I want to find out the (average) weight of a MagSafe 85W adapter, but I could not find anything really useful on the internet. I bought an adapter that weighs about 210 grams, whereas my old one (broken) weighs a little more, 230 grams.
I'm a little worried that the new one I bought is not genuine, since I bought it from an ebay seller who stated that it's a bulk product straight from the factory and had thousands of good reviews.
I measured the weight with a kitchen scale, without the power cable attached (i.e. only the adapter) and with the cable connecting to the computer on the ground, such that it's (for the very most part) not included in the weighting.
I know the latter is a bad technique, but the reason is that the old and new adapter have a different magnetic connector thing (the new one is L shaped).
It would be awesome if some of you guys could just put your adapter on a scale the same way I did it and tell me the result.
Best Answer
In short, you won't be able to prove it unless you had someone familiar enough with counterfeits to notice.
If genuine, it is possible that the power supplies are built by different manufacturers, or, as you've noted, that they have been changed (indicated by the different style of Magsafe connectors) which could have resulted in changes internally to the product. I doubt there is an official standard for these that would rule out a variance of 20g, unfortunately. This can be inferred by the following statement from Apple:
Typically, a genuine Apple adapter would have the following:
However, the above can all be easily faked. Unless you can easily tell that the build quality is suspect, generally the only way you'll know if it is a real adapter is if you buy it directly from Apple.