8 ms·

A dozen USB chargers in the lab: Apple is good, but not quite the best (2012)

84 points by pwg 4y ago

mwcremer 4y ago
[2012]
scblock 4y ago
Probably could use a (2012) label.
ink_13 4y ago
FYI, this is from 2012, although I would be interested in a similar analysis done today. At a guess, name-brand third-party chargers (Anker, Belkin, etc) are probably more than "good enough" at this point, but it would be neat to see that quantified.
- mmebane 4y ago
  AllThingsOnePlace on YouTube [1] has been doing a good job of reviewing performance characteristics of many different chargers, although he usually doesn't do teardowns. [1]: https://youtube.com/@AllThingsOnePlace https://youtube.com/@AllThingsOnePlace
  - gruez 4y ago
    >AllThingsOnePlace on YouTube [1] has been doing a good job of reviewing performance characteristics of many different chargers I watched one of his reviews recently[1], and while it's true that he reviews performance characteristics, it's unclear whether it's something I should care about. For instance, he talks about how that particular charger has a low power factor. Sure, having a high power factor[2] is nice in theory, but is that something I should care about? Judging from the wikipedia article it's more of an issue for the grid itself, and I'm not personally billed for it. I care far more about how much noise/ripple is being outputted by the charge, or whether it's going to damage my electronics, but that's doesn't seem to be evaluated. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uasxk9HBAtE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uasxk9HBAtE [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor
    - porkbeer 4y ago
      Low power factor can make other devices nearby unstable by introducing noise or uneven ac cycles. Its overblown, sure, but tends to be a reliable indicator of overall quality as most engineers will only optimize for it with higher quality designs. Lower quality designs can often be dirtier and shorter lasting due to feedback, inefficiency and parts omission.
    - bradknowles 4y ago
      Depends on where you are, and who your power company is. Some places have started charging you more for apparent power draw due to poor power factor.
  - runnerup 4y ago
    ChargerLAB[0] does a lot of tear downs but I can’t vouch for their value. 0: https://youtube.com/@ChargerLAB https://youtube.com/@ChargerLAB
- latortuga 4y ago
  I remember when this article came out originally because I was surprised to see a random charger I owned as the winner. I still have this HP touchpad charger and a decade later it still works great.
- mrjin 4y ago
  Named brands are not necessarily good. In mid-2022 I tried to consolidate my chargers (Lots came with phones/pads etc. one 4 ports, and one 6 ports in particular. Most of those came with devices support PD and are 18w at least. However, those two multi-ports ones can only do 5v/2.4a max. Brand names were hidden here just to avoid being taken as ads) into one single charge station. So, I expected to get one with 8 ports and could do 100w at least, USB-C/PD would be desired but not a must. I did not realize I just started a saga. I had very positive experience with some generic single port PD chargers, so I decided to start from generic ones first. Not quite a surprise, none of 3 met my expectations, mostly because of false marking. The worst one doubled the current it was delivering. Others had too much voltage drop, e.g. with 1700mA load, the voltage dropped to around 4.8 etc.. I thought I cheaped out, so decided to try big brands. So the only one I found was with 10 ports, 100w total, 2.4a max per port. It came with the charging station and a huge power brick. To be fair, the power brick was actually decent as when idle, the power consumption could not be registered by my power meter. But the charging station was a total disappointment. It chewed 5w when idle. When with around 1700ma load, the voltage dropped to below 4.6v. To my surprise, the single port generic ones I had could actually maintain the voltage to about 4.8v, one was even able to keep at about 5.1v. Eventually I gave up and returned all of them as I had exhausted all the available options but none of them were close to my expectations.
krabizzwainch 4y ago
I actually kept my HP Touchpad charging bricks (cylinders?) because they always seemed really solid. They are still useful for all of my Pi stuff as well.
- h4waii 4y ago
  Memories! I have 3 of those long cylinders from my old TouchPad too, and a stubby one from the Veer. Solid 5V2A chargers, but boy do they stick out.
- nolan879 4y ago
  I'm still using mine to power a qi charger. Everything about the HP Touchpad was overbuilt, I got mine during the firesale.
  - krabizzwainch 4y ago
    I missed the firesale but my old employer didn’t. They tried using them as POS devices and that never happened. One day they were just like “Get rid of these”. I played with cyanogenmod until all the batteries swelled up and I got rid of them.
xnx 4y ago
Can't see how this could comparison from 2012 could still be relevant with the advent of GaN chargers.
- walrus01 4y ago
  GaN has also had a big impact on the size and thermal wattage budgets/waste heat of a whole bunch of types of microwave and millimetre wave Tx power amplifiers, anywhere from 4 GHz to 120 GHz. If you look at the current state of the art for a "money is no object" manpack size VSAT/SNG terminal for geostationary use in a random very hard to reach area, such as might be owned by CNN or the BBC, the GaN Tx RF chain BUC/SSPA is remarkably small now compared to ten, twelve, fourteen years ago.
  - stevenhuang 4y ago
