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MacBook Air charging via USB-C to MagSafe 1 cable
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This is a concise summary post; if you want the details of how I got here, and the technical specs beneath everything, click here.My setup:
Works better than I’d expected, charged from 71% to 100% (as reported by macOS) in about 40 minutes. It took a bit longer to trickle-charge up to an actual 100%, at least as reported by coconutBattery. This is definitely going to be a “go-to” travel solution, especially for higher risk environs (theme parks...). The one caveat, opposite to the Amazon listing and the usual operation of Apple adapters, the AreMe adapters light orange when charged, green when charging.
Edit: I hooked up a MacBookAir3,2 (a mid-2010 Core 2 Duo 13") with a flat battery and it’s working fine with the AreMe cable, too. The battery is 12 years old and after 675 cycles is down to about 60% of its design capacity, and running Big Sur on 4GB RAM and a 1.86 GHz Penryn isn’t exactly a snappy experience, but it all still works. With the Klein ET920 I’m seeing the SuperTank Pro pump out about 60W and the Air is charging with 20-25W.
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Klein ET920 measuring SuperTank Pro output
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SuperTank Pro display showing charging output
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coconutBattery screen shot
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I tried it on a Mid-2007 MacBook and the setup was enough to power it up, but the battery is dead. Swollen. It was a generic A1185 I bought for $17 in 2015:
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Screenshot of Amazon order info for the $17 MacBook battery
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I definitely got my money’s worth from that thing. But now I’ve got to decide if I’m going to put any more money into the thing. I can pick up another generic battery for (still around $17), and if it lasts half as long I’ll be happy. Or I can get a decent NuPower for $60. But this is a 16 year old computer. It’s speedy under lubuntu 20.04 LTS, it’s usable under Lion, but it’s never going to be a primary workstation. But there are some sentimental attachments... I think I’ll pick up the cheapest decentish battery I can find and just rely on that to provide protection against accidental MagSafe disconnects.
Edit 2: I got the T-Tip cable today (April 7, 2023) and hooked it up to the 11" Air directly. Over about an hour doing a clean install of macOS Monterey and loading up software from a USB drive, with WiFi and Bluetooth running, it went from a dead battery to 100%, bringing the SuperTank Pro down to about 35% (from 100%) in the process. Interestingly, the T-Tip connector version of the cable lights the way you’d expect (orange while charging, green when charged). With the laptop fully charged, the SuperTank source is providing <= 15W to keep it running. Optimistically, that should give me about 6 hours of operation from the fully charged power bank before the laptop even starts to run from its built-in battery. I can definitely live with that. We’ll see if the real world comes anywhere close to that back-of-napkin estimate.
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| SuperTank Pro charging 11" MacBook Air using T-Tip cable |
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| Screenshot of macOS battery details |
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