Anker power bank lol
This is your choice moving forward.
You either decide to buy a device, like a laptop, with a proprietary power input, or buy with an open-standard power input like USB-C, and then wait for the community to support that open-standard.
I decided >1 year ago to only buy USB-C devices and my resulting purchase decisions work fine with a range of charging options.
What takes time is for multi-port higher Wattage open standard devices because you have to wait til enough have bought to pull a response. So for example USB-PD is slowly becoming supported for higher Wattage.
If you had stuck with USB then even if the higher Wattage charges are not available, worst case, you can slow the device’s drain via old fashioned 2A 5V USB, that works quite well. So I have a Pixel C, it’s official charger is 5V 3A USB-C, but I connect, say, a Powercore 26800, it outputs 5V 3A from one port of its 3 and so I’m able to recharge quite well. The new Powercore Fusion 5000 is 3A output as is say the Powercore II.
Even if you can’t get a high Wattage charger, a lower wattage charge slows the drain, so even a 2A output battery will go a long way to keep your device charged even if actively using so its flat slower than if you had it unplugged.
This is basically up to you, in what you decide to buy devices wise.
Hi there, I know that it is a little late, sorry for the reply but I would like to know what is your experience using the Yoga Lenovo.