Anker 65W PIQ 3.0 PPS Compact Fast Charger Adapter Expired

What's the Difference Between PPS, PD, and QC?

Programmable Power Supply PPS allows for stepwise changes in current and voltage. It decreases the conversion loss during charging, ensuring the charge is more efficient. When the charge is more efficient, less heat is produced, and when less heat is produced, a battery's lifespan increases. So, PPS fast charging is better for your device's battery.

Power Delivery (PD) is a standard for handling higher power that was introduced by the USB Implementers Forum. It allows devices to charge fast over a USB connection. It provides high-speed charging with variable voltage using intelligent device negotiation. Devices negotiate a power contract to determine how much power they can pull from a PD charger.

Power Delivery is designed to allow devices to fast-charge over a USB connection. Its newest version, PD 3.0, is one of the most popular fast charging protocols. PPS is the latest addition to the PD 3.0 standard. PPS and PD protocols work seamlessly together. PPS allows for renegotiation of non-standard currents and voltages between the charger and the device.

Anker's specialized charging tech is called Power IQ and with Power IQ's logic is that normal charging devices such as USB Wall chargers, car chargers, and power banks are all programmed in such a way that they only charge with one method.

With Power IQ devices, however, the devices are programmed in a various way to call different protocols that can charge devices as fast as possible with as much power the device can take. If it's an older phone, then the protocol that may be called will be one from just a regular charger. If you were to use a newer device, the charging protocol would be faster since the device can handle the faster charge rate.

The problem is that PD (Power Delivery) accomplishes the faster charging rates (higher wattages) by dynamically bumping up the voltage. Quick tutorial for people unfamiliar with electrical power engineering:

Voltage = potential at which that electrons flow through the cable. You can think of it as the water pressure in a hose.
Amps = rate of electrons flowing through the cable. You can think of it as the amount of water flowing through the hose.
Power = energy per second, measured in Watts. You can think of it as how much energy the water coming out of a hose has to blast dirt off your driveway.

For DC circuits, Watts = Voltage * Amps

But the catch is, the physical diameter and length of the cable limits the maximum Amps you can send through it. Just like the diameter and length of a hose limits volume of water you can push through it. Most USB-style cables are limited to 3 A. If the power is sent using the old USB standard of 5 V, that limits you to 5V * 3A = 15 Watts.

PD gets around this limit by letting the device and charger negotiate a higher voltage. So your laptop and this charger talk to each other and agree to use 20 V instead of 5 V. Thus allowing it to send 20V * 3A = 60 Watts of power. (Bigger chargers with thicker cables can send 5 A @ 20V, for 100 Watts. That's the current max commonly in use with PD.)

That's all well and good if the adapter has a single USB-C PD port. But if you have two ports, it becomes tremendously more complicated.


First, the two devices plugged into both ports may request different voltages. So your laptop may want 20V, while your phone wants 5V. In the old vanilla adapters where everything was 5V, you could just have electronics convert the 110V AC into 5V DC on a single 5V rail, and let all the USB ports draw off of it. But the only way for PD to deliver two different voltages simultaneously is to duplicate the voltage transforming electronics in the adapter. It's basically two adapters in one, not one adapter with two ports. That way one sub-adapter can deliver 20V for your laptop, while the other sub-adapter delivers 5V for your phone.
Second, it doesn't make sense to duplicate the electronics to convert the 110V AC into DC. You really only want one piece of electronics doing that, which is easy if there's a single port. But if you have 2+ ports, then you also need electronics to decide how to split the total DC power between the ports.

- The cheaper adapters can only split power by dividing the wattage into equal parts. So a 60W adapter with two ports will deliver 60W if only one port is used. But if both ports are being used, then it only delivers a max 30W to each port. Your phone will still get the 15W it can draw, but your laptop's power will be reduced from 60W to 30W. And the adpater will only give you a total 45W even though it's capable of 60W on a single port.

- The better adapters have more granularity. So the port powering the phone draws 15W, and the port powering the laptop draws 45W. That gives you the max 60W that the adapter is capable of delivering. (Yes, the laptop has to live with less than 60W, since that's the total limit for the adapter, independent of the ports.) Some of these better adapters aren't quite so smart, and will reserve 15W for the second port, dropping your laptop's port to 45W, if it detects a cable plugged into the second port. Even if the cable isn't plugged into anything and so not actually drawing any power, it still drops the max wattage your laptop can get to 45 W.

Unfortunately, to find out if a dual-port adapter is a cheap type, or a better type, or a smarter better time, you pretty much have to dig through reviews to find testimonials from customers who (1) have bought the adapter, (2) know about this and (3) have tested it with equipment which measures the wattage delivered.

So unless you can find reliable reports that a dual-port PD adapter operates intelligently, it's safer just to buy two single-port adapters, one for your laptop, one for your phone. Or just buy one adapter for your laptop, and unplug it for the 30-60 min needed to give your phone a decent charge (it's bad to charge the phone to 100% anyway). That also has the advantage of avoiding the drop in wattage your laptop will receive when you plug something into the second port.

Fast charging supports on usb-c to lightning. The thing is iPhone X takes max of 18W. Using a 65W charger won't make a difference.