Is It Safe To Use A Phone Charger To Charge The Nintendo Switch? – SlashGear

The Nintendo Switch comes in three varieties: the regular Switch, the Switch OLED, and the Switch Lite. The first two consoles — the Switch and Switch OLED — have the same charging specifications, but the smaller Switch Lite requires a bit less power. Nintendo ships the Switch consoles with a 39-watt USB-C Power Delivery (PD) AC adapter that is designed to deliver 15 volts/2.6 amps and 5 volts/1.5 amps. With these specs, you may find that the Switch charger also works well for recharging your tablet, smartphone, and possibly your laptop if it’s an Ultrabook.

If you look at the specs for your smartphone, tablet, or laptop charger, you may notice that they have a higher wattage than the Switch’s 39W AC adapter; many come in 45W, 65W, and even 100W and 240W varieties. That doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t use these chargers with the Switch, however, due to the technology introduced with USB-C.

Put simply, USB-C PD chargers are inherently smart in the sense that they can adjust to meet the demands of gadgets, including ones that aren’t designed to utilize their full charging potential. The charger may go up to 65W, for example, but the Switch won’t get that full load and will instead only get the power level it requires to safely and quickly recharge. The USB Implementers Forum describes this design as “flexible,” explaining that the current USB Power Delivery 3.1 specification is able to “optimize power management across multiple peripherals by allowing each device to take only the power it requires …,” among other things.