PW7015L and PW7015M Compatibility

Hi there.  Well the pw7015L i have right now, i could plug it into laptop and use it while its charging with my xps 15 9550.

I see the Power Bank Plus PW7018LC but what model is that for?   Could you use that with an old xps 9550 or 9560 or is that for 9570 and onwards?

I ask this because i want to get another pw7015L for more battery backup in case of power outage.  Thus have 2 on me.  But if i were to get an xps 9570 or the new one 7590 in the future, could i use these pw7015L with either the 9570 and 7590 laptops?  Or would i need to get that pw7018LC?  Because i dont want to have 2 old powerbanks that i can longer use in the future.

@quickguide01  the PW7018LC is for any system that can charge via USB-C.  Yes you could use it with the 9550 and 9560 because both of those systems can be charged either using the barrel-style connector or their USB-C/TB3 port.  In terms of future purchases, both the 9570 and 7590 again support charging via the barrel connector and USB-C.  However, USB-C is going to be the future, so if I were buying, I'd get the PW7018LC -- especially because you could then use that power bank for pretty much any device that charged via USB-C, not just Dell laptops.

The only catch to going with the USB-C version in your case will be that the PW7018LC itself has to be charged via USB-C, so if you don't already have an appropriate USB-C wall charger, you'd have to buy one.  Normally this isn't an issue because if you're buying a USB-C power bank, you would just use the USB-C AC adapter that came with your Dell laptop, but the XPS 15s are a bit of a special case because they support being charged two different ways and still ship with a barrel style charger (except the XPS 15 2-in-1).  Still, USB-C wall chargers are widely available.  I personally have this 65W charger from Nekteck that gets detected as a 65W AC adapter on all of my Dell USB-C laptops, so I would absolutely expect it to work for charging the PW7018LC.  But if you don't want to buy a USB-C wall charger and are only worried about being able to charge the 9570 or 7590 rather than any other type of laptop/device that could use USB-C, then the older PW7015L will work.

@quickguide01  in addition to the reply I just posted above, a couple more things about the 65W USB-C wall charger option in case it wasn't obvious.  If you go that route, you'll be able to use it with other USB-C devices as well.  Even if you don't have any today, you'll end up acquiring them sooner or later, so that charger would become useful for purposes other than just charging the Power Companion.  I use mine to charge laptops, battery packs, my Oculus Quest, and also for charging iPhones at max speed using a Lightning to USB-C cable.  It works perfectly with all of those.  However, I would NOT recommend using it as an additional charger for your XPS 15, because I believe it will cause the system to throttle performance significantly, since the XPS 15 is designed for a 130W source and you'd only be feeding it 65W. The Power Companions are also limited to 65W, but I believe they have special firmware that causes the system to behave differently when powered by those devices -- i.e. the system works around the power deficit by continuing to drain its internal battery when needed rather than cutting performance severely -- but that wouldn't be the case with a typical wall charger, or even a normal Dell 65W AC adapter.  If you want your XPS 15 performing properly, you should only use 130W AC adapters.  However, I suppose the 65W charger could be used as an emergency spare, or as a secondary charger when you only want to recharge the battery while the system is asleep/off and therefore performance isn't an issue.

Hi there.  I have one pw7015l at the moment for my xps 15 9550.  Im thinking about getting a second one.. the same pw7015l.  So i could have 2 of them for my current xps 15 9550.  

But if i get a pw7018C instead, it will not only work for my xps 9550 but future xps laptops as well right?  And it has 130 vs the 65 i currently i have now with this powerbank?  Do you know if it would give more charging time than the current one i have or is that also 18000mah?

Well if i have 2 of these pw7015l, can i still use it as a power companion for the 9570 or 7590?  I read something about someone tried to use it and it got a message on screen that say you need 130 as oppose to 65 but i think it still worked for them.  Like i dont want to have 2 of these pw7015l and in the future if i get 9570 or 7590, i can't use the 2 old power companions i have...

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@quickguide01 wrote:

Hi there.  I have one pw7015l at the moment for my xps 15 9550.  Im thinking about getting a second one.. the same pw7015l.  So i could have 2 of them for my current xps 15 9550.  

 

But if i get a pw7018C instead, it will not only work for my xps 9550 but future xps laptops as well right?  And it has 130 vs the 65 i currently i have now with this powerbank?  Do you know if it would give more charging time than the current one i have or is that also 18000mah?

