Poor USB Power Delivery compatability on TravelMate B3 TMB311-31

BrokenMagneticSensor

I have access to a couple of Acer TravelMate B3 and B3 Flips here.

The manual for these laptops say the USB-C port can charge with input of 45W in 5/9/15/20 volts.

Unfortunately, I can't get 9V charging to work on multiple chargers, and some chargers that support 15V or 20V won't negotiate at anything more than 5V.

I am an IT professional and have access to a lot of different USB C cables from different brands including Anker, UGreen, Cable Matters, and many more, in many different lenghts up to 10 foot/3 meters. I also have various power meters and cable testers, and different laptops and USB PD devices to compare with.

The big problem is with 20W and 30W chargers like the Ravpower I mention below. I have a couple of others from UGreen, INIU, AOHI, and other weird brands, and almost none of them will charge at more than 5W with a normal 6 foot cable.

While I can get a few chargers and cables to negotiate at 20V, in general, these laptops often downgrade to 15V, and longer cables (2-3M) cause more problems than short cables.

Here are some examples...

Lenovo ADLX45YAC3D charger. Won't negotiate at 20V, falls back to 15V. This is a common charger that comes with a wide variety of Lenovo laptops.

Dell HA45NM180 charger (DPN 01J12J). Won't negotiate at 20V, falls back to 15V. Another super common 45W charger.

Ravpower RP-PC150. This is a small 20W adapter that does 5/9/12V output. The TravelMate B3 won't negotiate at 9V with any cable at all. It's always 5V and the current pull is very poor, often sub 1A, even on short cables.

Baseus 65W GaN Charger. This is a very popular charger which has 2 C ports. The TravelMate won't do more than 15V on the C1 port with a 6 or 10 foot cable, and won't do more than 9V on the C2 port with a 6 or 10 foot cable. It also won't do more than 15V on the C2 port even with a 1 foot cable.

Tested with the latest UEFI 1.19 on multiple TMB311s.

JackE

Thanks for report. I think the most the B311 port can handle is 3A either way --- in or out. And power-in seems limited to 45watts max. So 20v drop off to 15v seems to make sense at least for the B311. For those adapters that don't seem to work, I've found some devices (not the B311) where charger pin polarity might be an issue.

billsey

The User Manual states that USB-C charging is optional, it's possible that it's not fully implemented on your SKU. The Service Guide doesn't tell me which models support which features though so I wouldn't be able to say for sure with yours even if I had the full model number (B311-31-xxxx).

AndrewF

I work at a school and we have the same laptops here. Just today 2 of them have been brought to me by a staff member as they weren't charging using the normal AC adapter. Decided to try USB-C on them. Using two different brands of charger (one BaseUS 65W and one Lenovo 65W) they are charging up okay.

Using free tool from nirsoft called batteryinfoview it reports the charging voltage as 12.3V and between 23-30W charge rate. I haven't seen 15V on either charger.