Quantcast
GTrusted

GTrusted

Discover Products, Check Compatibility, Share Your Experience

Apple’s First USB Type-C Power Adapter

Product Review
Reviewed Products

Reviewed Products

The two standards of Type-C power charging are Google Universal Type-C Charger 60W and the Apple 29W USB Type-C Power Adapter which were the first two USB Type-C chargers made available in the market respectively.

Apple's USB Type-C Power Adapter, the 29W USB-C Power Adapter, provides 29.6 watts (14.8 volts at 2 amps) or 12.5 watts (5.2 volts at 2.4 amps). It's a lot smaller than the Google Universal Type-C Charger 60W which provides 15, 36, or 60 watts.

I purchased the Apple 29W USB-C Power Adapter at the Apple Store in Westfield Valley Fair Mall in Santa Clara, California.

You'll want to only use Apple's USB Type-C Power Adapter with the Apple MacBook (Early 2015).

To look at the Apple 29W USB-C Power Adapter's support of power, we used the USB Power Test App from Granite River Labs with the Granite River Labs USB Power Delivery Compliance C2 Tester to produce the following test results.

The USB Power Test App first negotiates a power contract for every PDO supported by the Apple 29W USB-C Power Adapter, and increases the load gradually to find the threshold where over current protection (OCP) kicks in and voltage and current start to drop for safety reasons.

Port2 Plot

The USB Power Test App also reports out all the PDO's supported by the Apple charger and their OCP thresholds.

PDOOCP (A)
PDO#1 Fixed: 5V 2.4A2.8
PDO#2 Fixed: 14.8V 2A2.29

The USB Power Test App takes this data to produce an I-V curve which graphically shows the relationship between voltage and current for each PDO. We can observe as the current increases beyond the OCP threshold, the voltage immediately shuts off.

IV Curve

The USB Power Test App can also use the Granite River Labs USB Power Delivery Compliance C2 Tester integrated with the GW Instek APS-7100 programmable AC power supply to compare the charger's power output vs power input so that power efficiency can be measured and compared to regulatory limits from United States of Energy (DOE) Level VI or European Union's CoC Tier 2 requirements. We can repeat the power efficiency tests for different PDO's, current load conditions, and different AC input ranges, allowing us to get a complete picture of power efficiency ranges across all different usage scenarios.

Using the USB Power Delivery Compliance C2 Tester from Granite River Labs to run just a subset of the full USB Power Delivery compliance test suite, unfortunately all compliance failures were observed for the Apple 29W USB-C Power Adapter so just be careful when using this charger.

USB-IF High Level Mapping Summary

Sl No

Test Category

Test Group Description

Test Result

2

PHY_PRIMARY_RX

BMC Physical Layer Receiver

FAIL

3

PHY_PRIMARY_MISC

BMC Physical Layer Miscellaneous

FAIL

4

PROT_PRIMARY

Protocol Specific Primary

FAIL

5

POWER_PRIMARY

Power Source/Sink Primary

FAIL

Result Summary

Sl No

Test ID

Test Name

Test Result

3

TDA.2.1.2.2

TDA.2.1.2.2 BMC PHY RX INT REJ

FAIL

4

TDA.2.1.2.1

TDA.2.1.2.1 BMC PHY RX BUSIDL

FAIL

5

TDA.2.1.3.1

TDA.2.1.3.1 BMC PHY TERM

FAIL

6

TDA.2.1.3.2

TDA.2.1.3.2 BMC PHY MSG

FAIL

7

TDA.2.2.1

TDA.2.2.1 BMC PROT SEQ GETCAPS

FAIL

8

TDA.2.2.2.1

TDA.2.2.2.1 BMC PROT SEQ CHKCAP P PC

FAIL

9

TDA.2.2.2.2

TDA.2.2.2.2 BMC PROT SEQ CHKCAP NOMARK P PC

FAIL

13

TDA.2.2.7

TDA.2.2.7 BMC PROT BIST NOT 5V SRC

FAIL

15

TDA.2.2.9

TDA.2.2.9 BMC PROT GSC REC

FAIL

17

TDA.2.3.2.1

TDA.2.3.2.1 POW SRC TRANS P PC

FAIL

View Recommended Products for Apple 29W USB-C Power Adapter

Related Reviews
Latest Reviews