 

Well if i have 2 of these pw7015l, can i still use it as a power companion for the 9570 or 7590?  I read something about someone tried to use it and it got a message on screen that say you need 130 as oppose to 65 but i think it still worked for them.  Like i dont want to have 2 of these pw7015l and in the future if i get 9570 or 7590, i can't use the 2 old power companions i have...

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I feel like I'm answering some of the same questions multiple times here, but I'll try again and answer the new questions:

The PW7015L should work with any future Dell laptop that includes a barrel-style AC adapter connector.  The PW7018LC should work with any future Dell laptop that supports being charged over USB-C.  Possible exceptions to that rule would be systems that require very high wattage power supplies (180W and up), such as some Inspiron G Series gaming systems, Alienware systems, and Precision 7000 Series models.  Also note that not all systems with USB-C ports support being charged from that port, but that capability is getting increasingly common.

The PW7018LC's capacity is rated at 65 Wh.  Lithium-ion cells are typically rated for about 3.3-3.5V, in which case 65 Wh converts to 18,571-20,000 mAh.  Note that the internal voltage rating of the cells is completely different from the 19.5V output they provide.  So the PW7018LC capacity should be very similar and possibly a bit better in terms of capacity. (Note: It's important not to confuse watt-hours and watts.  The former is a unit of energy capacity, and the latter is a unit of energy delivery rate.  The PW7018LC's capacity is 65 Wh, and it also operates as a 65W power supply.  The fact that both of those values are 65 is a coincidence, but the units and their meanings are very different.)

If your PW7015L is working with your XPS 15, then the PW7018LC would work the same way.  The PW7018LC is not rated as a 130W power source, though.  It has the same maximum power output specs as the PW7015L, although again since the PW7018LC uses USB-C, it can be used with other devices too.

The reason you see a warning that you've connected an undersized power supply when you use the PW7015L is because again, the Power Companions only operate as a 65W power supply rather than the 130W the XPS 15 is designed to use.  You would likely see the same thing with the PW7018LC for the same reason because its maximum power output specs are identical.  That warning is unavoidable on the XPS 15 because to my knowledge, nobody makes a power bank that can operate as a 130W power supply.  When you connect an undersized power source, you will likely encounter some combination of slower battery charging, performance throttling, and/or the internal battery continuing to drain if the system is under heavy load.  Typically, the system will prefer to slow itself down rather than continuing to drain its internal battery because it assumes that you would rather have the system continue operating at a slower speed rather than potentially dying even when you have a power source attached, but the Power Companion might work differently, and under very heavy load, the system might have no choice but to continue draining its internal battery.  But again, the PW7015L and PW7018LC won't be any different in this regard, because they both operate as a 65W power supply.  They can both also apparently operate as a 90W power supply when the Power Companion itself is plugged into the wall, but I don't know if that mode requires that the Power Companion be connected to at least a 90W wall charger.  For the PW7018LC, 90W USB-C wall chargers are harder to find than 60-65W.  Here is one from Nekteck, but note that the cable is permanently attached to the charger, unlike the 65W charger I linked earlier, so if you got that one, you wouldn't be able to use things like Lightning to USB-C cables with it.  Or if you don't care about the Power Companion ever being able to operate in 90W mode, you could just stick with the more versatile 65W charger I linked earlier.

Hopefully this answers your questions.  It sounds like you're overthinking this a bit at this stage, so hopefully this "bottom line" statement helps: For any Dell laptops that can be charged via the barrel connector or USB-C, like the XPS 15 models (except the XPS 15 2-in-1), the PW7015L and PW7018LC will operate identically.  In terms of which one you should buy, the sole advantage of the PW7015L is that you won't need to buy a new AC adapter in order to charge it, and it might be cheaper because it's older.  The advantage of the PW7018LC is that because it uses USB-C, it will be more futureproof (some Dell laptops only charge over USB-C now) and it could be used to charge devices other than Dell laptops.  The only drawback to the PW7018LC is that if you don't already have a 60W+ USB-C wall charger, you'll need to buy one in order to charge the PW7018LC.  If I were in your position, I would buy the PW7018LC plus a suitable wall charger, because both the PW7018LC and the wall charger will be useful for other devices down the road, so I would consider the extra futureproofing worth the additional cost.

You say to get a 130W as oppose to 65W.  My pw7015l is 65W right?  How much W is the pw7018C?  Is that 65W or 130W?  You say xps are meant to be charged with 130W.   But how many powerbanks are there that has that?  I mean either 0 or 1?  

