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Fake Apple Chargers Fail Safety Tests (bbc.com)
Investigators have warned consumers they face potentially fatal risks after 99% of fake Apple chargers failed a basic safety test. From a report on BBC: Trading Standards, which commissioned the checks, said counterfeit electrical goods bought online were an "unknown entity." Of 400 counterfeit chargers, only three were found to have enough insulation to protect against electric shocks. It comes as Apple has complained of a "flood" of fakes being sold on Amazon. Apple revealed in October that it was suing a third-party vendor, which it said was putting customers "at risk" by selling power adapters masquerading as those sold by the Californian tech firm.
I found cheapo USB chargers from Amazon have huge inrush currents and make big sparks when plugging in. UL listed power supplies have inrush current limiting which prevents this.
This is Amazon's responsibility. They're selling counterfeit, dangerous merchandise.
I don't respond to AC's.
Here's a video taking one apart and reverse-engineering it to see why it's so crappy.
You get what you pay for.
...laura
With USB-C, this is going to get much, much worse. Apple, Google and HP now have laptops that can get juice from every charger.
However, the protocol for that (USB-PD, Power Delivery) is a digital protocol. So companies that used to build purely electronic chargers will now have to build or more likely buy firmware for their chargers. There's bound to be bugs in there, but we're talking about chargers that can supply up to a 100W of direct current.
I dare not guess how much houses are going to burn down because of crazy power supplies.
Personally, I'm only buying cables and chargers that have been tested thoroughly. You can't trust Amazon reviews, you can't trust big brands, you can only trust guys like Benson Leung and Nathan K., who whip out the protocol analyzer and the benchtop electronic loads.
This is a real good source:
https://docs.google.com/spread...
And this is the Google Plus page, where they post an analysis every so often:
https://plus.google.com/collec...
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The only reason why there's so many fake Apple chargers and non-compliant cables is because Apple prices genuine ones exorbitantly, and yet they are not designed to be durable. This combination creates a market for counterfeit and shoddy replacement products because when the genuine version breaks, consumers don't want to spend $100 or $45 or $20 to replace a charger or cable.
Case in point: MacBook Pro chargers have been known to suffer from frayed cables due to Apple's insistence on a design that lacks adequate strain relief. This has been a known engineering defect in their chargers since the iBook and PowerBook design over a decade ago, yet Apple has persistently refused to correct this flaw, presumably to encourage people to buy new chargers and make more profit. It would be a trivial matter for Apple to redesign these chargers to make the cable detachable from the brick--something that virtually every other laptop manufacturer does, so that if the cable breaks, you don't have to pay $100 to replace the whole thing and toss the broken one in the trash.
Same problem with iPhone cables. No strain relief. Apple talks about being an environmentally conscious company, but with millions of iPhone users--and almost everyone I know who owns one has said they've needed to replace the OEM cable due to wear--the cost of this garbage is substantial. Then add in the cost of the counterfeits both in terms of waste and safety.
Apple: lower the profit margins on chargers and cables, and make them more durable. You won't sell as much or make as much money, but only then will you be living up to your claims of being environmentally conscious and actually caring about consumers not injuring themselves, because you are playing a role in the fact that your consumers are buying knockoffs in the first place.
I replaced my broken apple MB Air charger 3 years ago. Recently it broke again. I repaired mine this time around, with electric connectors and tape. 85 Euros for a charger is freakin' insane, even by Apple standards. The margin on these things must be higher even than on iPhones. Someone should list their global profit percentage on chargers - that would probably be 99.9% vis-a-vis 91% of all Smartphone profits globally. ...
One of the reasons I'm actually happy about moving away from Apple computers now.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Ya, there is something inherent about apple that leads to a plethora of unsafe knockoffs. They design their products to need expensive accessories that they then gouge the consumer on. If they really wanted to slowdown the knockoffs, they should start selling at a price that's related to the cost of production.
The closest thing to "something inherent about the Apple design" is Apple's tighter control over production of devices with Lightning and MagSafe connectors through refusal to license relevant patents. Android devices, on the other hand, use standardized USB micro-B and USB C connectors. Licenses for patents that cover standard USB connectors are offered under "FRAND" (uniform royalty) conditions. So any safe USB charger is a safe Android charger.