    ah yes the dreaded "request for quote" pricing.. how much do one of these puppies cost? $20k?
    - dylan604 4y ago
      if you have to ask...
    - walrus01 4y ago
      way, way more than $20k as your geostationary-transponder-kHz using SNG terminal gets smaller you are still forced into using really rudimentary modulation so the other calculation is the $ per month for a dedicated piece of transponder space lease, or the even higher costs for occasional-use transponder space.
      - aDfbrtVt 4y ago
        What aspect of migrating to GaN PA's degrades the link budget for this application?
        stephen_g 4y ago
realworldperson 4y ago
[dead]
einpoklum 4y ago
1. This is from 2012. 2. No less importantly, I see a bunch of phone-vendor chargers, and am not seeing many of the most popular charger brands: Blitzwolf, Baseus, Kuulaa, USLion, UGreen, etc.
- sq_ 4y ago
  I’m curious about the brands you mention, as I haven’t heard of them too much. I usually just shell out for Anker stuff since it’s performed well for me. Would you say they’re all typically good quality? Or am I reading you wrong and you’d like to see analysis of how bad they might be despite being popular?
  - threeseed 4y ago
    I would recommend: http://reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware http://reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware Apart from top tier brands like Apple, Belkin etc which are generally good all of the others tend to be more mixed. Some products are amazing and best in class others a bit average.
    - wslh 4y ago
      What multiport charger options are the top of the line now? For example I saw [1] and bought one but then cancelled the order because there was no precise shipping details (waited more than 5 days for shipping information after the payment). [1] https://eu.ugreen.com/collections/gan-chargers/products/ugreen-nexode-200w-usb-c-desktop-charger?variant=40293723078739 https://eu.ugreen.com/collections/gan-chargers/products/ugre...
      - threeseed 4y ago
        I have that exact one and it has been solid given the power it is putting out. Satechi just released a competitor which isn't shipping yet but is a good brand: https://satechi.net/products/6-port-gan-charger?variant=40197715492952 https://satechi.net/products/6-port-gan-charger?variant=4019...
  - 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ysleepy 4y ago
Other USB Charger review repositories: https://lygte-info.dk/info/ChargerIndex%20UK.html https://lygte-info.dk/info/ChargerIndex%20UK.html https://www.chargerlab.com/category/reviews/reviews-chargers/ https://www.chargerlab.com/category/reviews/reviews-chargers... Both are great. I especially love the Oscilloscope analysis of the noise characteristics and safety review on lygte-info.dk
ajb 4y ago
The USB situation continues to deteriorate. We needed some usb hubs that would charge a device (that we are prototyping) at a decent rate and at the same time allow us to talk to it via usb. Found a grand total of one, everything else only had separate fast charge and data ports. And even that one would only charge at 12.5W, nothing does USB PD (to a downstream port) and data at the same time. Not only that, but it was really hard to tell what a hub supports from the specs (plenty will charge an upstream port, eg your laptop, but not a downstream port, but this is hard too tell from the description)
- SAI_Peregrinus 4y ago
  Acroname has several, though they aren't cheap. Their S99-USBHUB-3C-PRO does 100W (20V 5A) PD to each downstream port and 10Gbps data. Edit: And if you're just analyzing one device and don't need a true hub, TotalPhase has some very capable analyzers. I've used their "Beagle USB 480 Power Protocol Analyzer", it captures USB frames and monitors voltage & current. Very handy for low-level USB stack debugging. Also very pricey. Used it in combination with a 2GHz bandwidth oscilloscope, which is even pricier, try not to have to troubleshoot USB signal integrity issues it gets expensive fast.
  - ajb 4y ago
    This is pretty useful information to me, but I was actually commenting that even ordinary fast charging of devices on usb hubs at the same time as data seems to be pretty rare. The only one we found that could do it was a startech HB30C5A2CSC.
    - SAI_Peregrinus 4y ago
      What's "ordinary fast charging"? USB-PD 3 or USB-PD 2 or the older Qualcomm QuickCharge? Because the older Qualcomm versions (very common, pre-dates USB-PD 3) uses the data lines to communicate and thus requires a multiplexer to disable the normal data connection for it to work. USB PD 2 works similarly to Qualcomm. There are a lot of "USB-C" devices (including hubs) that only actually use USB 2.0 signalling, and don't support USB-PD 3.
51Cards 4y ago
I still have several of those HP Touchpad chargers. After I originally read this article years ago I tracked a bunch down when the Touchpad was having its big sell off. A little limited by today's standards but all of them still working really well.
winrid 4y ago
If you like this kind of stuff you'd like BigClive on YT, who does lots of teardowns of cheap chargers and other stuff.
- jbverschoor 4y ago
  The IKEA one was very good he said
  - squarefoot 4y ago
    I can confirm about IKEA chargers and power supplies: they have a high quality/cost ratio, plus a reasonably clean output. They also rebrand really good LED lamps, and batteries; maybe not like Eneloops but still good quality while a lot cheaper.
reiichiroh 4y ago
10+ years outdated This is a much better roundup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa4SLWXtwi0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa4SLWXtwi0

