A LTT video recently mentioned, often it’s cheaper to buy a broken laptop that uses the same charging cord just for the cord than to buy the charging cable directly. But there’s always some hassle second hand even if it is much cheaper.

Do the sockets fit? Going from 180 to240w should be fine. As long as the expected voltage match on the brick’s supply it should be fine to go higher in wattage.

In terms of wattage, it’ll only draw the current it needs.

In any case you can probably find a 3rd party brick that works just fine for way less. If you have a microcenter near you, they can help. Or there’s always crapazon.

Any cable that gets frayed could shock you, so to avoid getting shocked, stop using the cable before it rubs though to the metal. Getting a more heavy duty cable can help, but any cable will rm eventually wear through.

Things to look for:

• size and shape of the plug that goes into the laptop and the charging port on the laptop
• voltage & amperage: the chargers output voltage must be the same, the amperage must be equal or higher but never below the required amperage otherwise stuff starts to get warm and may potentially get too hot
• read your laptop chargers label

Or if you don’t have a charger read the laptop specs

It’s recomended you get a manufactory one that’s made for your laptop which you should be able to Google, make sure you’re not getting fake chargers either because those can cause house fires

any wattage above what it asks for on the new devices is fine, won’t hurt. less wattage won’t charge fast enough and it will complain. 65w is pretty standard for 14" laptops, 90w is recommended and will work on more devices in case you have one that requires 90w, usually 15.5" screens or larger, 130-180w for docks and gaming laptops. 240w for special scenarios. pick your poison, don’t go unbranded shitty universal ones, get a good genuine oem adapter, the 90w runs about $40 new on Amazon, 65w $22

LPT: if buying a new laptop, only get one that can charge via USB PD. If it can charge with a proprietary charger in addition, that ok.

Otherwise you are going to be in OP’s situation

Junk the laptop and buy one that uses USBC.

That shit should have stayed in the 2010s.

Your current adapter should have the wattage on it - buy the same. If you no longer have it, you can search yoir laptop by the service tag on the Dell Support page (it should detect it, if not the service tag is on a label on the bottom cover) and check the configuration there - it should have the original adapter listed. Buy the same.

If in doubt, just buy the 240W as that should work even if it used 180W.

Let me see if one of my dell spares works for you, I was gonna toss them

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. Thought I posed but this?

. Is this what you need?

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A laptop charger.