Also when i got the pw7015l, i connected it to my laptop.  I read lot of reviews about ppl who said when they got it, they were shocked they needed the ac dell adapter as well so they had to buy that also.  What confused me was... well if you have a dell laptop, you should have the ac adapter.  Do you know why ppl reviewed negative about this?  They said now they have to buy another cable.  But if you have dell laptop, that ac adapter you should have... otherwise how you charge it to outlet.  You talk about that wall charger you need to buy in the link.  But would i need to buy that if i buy the 7018C only and then try to connect it to my xps 9550?  What about if i get a xps 9570 or 7590 in the future?  Im confused about that wall adapter you posted.

Okay so even if i get another pw7015l, its fine because i can use it with 9570 or 7590 if i ever get those laptops in the future.  But the 7018c is future proof because it can charge any laptop regardless of brand if it has usb-c.  

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@quickguide01 wrote:

Also when i got the pw7015l, i connected it to my laptop.  I read lot of reviews about ppl who said when they got it, they were shocked they needed the ac dell adapter as well so they had to buy that also.  What confused me was... well if you have a dell laptop, you should have the ac adapter.  Do you know why ppl reviewed negative about this?  They said now they have to buy another cable.  But if you have dell laptop, that ac adapter you should have... otherwise how you charge it to outlet.  You talk about that wall charger you need to buy in the link.  But would i need to buy that if i buy the 7018C only and then try to connect it to my xps 9550?  What about if i get a xps 9570 or 7590 in the future?  Im confused about that wall adapter you posted.

I read the same complaint and I guess people just didn't realize that they'd have to keep using their laptop's AC adapter to charge the Power Companion and the laptop.  I didn't understand the complaint either since you can connect the laptop AC adapter to the Power Companion and then connect the Power Companion to the laptop so that you can charge both at the same time, but maybe people assumed they'd be able to take the Power Companion with them and keep charging that without also having to take their AC adapter.  Or maybe they assumed that the Power Companion could act as both a battery pack and a normal AC adapter.  Dell has actually created the latter product now, called a Hybrid Power Bank, but it only operates as a 45W power source, so I wouldn't recommend it if you're using an XPS 15.

But the reason you'd need something like one of the wall chargers I linked if you bought the PW7018LC is that the PW7018LC requires a USB-C power source to be charged -- so the Dell AC adapter that came with your XPS 15 won't work for that one the way it does for the PW7015L.  There are certainly Dell AC adapters that use USB-C because Dell now has some laptops that only support being charged over USB-C, and if you already had one of those, then you'd be able to use that with the PW7018LC.  But if you DON'T already have one of those, then you'll need to get a USB-C wall charger if you want to use the PW7018LC, because it doesn't come with its own charger.

Hi thanks for the very long response.  You made a lot of things clear but i have few other questions just to confirm after reading your detailed response.

1.  Well the pw7015l cost around $125 roughly.  You could sometimes get it cheaper price when on sale but after tax, it still is over 100 dollars.  The pw7018lc cost around $150.  But i will have to buy that usb wall adapter so thats another $30 right?  Thus it will cost me at least $190 for the pw7018lc? 

2.  I dont have the issue of when i connect the pw7015l to my xps 15 9550 of that message that i connected an undersized power supply to it.  Do you find that strange?  I read ppl mentioned this but i think this might be the 9570?  With my xps 9550 and the pw7015l, i do not get any message whatsoever.

3.  So both these powerbanks have the same 18000mah and if i had one of each, say each laptop has 20% before i connect each powerbank to it at different times, it should give the same power right?  Like with my current powerbank, when i connect pw7015l to it... while im still using my computer, it takes about 1h45m of charging before it runs out.  My xps 9550 would have at the very most 70% battery but its more like in the 60% range.  So the pw7018lc is pretty much going to be the same right?

4.  You say the pw7018lc is better because its more futureproof since it has usb-c.  Well does that mean you could use this with macbooks or tons of other laptops and it would work as long as it has usb-c?  I believe its yes but want to make sure.  But with my pw7015l powerbank, is it compatible with non-dell laptops?  When i go to compatibility page on the pw7015l on the dell website, it show what its compatible with and its all dell computer models.  But does the current one i have pw7015 work with other brands like even say a macbook or asus?  But the pw7018lc only works with computers that has usb-c only right?

