EU rules on common chargers apply to laptops from today. It means that all new laptops sold in the European Union must now support USB-C charging.

In December 2024, the rules came into force for mobile phones, tablets, digital cameras, headphones, videogame consoles, and portable speakers.

Laptop manufacturers were given a longer lead in time to allow for redesign and transition to the common charging system.

  • cecilkorik@piefed.ca
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    1 day ago

    Even if they had left out that condition, I’m sure there would be ways around it for gaming laptops and they wouldn’t necessarily even have to be stupid ways: I could imagine a stupid way of complying being a charging cable with USB-C for the first 100W and proprietary port for the other 200W+.

    Just because a law might say that it’s got to be technically able to charge from USB-C probably doesn’t imply that has to be the only charging port and method, nor even the normal/recommended one. Even on a 200W+ gaming laptop it would be nice sometimes to be able to charge it from USB-C, without pulling out the full charger. If mine supported USB-C charging I could see using it like that when I travel, I might only be using it for half an hour or an hour a day, the 100W would significantly extend the battery runtime, the rest of the time it could be sleeping or off and charging happily back to full from USB-C, so I wouldn’t even need to bring the (literal) charging brick.