More practical laptop charger design from Lenovo tested

For a long time, Lenovo used bog-standard chargers for its ThinkPad line. This meant chargers connected to the wall with a cable, which led to a brick and that brick was connected to the laptop with another cable. A standard and classical laptop charger design for laptops that were shipped in the thousands to large business customers.

In recent years, there has been a lot of progress when it comes to chargers. This includes wall mounted chargers, which means the charging brick is directly connected to the power outlet, requiring one less cable. And Gallium-Nitrid (GaN) chargers have enabled them to become smaller and more portable.

With the 2025 laptop model ThinkPad X9-15, Lenovo includes 65 W chargers that were both wall-mounted and GaN, so they could be portable, too. With the newest model, the Lenovo ThinkPad X9-15p Gen 1 Aura Edition, which we recently reviewed, Lenovo yet again introduces a new charger.

The newer and more powerful entry into the ThinkPad X9 series has a 100 W wall-mounted GaN charger. This not only enables a better performance, it also makes it possible to add a second USB-C charging port to the charger. The second USB-C port can output a maximum of 15 W, enabling users to charge accessories, like wireless headphones or a smartphone.

This is no doubt a useful feature, as it allows users to only carry one charger instead of many - and worlds apart from the simple chargers that Lenovo used to ship with all Lenovo ThinkPad laptops.