5.  Well let say you have the 9570 or 7590 to make it simple and want powerbank.  You could buy the one i have pw7015l and its fine and you pay much less than the pw7018lc right and it pretty much works exactly the same?  I mean difference is you plug it through the usb-c.   But you mean in the future when there are newer laptops and ppl no longer use the 9550, 9570 or 7590, and then have to upgrade... then when you get the new xps years down the line, there is good chance that the pw7015l won't be compatible?  But most likely it would?  Because to me, its like... if you are planning to keep your 9550 and use it for a long time or say 9570 or even the new 7590, well isn't getting the one i have pw7015l fine?  Again i have just 1 of these pw7015l and want to get another one.  But then you say maybe you should get the pw7015lc etc.

1. I personally would say that the extra cash is worth it to get a power bank that will be usable with other devices and a USB-C wall charger that will also be usable with other devices.  Again, even if you don't currently have any devices that charge via USB-C today, that's the industry standard now, so you'll get them sooner or later, if that helps you rationalize spending the extra $65.  But I realize cost and value can be highly subjective for different people.

2. Sometimes that warning doesn't show up if Windows is already running, but it will typically show up at boot if you have it connected at that time.  And if you check Task Manager, you might also find that your CPU limits its maximum clock speed when connected to the Power Companion compared to when it's connected to a 130W AC adapter or just running on its own battery.  I've tried connecting a 30W source to my Latitude 7480 that's designed for 65W, and I don't always see the warning either, but that doesn't mean the system is running the way it normally would.  Your system is designed for a power source that offers twice as much wattage as you're giving it with a Power Companion.  Something has to give in that scenario.

3. Yes, the PW7015L and PW7018LC appear to have nearly identical capacity.  Depending on the precise voltage rating of the internal cells, the latter might even have slightly more capacity, but probably not by much.  It definitely doesn't appear to have less.

4. The PW7018LC will work with basically any USB-C device because the PW7018LC supports the USB Power Delivery spec and can provide the standard USB 5V as well as 9V, 15V, and 20V if the device being charged requests one of those.  Pretty much any USB-C device will support at least one of those voltage options, and the overwhelming majority of USB-C devices do not require more than 65W of total power output.  So yes, things like tablets and non-Dell laptops will work.  There are confirmed reports of people charging Mac laptops with the PW7018LC.  The older PW7015L is not compatible with non-Dell devices because the barrel-style connector it uses is proprietary to Dell.  And even if you had an adapter to convert that to whatever was appropriate for the device you wanted (I'm not aware of such adapters), the next problem is that the PW7015L provides a fixed 19.5V output, since that's what Dell standardized on for that barrel connector when they first introduced it back around 2003, but that's unlikely to be suitable for most other devices you might want to charge -- which is probably why those adapters don't exist.  (UPDATE: Ok, there's this adapter, but this doesn't do any voltage conversion, so it appears to only work with devices that can accept 20V over USB-C, since the barrel connector's 19.5V is close enough.  It's also not clear to me whether this would even work with devices other than Dell laptops, but even if it did, given that it costs almost as much as a good USB-C wall charger that would be far more useful, I don't see the point of this for your use case.)

5. I feel like I already covered this in my "bottom line" comment in my post above.  If you only care about charging the XPS 15 models you're talking about, then the PW7015L will be fine.  But if you're willing to spend a bit more cash on a solution that will likely have a longer useful life and support charging more devices, then the PW7018LC is worth considering, especially because the additional cost is buying you broader compatibility.  Even the extra cost of the USB-C wall charger can be justified by the fact that it offers broad compatibility with other devices.  Even if you don't have other USB-C devices today, you could use it as a spare/emergency charger for your XPS 15 now.  But if cost is a major concern for you and you're not interested in broader compatibility or longevity, then sure, get another PW7015L like you already have.

Hey there.  Thanks a lot for answering every single question of mine in great detail.  I appreciate it.

Well i don't want to spend extra money now if i don't need to.  I mean if i get a new laptop in the future, it probably will be a dell xps.  I honestly can't imagine getting any other computer brand.  This xps 15 9550 is the best laptop i ever had in terms of speed.  All previous laptops i had... they were always slow or issues etc.

