Help me with a road warrior setup

#1

I literally have boxes of cables, batteries, adapters, etc and am trying to make a streamline kit for traveling.

I have an iPhone X (lightning), Surface pro 5 (proprietary connection), netgear hotspot (usb c), a couple micro usb devices like kindle etc. I also recently bought a Anker PC Slim 10000 PD which can only be charged via usb c.

Normally I take a big 26000 anker battery pack with all the different cables, my surface power adapter and call it a day. I charge the batter with the surface if needed. Its a big bundle but not too bad.

My goal is to move to a small PD wall adapter to charge the new slim battery. Charge the surface with a PD to proprietary adapter cable, fast charge phone with PD to lightning cable. Hotspot will be good on C to C. The kindle will still need its own micro usb cable

1 - PD wall charger
1 - C to C cable for battery, hotspot
1 - C to Surface adapter cable
1 - C to Lightning cable
1 - USB A to Micro USB (can charge kindle and other things with battery if needed)

I think my only concerns are: (1) will the 30w compact anker charger charge my surface? The stock adapter is rated at 44w. My assumption is it will charge it but not power/charge it during use (which is fine). My second option was to go to the 60w PD wall charger but then I’m not really saving much space.
(2). If I go 30w, should I go 30 watt Atom III Slim or 30 watt Atom PD1?

Any flaws in my logic?Untitled

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#2

The only real way to find out is to try it for yourself. You can then return it if it doesn’t work.

If you don’t care about the slim design or foldable prongs, then Atom PD 1 (mainly because it’s a bit cheaper). None of your devices support Qualcomm Quick Charge, so you wouldn’t benefit from PowerIQ 3.0 over Power Delivery.

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#3

i dug and found out I have a 30w pd charger (1pd port 4 USB A ports). So i ordered the surface USB c cable adapter and will find out

#4

As @Insider mentioned, you may need to test this out to know for sure. My Acer R13 Chromebook came with a 45W charger and is very finicky with 30W chargers (most 30W chargers put it in a charge-stop-charge-stop loop) even though a regular 12W (5V 2.4A) USB charger works fine, just slower.

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#5

The 30W charger will be low on the surface. Its spec’d at 44W. So you may see some “odd” responses since windows is more picky with charge standards than macbooks. My XPS I have for work is not a fan of my atom 30W charger. I typically see a yellow triangle with an exclamation point in it when using an undersized charger. Cant really see the surface pro acting much differently tbh.

#6

tried it on my dell latitude e7970 and it gave low power warning at boot, said it would draw power from battery to get enough power. no way of telling if it charges it while off, (no light)

#7

Did you figure it out?

#8

no had to order the surface adapter

#9

so FYI on surface. The surface detects the USB adapter as being plugged in to power, either to the 30w PD charger or into the Anker PD Slim 10k battery pack. I never received any power warnings. Nothing seemed excessively warm.

Plugged into the PD Slim 10k battery, the surface ran at full performance but the battery meter went down.
Plugged into the 30w PD charger, the surface ran at full performance and the battery meter seemed to hold steady for the most part (although I believe there may have been a 2% drop after 30 minutes of leaving a game open to simulate heavy usage)

If i turned the performance down on the surface, of course everything improved accordingly to degree of which i turned it down.

If i put surface into sleep mode (screen off but cpu idle) both the battery and the 30w charger fully charged the surface back up to 100%.

I imagine its not good for the surface battery to run off the PD battery pack. Maybe it doesn’t hurt it but I think it puts it into running in a way it is not supposed to (detecting ac power but draining battery). Probably the same with the 30w charger as well, just not as bad. Reduced performance setting may nullify effect with 30 w charger. I will probably avoid leaving either of them plugged in while using the surface to avoid any battery damage, and only plug them in to charge the surface back up

#10

Its a great idea, but I think you will need to wait for a solid 60W system for an all in one. Newer tablets and laptops just have too much draw to run less efficiently.

#11

actually the Anker 60W PowerPort Atom III, delivers 45w to PD port and 15w to USB A port.
The surface full power requirement is 44 W so it may work