84 points by pwg 4y ago

mwcremer 4y ago

[2012]

scblock 4y ago

Probably could use a (2012) label.

ink_13 4y ago

FYI, this is from 2012, although I would be interested in a similar analysis done today. At a guess, name-brand third-party chargers (Anker, Belkin, etc) are probably more than "good enough" at this point, but it would be neat to see that quantified.

mmebane 4y ago
AllThingsOnePlace on YouTube [1] has been doing a good job of reviewing performance characteristics of many different chargers, although he usually doesn't do teardowns. [1]: https://youtube.com/@AllThingsOnePlace https://youtube.com/@AllThingsOnePlace
- gruez 4y ago
  >AllThingsOnePlace on YouTube [1] has been doing a good job of reviewing performance characteristics of many different chargers I watched one of his reviews recently[1], and while it's true that he reviews performance characteristics, it's unclear whether it's something I should care about. For instance, he talks about how that particular charger has a low power factor. Sure, having a high power factor[2] is nice in theory, but is that something I should care about? Judging from the wikipedia article it's more of an issue for the grid itself, and I'm not personally billed for it. I care far more about how much noise/ripple is being outputted by the charge, or whether it's going to damage my electronics, but that's doesn't seem to be evaluated. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uasxk9HBAtE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uasxk9HBAtE [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor
  - porkbeer 4y ago
    Low power factor can make other devices nearby unstable by introducing noise or uneven ac cycles. Its overblown, sure, but tends to be a reliable indicator of overall quality as most engineers will only optimize for it with higher quality designs. Lower quality designs can often be dirtier and shorter lasting due to feedback, inefficiency and parts omission.
  - bradknowles 4y ago
    Depends on where you are, and who your power company is. Some places have started charging you more for apparent power draw due to poor power factor.
- runnerup 4y ago
  ChargerLAB[0] does a lot of tear downs but I can’t vouch for their value. 0: https://youtube.com/@ChargerLAB https://youtube.com/@ChargerLAB
latortuga 4y ago
I remember when this article came out originally because I was surprised to see a random charger I owned as the winner. I still have this HP touchpad charger and a decade later it still works great.
mrjin 4y ago
Named brands are not necessarily good. In mid-2022 I tried to consolidate my chargers (Lots came with phones/pads etc. one 4 ports, and one 6 ports in particular. Most of those came with devices support PD and are 18w at least. However, those two multi-ports ones can only do 5v/2.4a max. Brand names were hidden here just to avoid being taken as ads) into one single charge station. So, I expected to get one with 8 ports and could do 100w at least, USB-C/PD would be desired but not a must. I did not realize I just started a saga. I had very positive experience with some generic single port PD chargers, so I decided to start from generic ones first. Not quite a surprise, none of 3 met my expectations, mostly because of false marking. The worst one doubled the current it was delivering. Others had too much voltage drop, e.g. with 1700mA load, the voltage dropped to around 4.8 etc.. I thought I cheaped out, so decided to try big brands. So the only one I found was with 10 ports, 100w total, 2.4a max per port. It came with the charging station and a huge power brick. To be fair, the power brick was actually decent as when idle, the power consumption could not be registered by my power meter. But the charging station was a total disappointment. It chewed 5w when idle. When with around 1700ma load, the voltage dropped to below 4.6v. To my surprise, the single port generic ones I had could actually maintain the voltage to about 4.8v, one was even able to keep at about 5.1v. Eventually I gave up and returned all of them as I had exhausted all the available options but none of them were close to my expectations.

