Best quality power supply

Compatibility with laptop – NOT compatibility with every country’s wall socket! Most people who travel already have sockets to convert power from one region to the next, and what you don’t want to be doing is effectively spending more money for the laptop charger manufacturers to be catering to multi-region as well. We trust frequent travellers to take care of the wall sockets, so that we can focus on what we’re best at – the laptop charger itself.

A lot of companies including high street brands like to focus on how many different car models (they’re not all the old cigarette-lighter type of sockets, believe it or not!) and airline plugs their charger can be compatible with, then charge a lot for the privilege of being able to theoretically connect everywhere. But to be honest, the most important things are compatibility with your laptop, not with the power source.

2. Check Your Laptop Charger Cables – The Most Important Part!

If frequent travellers had to pick a single most important part of a laptop charger, most of the time they would say the cable itself. Because you travel a lot, the laptop gets packed away and brought back out again on a very regular basis. The travel laptop charger, therefore, gets picked up, cables folded up and tucked into a suitcase or a bag more often than not.

Thin cables, or cables where the connection to the travel laptop charger ‘brick’ itself is weak, will often result in a broken charger as little as a few months after you get it. This is terrible, and getting a new charger while somewhere remote is often way more difficult than getting one at home!

Therefore, spare no expense and spare no weight on the cables. Extra thick shielding WILL be heavier, but it’s only marginal and it’s worth it – extra protection on parts that bend a lot will mean your charger can last for years…not months.

3. Multi-Device Charging for your Phone on your Travel Laptop Charger

If you buy a high quality universal laptop charger, chances are a little bit of weight will be added if you have good safety and protection in the brick itself, and also the effect of thicker cables. However, you can offset some of this weight by checking to see if the charger you’re buying has a built-in USB port.

More often than not this gives people an excuse to not have to bring a second travel wall-plug adapter (since you can charge your phone via your travel laptop charger), and also saves you having to bring a separate physical charger as well. So while this won’t save the entirety of the extra weight you pay for quality, you’re still looking at under 1kg for an excellent travel laptop power adapter with room to charge your phone or tablet as well.

Hopefully this has been useful and gives some good food for thought on how you can ensure the next charger you buy for the frequent traveller in you, is one that will last you years!