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It's worse than that. At work, we use trolleys for charging macbooks. Each trolley has fifteen slots, and fifteen magsafe cables coming from a common power supply.
Except that there is no way to get those cables.
Apple holds the patent. They make exactly as many connectors as they do chargers. They don't sell the connectors or cables separately. They will not allow anyone else to manufacture them. So on every one of those trolleys, for every one of those fifteen bays, we had to sacrifice an Apple charger. We chopped off the connector and had it incorporated into the trolley, and threw the charger body itsself away.
And every time a connector needs replacing - which happens a lot, see above post on how awful magsafe connectors are from a durabiity standpoint - we have to buy another expensive charger, chop off the connector, and throw the rest away.
You can get magsafe connectors on eBay, which I assume come from some knock-off-shop in China who are happily ignoring the patent. Supply is erratic, and we can't use them because they don't come from a known trustworthy supplier.
I purchased a couple of those white boxy chargers on E-bay and found that if I plug in the thing the wrong way, I get the full line voltage on the case of my apple phone. Those things could have killed somebody! Seriously, they are more than just a little dangerous. I could have died just holding my phone in bare feet while charging.
Once I realized the issue, ALL of them went into the trash and although I'm $10 poorer, I learned a valuable lesson. Don't buy stuff like this from E-Bay. Cheap cables and stuff w/o any active components? Fine... Just NOTHING that plugs into the wall unless you can verify it's not a knock off (which is unlikely to be possible). Shocking what kinds of stuff they get away with selling...
Still, why on earth does Apple run the price of this stuff so blooming high? Seriously guys, I don't mind you making a profit but do you really have to gouge me after I paid retail for that I-device to start with? How much does a 5V power supply actually cost you to produce anyway?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Part of what makes these problematic is largely that they're trying to look like Apple products. Apple makes really small power supplies, which makes it much harder to create knock-offs that work. Nobody makes knock-offs of Android supplies; they just make cheap USB power supplies. Because they aren't trying to hit an absurdly small form factor, they don't cut corners to the same degree, and the supplies tend to be more reliable at a given price point. That said, the Apple USB supplies cost $19, and the usable third-party branded supplies usually start at about $12, so there's not a lot of savings to be gained even when you take away the form factor.
More significantly, because they're trying to look like Apple products (and often pretending to be Apple products), they can't be branded. If they were, Apple would go after them for violating their design patents (and trademark violations if they use the Apple logo). That entire selling model is incompatible with branding. As a result, there's no hit to their reputation if the product doesn't work. They just change the name on their Amazon or eBay account and go right back to fooling people. So there's also no incentive to make a quality product.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Any cost conscious product manufacturer uses another NRTL for the small USA market.
Um... no. The US represents the single largest single market in the world, and is roughly 25% of the entire world. No manufacturer can afford to ignore a quarter of the market, any more than they can ignore the E.U. or China.
There are plenty of PSUs which have good safety, and are not UL listed (but UL certified by another NRTL).
That makes NO sense: UL Certification means Underwriters Laboratory did the testing. Another NRTL cannot by definition, UL certify anything
But assuming you meant that the product is certified by a different NRTL: You're ignoring the scope and purpose of an NRTL.
An NRTL can do testing for OSHA compliance. OSHA is only an authority for workplace safety, and nothing else. An NRTL's certification is only valid for an industrial or commercial application, and has no value for products intended for a home.
There are only 17 NRTL's, but even then, they are limited in scope. Each NRTL is only licensed to test a specific set of criteria: For example, the NSF is an NRTL, but it's wholly inappropriate for the group to certify an electrical product. There only a couple of NRTL's licensed to test electrical products.
It's also important to note the origin and continued primary business of UL: UL was formed by and works primarily for the American fire/homeowner's insurance industry. They are the laboratory that the insurance industry goes to in order to underwrite the safety of a product.
UL listing of consumer products isn't, and should never be mistaken for any sort of governmental certification. It's an insurance industry approval, and means you're likely to get a payout should the product cause damage.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.