What does that mean? If the monitor only requires 15W to operate, that's a good thing, right? Unless monitors are expected to use less than that? I'm not familiar with reading monitor spec sheets.
to add on to what jsheard said, for this feature to be usable (ie, charge your laptop just by plugging in the monitor), you need this number to be about what your laptop's charger is. At 15W, even a macbook air would run out of power slowly while plugged into this monitor, assuming you don't plug a second cable into your laptop. 65W or 90W is a much more normal value for a feature like this.
That all makes sense. The only thing I was missing was that this refers to power output. It seems like kind of a niche and tenuous value-add for a monitor. Why would I want to get power from my monitor?
Both at work and at home, I can plug in my monitor to my laptop with a single cable to my monitor. That single cable charges my laptop, connects the display, and passes through a usb hub that's built into the monitor that connects my keyboard and webcam. It's _incredibly_ convenient. It's also just a lot less cabling. You can think of it like a dock, built into the monitor for free.
> It seems like kind of a niche
Different workflows/circles. It's not something you're likely to use with a desktop, mainly with a laptop. It also really only works well if you use thunderbolt. It's reasonably common but probably not a majority where I work, where 90% of dev machines are macs.
> USB-C with 15W power delivery for maximum compatibility
I am hoping that is a typo.