HTG Explains: Can You Use Any Charger With Any Device?

Every device — smartphone, tablet, eReader, laptop — seems to come with its own charger. But do you really need all these chargers? Can you re-use the same charger for multiple devices?

The Micro-USB connectors and chargers shipped with most modern smartphones and tablets are now supposed to be standardized. This is a topic that’s more confusing than it should be, given this standardization.

Types of Chargers

While chargers are becoming more standardized over time, there are still a variety of different charger types in wide use:

• Laptop Chargers: Unfortunately, there’s still no standard type of charger for laptops. You’ll want to get a charger designed specifically for your laptop. Connectors aren’t standardized, so you probably won’t be able to accidentally plug the wrong charger into your laptop.
• Apple Lightning Connector: Apple has now standardized on the Lightning connector, introduced in 2012, for their devices. iPhones, iPads, iPod Touches, iPad Nanos — all the new iDevices use the Lightning connector and can be connected to any Lightning charger certified or developed by Apple. Older devices use Apple’s 30-pin dock connector. Apple makes a connector that allows you to connect new devices with a Lightning connector to older charges with a 30-pin dock connector, if you really want to do this.
• Micro USB Chargers: Most smartphones — including Android, Windows Phone, and Blackberry phones — and Android tablets use standard Micro USB connectors. These replace the proprietary chargers that old cell phones used to use. To comply with the European Union’s directives on a common type of charger for smartphones, Apple offers a Lightning-to-Micro-USB adapter.

Laptop chargers aren’t compatible, while Lightning connectors can be shared between Apple devices. (Note that iPad chargers will have a higher amperage than iPhone chargers, see below for more about that.)