240W USB-C: what changed, and why it took so long

In May 2021, the USB Promoter Group announced that USB Power Delivery could go from 100W to 240W over the same USB-C connector you already own.¹ On paper, that was the end of the proprietary brick: one cable to charge your phone, tablet, monitor, and the laptop that eats 200W under a gaming load. Then four years passed. Cables showed up. A few 140W chargers showed up. The actual 240W charger stayed in limbo. In 2025, the dam finally broke. So let's walk through what changed in the standard and, more to the point, why it took so long to become a product on a shelf.

What 240W actually is, in plain terms

The new number comes from revision 3.1 of USB Power Delivery, the protocol that lets a charger and a device negotiate how much power crosses the cable.¹ The old ceiling was 100W. Revision 3.1 introduced the Extended Power Range (EPR), which adds three new voltage levels (28V, 36V, and 48V) on top of the 20V that already existed.¹ ² ³ The 240W figure comes from the simplest math there is: 48V times 5A.¹

Here's the trick almost nobody explains. Power is voltage times current. Raise the voltage to 48V and you can deliver 240W using just 5A of current.⁴ Current is what heats a wire. The more current you push, the thicker the conductor has to be and the more energy bleeds off as heat along the way.⁴ ⁵ Delivering 240W at 48V instead of at a low voltage means a thinner cable and less wasted heat. That bit of engineering is what made it viable to run this much power through a connector that small.

Why it took so long: the cable was the problem

The standard on paper is one thing. A cable that handles 48V and 5A safely is another, and that's where the years went.

First, certification arrived after the spec. The USB-IF's official 240W EPR cable certification program only launched on December 14, 2021, months after the standard was announced.⁶ Without certification, no responsible vendor ships a 240W cable.

Second, an EPR cable is a different beast. Every 240W cable has to carry an e-marker chip, a small electronic identifier that tells the charger what the cable is rated for, and it has to be visibly marked with EPR icons.² ⁴ ⁷ The cable tiers changed too: under the new certification, a cable can only be rated 60W or 240W. The old 100W middle ground is gone.²

Third, and most important, the higher voltage rewrote the safety bar. The minimum operating voltage for an EPR cable is 53.65V, and components in the power path have to be rated for at least 63V: the protection capacitor that used to be a 30V part now has to be a 63V one.⁴ ⁷ ⁸ Past 100W, the fire rules tighten as well. Under UL 62368-1, an energy source in that range carries "a higher risk of ignition and fire spread," which demands more rigorous safety testing.⁸ Even the protocol was made deliberately paranoid: negotiating anything above 20V requires a message sequence designed so that no single communication error can result in more than 20V reaching the device.⁹

The drought years: 140W happened, 240W didn't

Apple's 140W adapter, shipped in October 2021 with the 16-inch MacBook Pro, is usually cited as the first PD 3.1 / EPR charger on the market.¹⁰ But it tops out at 28V/140W, not 240W. And on the MacBook, that fast charge runs over MagSafe, not the USB-C ports.¹⁰ The upshot: for years, cables and a handful of 140W bricks existed, but no consumer device asked for the full 240W. With nothing asking, nobody built the charger.

That flipped in 2025. On April 14, 2025, ChargerLAB reviewed the Delta ADP-240KB BA as "the world's first power adapter that supports PD3.1 240W," measuring up to 95.28% efficiency and a peak of 58.2°C under full load, in a brick weighing around 710g.¹² The consumer milestone came from the Framework Laptop 16, which Framework presented as the first laptop to ship with a single-port, standards-compliant 240W USB-C (PD 3.1) charger.¹³ ¹⁴ The payoff is running at full power without the battery draining while plugged in, something the previous 180W brick couldn't manage under a gaming load.¹³ ¹⁴ (The charger's price was reported between $99 and $109, but that's worth confirming on Framework's own store.)

What the community is saying

Among people who follow USB-C closely, the mood is one of slightly irritated pragmatism rather than hype. One line sums it up: "the cables and the spec have existed for years; where are the devices?" Most treat 240W as future-proofing, useful mainly to gaming-laptop owners, not an everyday need. (Community opinion, not fact.)

On the Framework Community forum, Laptop 16 owners with the 180W charger report that under sustained gaming the battery still drains even while plugged in, and they ask how to get true full-power charging. The pragmatic consensus pushes back on risky workarounds like plugging in two chargers (a laptop accepts power from one source only) and suggests dropping to a "balanced" performance profile while they wait on the 240W brick. There's also a recurring distrust of cables: people want to see the USB-IF EPR logo and the e-marker, not just a "240W" silkscreen on a cheap cable. (All of this is the community's read, not verified.)

