GTrusted

The Nintendo Switch Dock uses USB Power Delivery to get power from the 39 watts based Nintendo Switch AC Adapter. Here we see how well the Switch Dock uses much of the full power available from the AC Adapter by playing from a Mario Kart 8 Deluxe cartridge, connecting to a HDMI TV, and using all 3 USB ports to charge phones and tablets.

When plugged into the Nintendo Switch Console into the Dock which is then connected to the AC Adapter, we can see that the Adapter offers USB Power Delivery profiles of 7.5 watts (5 volts @ 1.5 amps) and 39 watts (15 volts @ 2.6 amps) to the Switch Dock.

At first the Nintendo Switch Dock requests only 7.5 watts (15 volts @ 0.5 amps) which the AC Adapter accepts.

After a while the Nintendo Switch Dock follows up to establish a power contract with the highest PDO of 39 watts (15 volts @ 2.6 amps) offered by the AC Adapter.

When we first placed the Switch Console into the Switch Dock with HDMI connected to the TV, the Dock starts off pulling 15 volts and rapidly changing current resulting in a 5 to 10 watts power band. When the game cartridge is played, the power pulled goes up to the 5 to 20 watts band. As we connect more phones and tablets to charge from the USB Type-A ports to the Dock, we can see that the maximum power pulled goes up close to 33 watts. This power is much higher than when using the AC Adapter to directly charge the Switch given the Dock consumes more power used to support the HDMI and USB ports, and is a lot higher during active gameplay.