Inverters

[David E]

I hope that this won't be moved as it is an electrical question!!! basically I need an inverter to power my laptop in the car, The charger is very helpful stating the input is 110-250v @1.5A which is 165-360W (output is 65W). What size inverter do I need given the widely ranging input wattage????

 

[plugwash]

if you belived those figueres you'd need a 200W (or slightly lower but not much) american inverter or a 400W british one but i somewhat don't belive them.

a 200W inverter will probablly be fine, i suspect that they just forgot to mark the fact that it will use less current at higher voltage (yes this is the opposite of what resistive loads do but it is pretty much correct for a universal input SMPSU).

 

[toasty]

If it's any help mate, I've got probably one of the most powerful (in terms of processor power) laptops you can get at present.

also it's fully loaded with RAM and has a huge harddisk in it large screen plus DVD burner etc....

What I'm saying is that I can't imagine many laptops exist that take more power.

I've got a quite old 150w inverter and it powers it a treat, and also has enough juice left to charge my pda and phone.

So, I would say a 150w inverter would be plenty, certainly it works for me.

Hope this helps.

 

[mikeddavies]

If the output from the mains charger is 65W as you state then this is the maximum/surge output power needed for your laptop (usually quite a lot less). So this is the maximum output needed from the invertor plus a little for losses in your charger converting back to DC. In the way of the world, probably round up to 75W to 100W.