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December 22nd, 2020 10:00

Inspiron 7501 USB-C Thunderbolt port is actually useless for charging ? !!

Hi, 

I recently purchased an Inspiron 7501 With a Thunderbolt3 Port. This laptop has the Nvidia 1650Ti and comes with a 130W power brick. So, the laptop requires 130W to charge and run. 

After studying a lot of Dell manuals and docks and other threads in this forum, it seems to me that the Thunderbolt/USB-C port for charging is pretty much useless on this laptop. Here's why - 

The main issue is that Inspiron 7501 laptop requires 130W on the USB-C/Thunderbolt port. 

1. As per my understanding, there is no third party Thunderbolt3 / USB-C dock that supports 130W charging. Apparently the Specs of TB3/USB-C PD limits this to 100W.

2. Dell supports 130W charging on USB-C/TB3, apparently, in a proprietary manner. So, one would have to depend on a Dock made by DELL. (Fair enough, but see below.)

Here's the catch though - Dell TB3 Docks don't claim support for Inspiron laptops though the Dell WD19TB thunderbolt dock does support 130W on its output TB3/USB-C port. This dock is meant for selected models of Latitude, XPS and Precision business laptops. Not supported for the Inspiron. 

Catch 22 - I cannot buy a third party dock because none will give 130W due to the spec limitations. The only one who can actually make a compatible 130W TB3 dock is Dell due to a proprietary implementation, but DELL officially does not support this dock (or any dock ?) for the Inspiron 7501. So, it would seem to me that there is no way to charge my laptop on USB-C/Thunderbolt port while connected to a 4k60 monitor.

So, I'm STUCK !!

So, if a Dell WD19TB dock is connected to an Inspiron 7501, will it charge and support a 4K60 monitor ? 

No one from Dell is forthcoming with a proper answer. Dell support re-directs me to Sales because this is not a 'technical issue'. Sales guys were not reachable. 

(I have a DELL 27inch USB-C monitor that delivers 90W. The Inspiron 7501 will not charge on this monitor, but my office laptop (non-Dell) rated at 60W charges and gives me 2K60 and 4K30 on display via single USB-C.)

My conclusion is that the USB-C/TB3 port can only be used as a DisplayPort 1.4 (USB-C/DP1.4) on the Inspiron 7501. The PD/Charging part seems USELESS for this model. (Ya, you can probably connect a TB3 storage device but that's not my use case.) 

My opinion is that DELL needs to clarify their position on this issue. By going with a proprietary implementation to support 130W on the USB-C / TB3 port Dell has severely limited any practical use for the TB3/USB-C port for charging and limiting consumers from depending on third party docks. In my opinion, the claim to be able to charge the laptop on USB-C/Thunderbolt is not quite accurate. A lot of fine print seems to apply here.

I'm inclined to believe that I may have over paid for this laptop for TB3 support. 

How can DELL help me ?

Recommend me a 130W dock that will charge my Inspiron 7501 on USB-C/Thunderbolt and support a 4k60 10-bit monitor. 

Regards,

 

 

 

 

1 Message

June 24th, 2021 02:00

I know this is an old thread but I found whilst searching for information for docks. If I found it, other people might.

 

I have the same laptop and at work it charges through a Dell D6000 dock and at home it charges via my Dell U4919DW. The dock claims to provide 65W and the monitor 90W, both seem to charge the laptop perfectly adequately whether it's just topping it up or reviving it from being flat. I do feel as though the dock charges it a little slower and certainly neither are as fast as using the supplied laptop power supply (130W) but both are fine. 

 

Large caveat: I'm a business user and this is my work laptop. Whilst I do do some video editing (which is why I went for this model with a discreet gpu) most of my work is productivity/office stuff and the 1650 isn't being utilised for most of the time. 

 

TLDR - this laptop charges sufficiently well via the usb ports.

2 Posts

October 6th, 2022 10:00

It will not charge from my Dell dock either - it doesnt even register it

Sometimes it will charge from a usb-c but most of the time it just ignores it.

2 Posts

October 6th, 2022 10:00

Quite inaccurate - or at least rare and random ...

4 Operator

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4K Posts

October 6th, 2022 22:00

A Thunderbolt 3 cable charges devices at a standard 15 watts of power. But any devices with Power Delivery protocol are charged at up to 100 watts, which is the same as USB-C. For charging most devices, including laptops, a Thunderbolt 3 cable will give you virtually identical charging speeds compared to USB-C

1 Message

October 13th, 2022 06:00

I am also using Dell 7501 with a thunderbolt port,i am thinking of getting a 100w hub(by creation cable) which supply 85 w to c type port..should I go with it or not.. please advise...and if their is any other hub which is less then Rs 5000 with pd,hdmi,2*usb for Dell 7501 please advise 

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