An LDO voltage regulator circuit is simple; just two capacitors are required, one at the input and one at the output. Many users may believe that DC/DC converters are more difficult to use because of the inductor selection and value  calculation.  Torex provides a simple solution with the new XCL206 DC/DC converter by incorporating an inductor in the IC package. Users can achieve high efficiency in power conversion with the XCL206 product by adding just the two external ceramic capacitors.  For example, consider a power rail system using a Lithium-Ion battery with a nominal output voltage of 3.6V; stepping down to 1.8V at 300mA output current. If an LDO is used to create the 1.8V output voltage, the LDO draws 300mA from the battery, the same as the output current. In this LDO application, using rough calculations, the 750mAh capacity battery can run continuously for 2.5 hours. By replacing the LDO with an XCL206, the Torex micro DC/DC converter will draw an input current of only 183mA from the battery to create an output voltage of 1.8V, with an output current of 300mA. In this case, the 750mAh capacity battery can run 4 hours. This is one big advantage of a DC/DC converter as compared to an LDO linear voltage regulator.