Verdict

240W has gone from a paper promise to a real product, and it arrived alongside the best possible argument for it: the EU's common-charger rules took effect in December 2024 and reach laptops from April 28, 2026.¹⁵ The real use case is still narrow. We're talking gaming laptops and workstations, not your phone. But the delay was never reluctance. It was the time it takes to make a cable carry 48V safely without becoming a fire headline. If you don't own a laptop that pulls anywhere near 200W, you don't need to chase a 240W charger. If you do, the good news is it finally exists for real. And when you buy a cable, insist on the e-marker and the certification logo.

Sources

1. USB Promoter Group Announces USB Power Delivery Specification Revision 3.1 · Business Wire (official release) · https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210526006131/en/USB-Promoter-Group-Announces-USB-Power-Delivery-Specification-Revision-3.1 · May 26, 2021
2. USB Type-C Specification 2.1 allows up to 240W Extended Power Range (EPR) · CNX Software · https://www.cnx-software.com/2021/05/27/usb-type-c-specification-2-1-allows-up-to-240w-extended-power-range-epr/ · May 27, 2021
3. USB Specification Revision Defines Up to 240W and 48V of Power Delivery Over USB Type-C · audioXpress · https://audioxpress.com/news/usb-specification-revision-defines-up-to-240w-and-48v-of-power-delivery-over-usb-type-c · May 2021
4. What Is 240W USB Extended Power Range (EPR)? · Plugable Technologies · https://plugable.com/blogs/news/what-is-240w-usb-extended-power-range-epr · accessed Jun 18, 2026
5. A Deep Dive into USB Power Delivery Extended Power Range (USB PD EPR) · Coolgear · https://www.coolgear.com/guides-informative-articles/a-deep-dive-into-usb-power-delivery-extended-power-range-usb-pd-epr.html · accessed Jun 18, 2026
6. 240W (EPR) Cable Certification Testing is Now Available at Allion Labs · Allion Labs · https://www.allion.com/news-center/240w_epr_cable/ · program announced Dec 14, 2021
7. USB Type-C 2.1 Cables Start to Become Available for 240W Power Delivery · Tom's Hardware · https://www.tomshardware.com/news/usb-type-c-21-cables-start-to-become-available-for-240w-power-delivery · 2021
8. 240W USB-C Cable Performance Testing and Safety Considerations · UL Solutions · https://www.ul.com/insights/240w-usb-c-cable-performance-testing-and-safety-considerations · accessed Jun 18, 2026
9. USB-IF announces version 3.1 of the latest USB Power Delivery specification (USB PD 3.1), up to 240W · Bay Area Compliance Laboratories Corp. · https://www.baclcorp.com.cn/show.asp?para=en_2_49_4563 · 2021
10. Apple 140W USB-C PD 3.1 EPR Power Adapter, Part 1 · USB Charging Blog · https://usbchargingblog.wordpress.com/2022/04/22/apple-140w-usb-c-pd-3-1-epr-power-adapter-part-1-how-it-charges-a-16-inch-macbook-pro-2021/ · Apr 22, 2022
11. Summary of PD3.1 Products: Laptops, Chargers, Power banks, and Power strips · ChargerLAB · https://www.chargerlab.com/summary-of-pd3-1-products-laptops-chargers-power-banks-and-power-strips/ · compiled May 29, 2024
12. Review of Delta's World's First PD3.1 240W USB-C Power Adapter · ChargerLAB · https://www.chargerlab.com/35391-2/ · Apr 14, 2025
13. Framework introduces 240W USB-C charging to laptops · VideoCardz · https://videocardz.com/newz/framework-introduces-240w-usb-c-charging-to-laptops · 2025
14. Framework Laptop 16 gets a 2025 upgrade · Tom's Hardware · https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/framework-laptop-16-gets-a-2025-upgrade-modular-notebook-gets-rtx-5070-graphics-zen-5-cpu-options-and-240w-type-c-charger · 2025
15. EU common charger rules: Power all your devices with a single charger · European Commission (official) · https://commission.europa.eu/news-and-media/news/eu-common-charger-rules-power-all-your-devices-single-charger-2024-12-28_en · Dec 28, 2024

Community sentiment drawn from the Framework Community forum and third-party USB-C coverage; treated as opinion, separate from the sources above.

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