Price is not always an indicator of a quality product

[williefleete]

I feel a right fool for buying 2 of these for the advertised $15.72 a pop (litterally) but I am getting refunded and getting some official chargers
  we got a failure cap'n 



one of them did fail hence the blackened circuit board so I cracked this one open and had a squiz at what wonders I would find inside. the case was relatively easy to crack open and had (probably fraudulent) official looking markings on it, and I know from experience that even the 5watt version of the offical chargers are extremely difficult to crack open. looking at the board I instantly knew it was fake, the skew whiff driver transistor, the cheap looking and poor quality transformer, the lack of clearance and isolation slots, the poor soldering on the mains connector and USB port shield and the lack of fusing and the fact the diode failed (litterally) smelled of cheap won hung low nasty chinese crap with a marked up price to attract the fools (IE ME!) into thinking they're genuine

[mjkuwp]

Write what you will about an ME (which I am) or IE.  but 'I' didn't overpay for that junk.

I often wonder what a person from China would think, reading this forum.  Oh, well I guess we all have to have thick skin.

Are those from ebay?

[rdl]

Going by the first line, I think it was meant as "me", as in me, myself and I.

I feel a right fool for buying 2 of these for the advertised $15.72 a pop ...

... to attract the fools (IE ME!) into thinking they're genuine

As to the part about Chinese quality, there is the old saying, you make your bed, then you must lie in it.

[mjkuwp]

Going by the first line, I think it was meant as "me", as in me, myself and I.

oh, man.  Someone has a bit of egg on his face, i.e. me.    I apologize @williefleete

maybe now the grammar police can duke it out.

In my school we had ME, EE, IE (Mechanical Electrical and Industrial) and IT (industrial tech) which we called "I Tried to be an engineer".  Not very nice but that was a long time ago.  These days I respect all kinds of backgrounds.  I am proud of my profession and glad I got a degree but I learned to respect 'the farmer's guess'.


but I digress,

hopefully not off-topic but would a GFCI (GFI) protect one from failure in this kind of device?

[williefleete]

Are those from ebay?

New Zealand site, Trademe

[kwallen]

I'm of the opinion that any sort of generic power supply is going straight in the bin. Most of the failures I've seen are just melting or the DC side cap blowing up, but I have absolutely no desire to be on the end of a transformer insulation failure. You're literally trusting this stuff with your life, it's not the place to skimp on the price. Apple chargers are cheap and efficient for 5v USB stuff, for the rest there's cheap switching supplies on Mouser that actually have semblance of safety regulations being adhered to.

If you want to get these things for free, go to a hotel and ask if they have some left behind that you can have.

[Mechatrommer]

Are those from ebay?

New Zealand site, Trademe

bingo! why blame chinese when the new zealander resell a cheapo at overpriced? an aussy ordering and new zealand is also an "otherWise", just imagine how the el-cheapo sling shotted from china to kangaroo land?

[amyk]

These look quite a bit better than the usual ones with a 2-transistor oscillator and no ICs, but it appears they've completely omitted the choke on the secondary...

[williefleete]

These look quite a bit better than the usual ones with a 2-transistor oscillator and no ICs, but it appears they've completely omitted the choke on the secondary...

Believe me a lot of stuff is missing. As soon as I found out they werent the real deal, I biffed them, I might save the board with the USB plug and bootstrap resistors though.
There is 1 IC on it most likely a generic SMPS controller with external transistor, the voltage is regulated off the primary instead of using an adj ref and opto. no Y cap between pri and sec, there are pads on the board where they probably would have put a ceramic SMD cap, its likely why the touchscreen keyboard on the iPad went AWOL when I was typing and it was on the charger too.