Laptops and Wireless Charging: 50W Changing Laptops Today ⚡🔋
Summary Wireless charging technology, capable of delivering up to 50W of power, can now provide enough power even for high-end laptops using easy-to-install external batteries 🔋⚡️.
MagSafe-style power banks can significantly extend the average battery life of laptops, paving the way for thinner and lighter designs in the future ✨💼.
While compromises—such as efficiency, thermal management, and standards compatibility—will likely come with some compromises, there's no reason wireless charging in laptops won't soon become a practical and scalable reality.
One of the biggest problems with laptops, if not the biggest, is their short battery life. The only way to fix this problem would be to install bigger batteries and make them less portable, right? Well, there's another solution: wireless charging! 🔋
Wireless Charging Is Faster Than You Think
In short, the idea is to equip portable gaming PCs with wireless charging and magnets and simply use MagSafe-style external batteries to give them that extra boost. Smartphones have been doing this for years, so why not implement the same technology in portable PCs, which, let's be honest, need it more than phones? 📱
The problem is that wireless charging is relatively slow. Or is it?
The two most popular wireless charging standards, Qi2 and MagSafe, max out at 15W and 25W, respectively. These charging speeds are far from sufficient to power a laptop, most of which support TDPs up to 25W when on battery. 🔋
The Pros and Cons of Wireless Charging
Wireless charging isn't new, but it's not perfect yet.
Adding the display, speakers, and other power-hungry components, my ROG Ally uses almost 40W total with its 25W mode enabled, speakers at 50%, and screen brightness at maximum. 🎮
But Qi2 and MagSafe aren't the only wireless charging protocols out there. Chinese brands like Oppo, OnePlus, and Vivo have been offering 50W wireless chargers for years, and the evidence shows that do their job without heating up the phone like a roast. 🔥
50W is more than enough for most high-end APU-equipped laptops and is a real waste for the Steam Deck, which doesn't even reach 30W maximum power consumption with its screen brightness at maximum.
While a laptop with wireless charging support might seem unlikely at first, there are wireless charging standards that can deliver sufficient power to almost all laptops, even when operating at their maximum power profiles.
All laptop makers have to do is work on their own 50W wireless charging protocols or perhaps license the technology from BBK Electronics, the parent company of OnePlus and Oppo. 💰
Ugreen Uno 2-in-1 15W Magnetic Wireless Charger
External Batteries for Laptops Could Improve Battery Life
Now that we have a wireless charging protocol that can deliver enough power to laptops running at full power, we need to develop a delivery system.
The best option would be an external battery that attaches easily, like those MagSafe iPhone batteries. Just attach a couple of magnets in strategic locations, and you're ready to go! 🔗
This solution would not only solve the battery issues plaguing all gaming laptops, but would also allow manufacturers to design lightweight devices that could double battery life with an attachable power bank. ⚙️
I love my ASUS ROG Ally, but most other laptops are too big for me. What I really dislike is the recent trend toward larger, heavier laptops, with some models weighing almost two pounds. ⚖️
For example, the MSI Claw 8 AI+ (what a name…) weighs 1.75 pounds, which isn't very portable for me. My wrists always start to hurt after using my Deck for more than half an hour, and the same goes for the 1.5-pound Zotac Zone. They'd probably fall off if I tried to play on the Claw 8 for more than half an hour. 😖
By equipping future laptops with wireless charging technology, manufacturers could still integrate them with high-end APUs and large displays, but they would also make them easier to manage by using compact batteries. 🛠️
They could opt, for example, for a 40Wh battery, enough for about an hour of use, which would allow the device to stay under 1.3 pounds (600g), which is the ideal weight for me. ⚖️
An hour of battery life would be enough when you're playing at home, near an outlet. Just imagine, you could use your laptop in its "light mode" at home, allowing you to play for hours. connected to a charger (wired) without your hands getting sore or your wrists suffering. 💻
Once you're out and about, you can carry an external battery pack, or multiple cells, attach them to your laptop in a second, and double or triple your battery life. Once the first cell runs out, you can remove it and add another one faster than you can die in Nuketown.
