It is extremely important for any business person in any situation to be ready to get involved in work. A laptop always helps to perform almost any task anywhere, most importantly, the Internet and a charged battery in the laptop itself are at hand. There are almost no problems with the first one now, you can use the Wi-Fi network in a cafe or a shopping center or use the data network of mobile operators. It’s more difficult to deal with the problem of a discharged battery. Car enthusiasts can save charging from a cigarette lighter for a laptop. Let's see how useful this thing is and how to charge your laptop in other ways.
External battery
With the advent of power banks for mobiles, it has become much easier to extend the life of all mobile devices, including laptops. On average, an external battery allows you to work 2 times longer without connecting to a network, however, now you need to carry an additional heavy unit and an adapter to charge your laptop with you.
Inverter in car
The second option is to use a car inverter. An inverter is a device that allows you to convert the voltage of a car network into 220 V AC. In this case, charging from the cigarette lighter for a laptop is not needed, you can use the usual charger that comes with your device. Of the minuses - a large load on the car’s battery, so it is recommended to use it for a long time only with the engine running. By the way, some manufacturers are already equipping their cars with inverters and 220 V sockets, which, again, only work with the engine running.
The only possible nuance may be that not all devices can fully work through such inverters. Due to a phase mismatch, your laptop’s charger may not work. Unfortunately, this can only be checked in practice, so if you need to buy an inverter, take your laptop with you, then you will immediately know whether you can charge it or not.
The benefits of cigarette lighter charging
Now we turn to the cigarette lighter chargers. As a rule, such a charger is nothing more than your usual one, with which you charge the laptop from the network, so it should not bring you any discomfort. In addition, charging from a cigarette lighter for a laptop has other advantages:
low cost;
compactness and light weight;
no need to buy additional equipment in the car;
works in any car;
Does not heavily load the car battery.
In addition to the above positive qualities, it is worth noting one more thing - versatility. The fact is that most automobile memory for laptops are universal. Using the adapter to charge the laptop of the desired model, you can easily charge yours. Often, the “charger” also has a USB port through which you can charge your smartphone. This is very convenient if your car has only one cigarette lighter socket.
Disadvantages of charging
Not only positive aspects are in car chargers. Now let's talk about the cons:
longer charging time than from mains;
due to power surges in the car network, you can ruin the battery of your smartphone;
during long work it is necessary to start the engine, otherwise you risk landing a car battery.
How to choose a laptop charger
If you have a need to purchase a cigarette lighter charger, it is best to choose from those manufacturers whose accessories you used and to which you have confidence. Ideally, if you buy a branded car charger for Asus laptop from the cigarette lighter or your brand. Such models are optimized as much as possible, and you definitely will not have problems with the battery after using this charge.
Universal charging from a cigarette lighter for a laptop will not match the characteristics of your main power supply, so you have to take risks. There are models of chargers in which you can adjust the voltage and charging current. In this case, you practically do not risk anything, the main thing is to set the parameters corresponding to those declared by your laptop manufacturer. There are also models with automatic determination of the necessary parameters, but they do not always work one hundred percent correctly, and the price is an order of magnitude higher.
When buying a charge, it is better not to save too much. Most likely, cheap models will have neither automatic adjustment of parameters, nor mechanical adjustments. Such memory most often causes the failure of your laptop. After purchase, be sure to check compliance with the declared parameters, the actual output voltage and current. Often defective models, even with manual tuning, produce a voltage that is much different in parameters.