So if i get another computer in the future as my main computer, it will almost always be a dell.  I mean i would not get a macbook since i like windows a lot... and also macs are super expensive.  I mean there are other decent brands like asus and lenovo but i can't imagine using one of those laptops as my main laptop.  But of course if i get one of these whether macbook or lenovo in the future as my main laptop, like you said... if i had the pw7018c, then i can charge it as oppose to having say 2 of the pw7015l.  I mean it should give a full charge to many laptops that are not dell or macbook right especially since laptops now are more efficient in terms of energy saving?  I heard this not long ago that laptops now... the quad core but its the i7 or i9... they are not only fast and quad core, but they use very little voltage?  Because back then, i recalled it was get quad core, give up battery.  Get a ton of battery, but you can't get quad core.

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@quickguide01 wrote:
Few other thing i want to make comment on. Is there a reason the usb-c charger cost so much more than the regular one? But in general, that is pretty expensive for a powerbank, do you agree? I mean thats pretty expensive for a portable backup battery for laptop. What percentage of laptops made recently have the usb-c port? When i go the xps 15 9550, i recalled it was mentioned it had that usb-c port. I of course had no idea what it was and didn't thought nothing about it. But are there laptops now where they don't have this usb-c port? Like do modern brands like asus or lenovo don't have this port? I would assume all macbooks made now all have it right? But what about dell laptops that are not xps? Like those inspirion? A bit of concern i thought would be what if the laptop has no usb-c port? Or that is extremely rare unless you get like a complete basic computer?

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@quickguide01  I'm going to answer this last round of questions, but I think that's going to be it for me.  I was willing to spend time providing information that wasn't quite as obvious in order to help you make a purchasing decision, but you're now asking some pretty broad questions that involve opinion and/or could be answered with a bit of research on your end.  I hope you can understand that I've donated quite a bit of time here already.  So here goes:

- The PW7018LC is newer and more versatile.  Those factors tend to increase cost.  However, looking at the Dell US site right now, the PW7015L is listed at $104.99 and the PW7018LC is listed at $114.99 -- not much of a difference.  Obviously third party sellers and even Dell online stores in other regions might have other prices, but I didn't do a bunch of shopping to find out because I'm not the one interested in buying.

- "Expensive" is relative.  While there are several power banks that have 18,000-20,000 mAh capacity or even higher, very few of them can provide that power at a 65W rate.  Most of them are limited to maybe 12-30W per port max.  So delivery rate is a key differentiator.  If you compare to the Power Companion to something like the Lifepowr A3, which admittedly has better specs on capacity and delivery rate but also costs quite a bit more, the price of the Power Companions might start to look more reasonable.  And then of course these are primarily business-oriented products, and for most business users, a little over $100 is probably nothing compared to the value of their time being able to work longer without being near power.

- USB-C is becoming pretty standard on laptops and even other on devices that previously used micro-USB, like non-Apple smartphones, tablets, gaming devices, etc.  The reason it's so popular is because the connector is small, reversible, supports transferring a lot more power than USB-A ever did (100W vs. typically 12W max), supports transferring that power in either direction (USB-A only allowed power to flow in one direction), and it can also carry DisplayPort video traffic.  Yes, ASUS and Lenovo systems have USB-C ports -- maybe not ALL of their laptops, but certainly the higher-end ones.  However, not all laptops support being charged via their USB-C ports, although the laptop models that are higher-end and business-oriented typically do because that allows them to be used with USB-C docking stations.  The only exceptions would be high-end systems that also require way more power than USB-C can provide today, as I mentioned earlier.

- If you have a laptop with no USB-C port, then obviously you can't charge it using a USB-C power bank like the PW7018LC.  But if you have a device that doesn't have Dell's barrel-stye connector, either because it's not a Dell laptop or it's a Dell laptop that only supports being charged via USB-C, then you wouldn't be able to charge it using your current PW7015L.  But as I've said, right now you have a system that has both USB-C (and supports charging that way) and a barrel-style connector, but looking down the road, you're much more likely to end up with a device that has a USB-C port than a barrel-style power connector.  Even Dell has started dropping the barrel style connector from some of its systems, like the XPS 13 2-in-1, XPS 15 2-in-1, and the most recent 2 generations of the regular XPS 13.

Hey thanks for clarifying and making everything very clear man.  I was confused with the battery as i thought hey if someone has 56wh vs 97wh... would that 97wh get more charge etc but what you say makes sense.

Im curious but which dell laptop do you currently have?  And do you have any power bank such as either of these?

You are definitely a huge expert at this as usually when i ask a question, people answer and its very confusing but yours make lot of sense.