XPS 15 9500 Third Party PD Charger

@Nurwazil  That's very strange, and that would suggest an even more hostile approach to third party chargers than Dell has had thus far, where Dell systems won't draw more than 65W from third party USB-C power sources.  Sorry if this sounds obvious, but did you try all of the USB-C ports and confirm that those chargers worked properly with other devices?  I'd just be really surprised if Dell had somehow locked out all third party USB-C chargers, since if anything they should be going in the opposite direction of removing the 65W limit.  The other possibility that crossed my mind is that this might be some sort of firmware bug.

I did check if the chargers worked with other devices.  They did.  I don't recall whether I checked more than one port.  Not sure what the problem is, or what Dell's strategy is, or if the strategy is the problem, but I'm not getting another charger until someone can confirm that it works.  I think I've done my share of the research.

@Nurwazil I've seen posts on reddit confirming that both the 90w Ravpower adapter and the 100w Choetech adapter charge at 90W on the 9500

@zennrix  Nice to hear this restriction might be easing up, even if it's not being completely lifted.  Although actually I'd be curious of the people reporting 90W charging are using XPS 15 9500 configurations that only have an Intel GPU with no NVIDIA GPU.  In that configuration, it seems that Dell is shipping the system itself with a 90W adapter, and in my experience with Dell systems, if the system is only designed for a certain wattage level below 65W that seems to have been the cap for a while now, it will only ever report that much draw even from a power source that provides more.  For example, if I connect my 60W charger to an XPS 13 that's only designed for 45W, it will show as a 45W source, even though connecting that charger to my Latitude 7480 that's designed for 65W will cause that charger to register as a 60W source.

If those test results are coming from systems that have an NVIDIA GPU and would therefore be designed for 130W, then I find it a bit strange that Dell would have finally relented on the 65W cap, only to raise it to 90W rather than going all the way to the 100W max of the USB PD spec.

@zennrix  Ok, then we're back to needing to get test results from connecting a reliable 100W USB-C power source to an XPS 15 or XPS 17 that has an NVIDIA GPU and therefore is designed for 130W.  If all of the test reports thus far are from people who were only testing 90W sources and/or were only testing with systems designed for 90W, then that might not be telling the whole story.  (Would sure be nice if we could just be confident that Dell didn't restrict charging from third-party USB-C sources in the first place...)

@zennrix  Ok, well the XPS 17 always comes with an NVIDIA GPU (at least based on the configurations on the Dell US site at the moment) and therefore always with a 130W adapter.  Very strange.  But a step in the right direction at least, I guess.  Thanks for sharing this information though!

@jphughan on reddit I've seen several people use the aforementioned chargers on the 17 9700 with dGPU and get 90W. For the 9500 I can't remember if the threads I saw had dGPU or not

@zennrix  By the way, I checked the Dell Canada site.  The XPS 17 is indeed available there without an NVIDIA GPU, but when I clicked the Customize page, the ordering page still indicated it would come with a 130W adapter.

@zennrix  Nice, thanks for posting a link.  So I guess that's one step forward...but not two steps forward.  The scenario of using chargers through a USB-C "mini-dock" hub device getting less would be expected.  The hub is likely skimming power off the source to run its own electronics and keep power available for USB devices that might be plugged into it, and therefore has less available to pass through.  I'm surprised a 100W power source got 90W through the hub while Dell's 130W charger only got 85W through, though.  I wouldn't have expected the hub to negotiate Dell's proprietary 130W with the Dell charger, but I would have expected 100W in both cases and therefore the same passthrough in both cases.  Then again, judging by the strange issues reported later in that post, that might be a firmware quirk of some kind.

In any case, things seem to be looking a bit better on the third party USB-C charging front.  If I can find my old thread about this, I'm going to post an update about it.  Thanks again!

@jphughan Hmm interesting, the Canadian site has a 17 i5 iGPU base model available so I assumed the same was true for the US site. In any case I hope to be able to verify the 9500 charging claims for myself soon. Just holding on a bit to see if the Dell site has any Canada day sales before I order

@jphughan No problem, I guess I'll update when I buy a 9500, since I'll be using it with a UGreen hub and probably the Ravpower 90w, since it's the only compact 90w+ charger I can find in Canada for a reasonable price.

@jphughan 

Update: I received my 9500 and the Ravpower 90w adapter. Charges at the full 90W according to bios. When used with a USB hub, I get 85W from both the Ravpower and the Dell stock charger in the bios. So it appears that it does support up to 90W. However, any adapter that's not the Dell one gives me a slow usb charging warning. It also gave me a warning page when starting the laptop that the 90W charger isnt enough, though it had an option to stop the startup warnings. Haven't used it enough to test any difference in charging times yet and I don't have a 100W charger to test if it goes above that though.

I may have to get this one replaced as I have both the loose trackpad issue and a defective light on the chassis, so if I do I'll be sure to duplicate my charging tests on any replacement units

Thank you @zennrix for not forgetting to share.  I just ordered one too!  And sorry to hear that you new XPS came with all of these issues.  Hope they work it out for you.

@Nurwazil 

Thanks, waiting for my replacement to arrive. As another update, my Gigabyte Aorus Gaming Box egpu does not seem to charge the 9500 at all, despite supposedly being capable of 100w PD charging.