Not at all. That's part of the drawback of barrel jack connectors. There is no standard voltage output. You can undervoltage your product input, or overvoltage it and break something.
Before the whole USB-C thing, the majority of laptops had already settled on something like 18-20V (with some of the smaller ones at 10-12V). The input tolerances are relatively wide and you are highly unlikely to cause damage unless the polarity is reversed.
Here's some comments I made a few years ago explaining why that voltage:
There are tons of wall warts with barrel jack outputs that are the exact same case size and cable length. A quick search of digikey will confirm that. That's a big part of their flexibility - you can easily get an AC/DC converter spec'd for slightly more power in just about the exact same form factor. If you need a little more power, buy a wall wart with slightly higher rated amperage.
I would also suggest that the Pinebook volumes are nowhere near the scale where they can harness USB-C benefits. They're a small company, not an Apple.
I have a crate of probably 30-40 different power supplies. Almost no two are alike, there's 5v, 5.1v, 19v, 32v, 19v, at every amperage from .3 to 30. They all have different sizes of plug, different polarity, different shapes.
Conversely, I can walk around my apartment and charger my thinkpad from any of about 20 different USBC supplies. I can charge my phone in the car, or my laptop from the USBC output. There's a swathe of batteries on the mantle, all of which can charge my phone or my laptop for days or a week depending which size I pick up.
You realize a barrel jack is just some metal of a certain size right? Calling a barrel jack proprietary because dell added crazy things to their own power supplies is nonsense. Barrel jacks have been around and sold individually in bulk for half a century.
You could add those same DRMs to a USB-C connection and 'manufacturer required' power supply.
Barrel connectors are not proprietary just because someone implemented theirs in some specific way to harm consumers.
In fact USB-C connectors are more likely to implement a DRM, given that the connector comes 'batteries-included' with a data channel that won't need to be re-imagined.
Barrel jacks offer no such boot-straps to would-be DRMers. That isn't to say it's impossible (as HP/Dell/Fujitsu have proven), but a 2 prong barrel jack is going to require a bit more effort.
If you are using proprietary to mean 'consumer-hostile', use a better phrase. Proprietary has specific context to IP/copyright/design.
USB-C seems superior because it comes with a data link, and negotiates higher power ratings.
The tradeoff is that this comes with complexity. The Pinebook team, sensibly, decided they didn't want to fuck with building and verifying USB-C power negotiation subsystems.
Guarantee that everyone complaining about it here has never had to implement, or be accountable for the BOM cost of, a USB-C power negotiation system.
USB-C seems superior because every desk that I ever sit at already has a USB-C charger, plus another in my backpack, and compatibility with portable power banks.
Granted I haven’t ever had to implement it, but I think you’re underselling its benefits.
"Are you 12" is an internet insult trope. The comment clearly broke the site guidelines. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
>Guarantee that everyone complaining about it here has never had to implement, or be accountable for the BOM cost of, a USB-C power negotiation system.
Huh, evidently this hasn't been sufficiently abstracted into hardware/software modules? I find that sort of surprising given the maturity of the problem, though I guess some things just aren't that simple.
Most people would probably prefer USB-C, as yo can use any old power supply. Though in this case it looks like it supports USB-PD anyway, so doesn’t seem like an issue.
It has USB-C charging as well. I think that's sort of the best of both worlds, it's not like a barrel connection adds much to the board, and it means you can run it from a much less complex power supply.
It does mean it has an extra port that you might find unnecessary, but at the kind of prices they're selling this at including a usb-c charger would actually add a fair bit to their costs, and you can buy an aftermarket one pretty easily.
USB-C means that I get to use any charger I have and can trivially replace it; a barrel-connector is some one-off component that is precious: if I lose it or damage it I am _screwed_.
The article says the device also support some charging over USB-C... why even bother including a barrel-connector? It feels wrong.
universal PSUs with all of the few common barrel connector sizes are commonly and cheaply available. I personally prefer USB-C too, just because I have more devices with it, but barrel connectors aren't that weird.
> No one seems to complain about their 120/240 mains plugs not being "modern" either
Those plugs are standardized. I can use them with a Dell laptop, an Apple desktop, and a VIC-20 from 1982, with zero difficulty. If there were exactly one barrel plug (per country) that worked on everything, you'd see a lot less interest in ditching it.
Their commoditized nature means people are making smaller and lighter adapters.
Depending on the wattage you can use the same USB-C adapter for multiple devices.
There are many USB-C external batteries available.