The good news is that most current handhelds already have room to accommodate those dockable batteries without interfering with the air vents—just look at all that space available on the ROG Ally pictured below! 📐
In other words, I think designing future laptops with attachable batteries in mind wouldn't be a huge hurdle to overcome. Laptop manufacturers could make some extra money selling battery packs, which is always a good thing. I'd love to see a laptop like that. 💵
Ugreen Uno Magnetic Power Bank 10000mAh 15W
$44.99 $69.99 Save $25
Some Compromises Will Have to Be Made
Of course, such a radical redesign would likely require some compromises. When smartphones adopted wireless charging, their backs went from metal to glass. If and when laptops gain wireless charging capabilities, some compromises will likely have to be made as well. 😅
For starters, placing magnets on the back of the device would make using Hall Effect and TPM joysticks more complicated.
That said, the two most popular laptops, the Steam Deck and the ROG Ally, use decent mechanical joysticks, and I haven't encountered any drift in either of them over the years. I could live with this drawback. Perhaps we could have our cake and eat it too with external battery packs attached to the bottom rear panel, moving the magnets used for wireless charging away from the triggers and analog sticks. 🎂
The second most likely compromise would be a higher retail price. Alternatively, manufacturers could keep the same price but omit the attachable battery pack from the retail package, offering it as an accessory instead. Or give you the option to purchase the laptop with a battery pack at a higher price. It's not perfect, but it's far from a deal breaker. 💵
The final issue has to do with the wireless charging protocol itself. In a perfect world, laptop manufacturers would sit down and agree on a universal protocol to use across all devices, but this doesn't always work in our profit-driven world.
That said, phone makers have nailed it. Qi is the de facto wireless charging standard on Android phones, while iPhones use MagSafe but are backward compatible with Qi and Qi2, with the only limitation being slower charging when using Qi chargers. I don't see why laptop manufacturers wouldn't agree to a similar solution. 🤝
What is a “Qi-Certified” Charger?
When purchasing a wireless charger, you'll often see the term "Qi-Certified." Here's what it means.
For example, the Steam Deck 2 could come with 30W wireless charging and the ASUS ROG Ally 2 with a 50W variant, but both could use the same battery packs that go up to 50W but support lower charging speeds. I don't know about you, but since I started thinking about this, I haven't been able to think of a better way to solve the battery life problem that plagues every single gaming laptop on the market. 😲
Adding magnetic wireless charging to the portable PC mix would be an elegant solution that wouldn't compromise power or performance. It would allow for future, lighter portable devices that aren't as heavy as small laptops; we could play games on this type of device for a full day if we have enough dockable batteries on hand, and manufacturers could make extra money selling external batteries. 💸
Now, we just need an engineer from ASUS, Valve, GPD, or some other laptop brand to read this and make this happen. 🚀
ASUS ROG Ally X (2024)
The ASUS ROG Ally X (2024) is a gaming laptop designed to take your favorite titles with you wherever you go. Powered by the AMD Z1 Extreme processor and 24GB of RAM, you’ll find the ROG Ally X to be a great performer. It’s capable of playing games like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 at over 100 FPS using recommended settings. USB4 and USB-C allow the ROG Ally X to convert into a desktop via a USB dock, making it even more versatile.
Steam Deck OLED
Enhance your gaming experience with the Steam Deck OLED. Immerse yourself in stunning visuals on the vibrant OLED display, while enjoying powerful performance and portability.
Conclusion
The arrival of wireless charging up to 50W ⚡ transforms the way we think about laptops: it offers a practical solution to the eternal limitation of autonomy without sacrificing power, allowing for thinner designs and MagSafe-style dockable batteries that extend lifespan on the go 🔋💻.
While there are real challenges—efficiency, thermal management, magnetic interference, and the need for agreement on standards like MagSafe/Qi—none seem insurmountable; smartphone experience shows that mass adoption and certification are possible and beneficial for today's market.
In practice, an ecosystem of magnetic power banks and high-power charging protocols would allow manufacturers to offer lightweight and modular laptops, monetize accessories, and give users the flexibility to choose between lightness or autonomy depending on the occasion 🧩🔌.
If the industry focuses on standardizing interfaces and optimizing dissipation and safety, 50W wireless charging for laptops will cease to be a promise and become a tangible improvement in the gaming and mobility ecosystem: more portable, more powerful, and more adaptable 🎮🚀.
Now it's up to manufacturers and engineers to take the next step and turn this vision into real devices and accessories 🔧✨.
