Which are trustworthy brands for a simple USB wall charger?
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For me, the big problem isn't to find reviews or teardowns. The problem is to find where I can buy the same model that was reviewed.
Take the dollar store charger as an example. Even if I could visit the same dollar store, I don't think it is likely that I would be able to buy the same model. Getting it in my part of the world (or on ebay/ali) would be even harder.
I like that lygte has info on where they bought it from.
Yeah, I guess IKEA it is. Thanks for your earlier post pointing it out. :)
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@gohan said in Which are trustworthy brands for a simple USB wall charger?:
then IKEA is the only reliable solution :sweat_smile:
Should I tell when the LNK36x chip of my Ikea bedside led lamp power supply exploded ? The small black plastic rectangle behind is the top of the packaging of the chip.
Good news is it failed but it was safe, I had a flash when the chip exploded but the fuse blew also (maybe a tad too late :)) and nothing happened to my house.
Ordered some LNK chips from AliExpress, replaced it and the fuse and it was back to life :o
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@gohan said in Which are trustworthy brands for a simple USB wall charger?:
then IKEA is the only reliable solution :sweat_smile:
Should I tell when the LNK36x chip of my Ikea bedside led lamp power supply exploded ? The small black plastic rectangle behind is the top of the packaging of the chip.
Good news is it failed but it was safe, I had a flash when the chip exploded but the fuse blew also (maybe a tad too late :)) and nothing happened to my house.
Ordered some LNK chips from AliExpress, replaced it and the fuse and it was back to life :o@Nca78 Maybe it helped that there was a kind of "wall" separating the exploded part from the low voltage connections?
Back in the day it seemed like everything electrical was UL listed, and it meant something. I never did understand why the US now seems indifferent about the importation of junk that has counterfeit UL Listings.
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I just now ordered two from Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B011LLGODS/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=ASQXP29CHGNZF&psc=1 -
By ordering from Amazon (actually from one of their "marketplace" dealers that's fulfilled by Amazon), there is some (hopefully only slight) chance that I'm actually getting a counterfeit unit. I know for sure that this happens fairly frequently with Samsung and Apple products. I suppose any well branded product is a possible target.
Eventually I'll get one from an actual Ikea store (my wife likes to shop there), and I'll compare the weights. I'm guessing a counterfeit has a somewhat different weight.
Does anyone reading this already have this precise model? If so, let's compare weights! It's at least a little different than the one that BigClive took to bits, since it has the American rather than the EU plug.
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Dave Jones tried to do a videoblog teardown of both an Apple USB charger and a fake Apple USB charger, but it turned out they were both fakes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi-b9k-0KfE
I think this proves you can't be sure just by looking at something that it's genuine. Not all the counterfeits are obvious.