krabizzwainch 4y ago

I actually kept my HP Touchpad charging bricks (cylinders?) because they always seemed really solid. They are still useful for all of my Pi stuff as well.

h4waii 4y ago
Memories! I have 3 of those long cylinders from my old TouchPad too, and a stubby one from the Veer. Solid 5V2A chargers, but boy do they stick out.
nolan879 4y ago
I'm still using mine to power a qi charger. Everything about the HP Touchpad was overbuilt, I got mine during the firesale.
- krabizzwainch 4y ago
  I missed the firesale but my old employer didn’t. They tried using them as POS devices and that never happened. One day they were just like “Get rid of these”. I played with cyanogenmod until all the batteries swelled up and I got rid of them.

xnx 4y ago

Can't see how this could comparison from 2012 could still be relevant with the advent of GaN chargers.

walrus01 4y ago
GaN has also had a big impact on the size and thermal wattage budgets/waste heat of a whole bunch of types of microwave and millimetre wave Tx power amplifiers, anywhere from 4 GHz to 120 GHz. If you look at the current state of the art for a "money is no object" manpack size VSAT/SNG terminal for geostationary use in a random very hard to reach area, such as might be owned by CNN or the BBC, the GaN Tx RF chain BUC/SSPA is remarkably small now compared to ten, twelve, fourteen years ago.
- stevenhuang 4y ago
  ah yes the dreaded "request for quote" pricing.. how much do one of these puppies cost? $20k?
  - dylan604 4y ago
    if you have to ask...
  - walrus01 4y ago
    way, way more than $20k as your geostationary-transponder-kHz using SNG terminal gets smaller you are still forced into using really rudimentary modulation so the other calculation is the $ per month for a dedicated piece of transponder space lease, or the even higher costs for occasional-use transponder space.
    - aDfbrtVt 4y ago
      What aspect of migrating to GaN PA's degrades the link budget for this application?
      - stephen_g 4y ago

realworldperson 4y ago

[dead]

einpoklum 4y ago

1. This is from 2012. 2. No less importantly, I see a bunch of phone-vendor chargers, and am not seeing many of the most popular charger brands: Blitzwolf, Baseus, Kuulaa, USLion, UGreen, etc.

sq_ 4y ago
I’m curious about the brands you mention, as I haven’t heard of them too much. I usually just shell out for Anker stuff since it’s performed well for me. Would you say they’re all typically good quality? Or am I reading you wrong and you’d like to see analysis of how bad they might be despite being popular?
- threeseed 4y ago
  I would recommend: http://reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware http://reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware Apart from top tier brands like Apple, Belkin etc which are generally good all of the others tend to be more mixed. Some products are amazing and best in class others a bit average.
  - wslh 4y ago
    What multiport charger options are the top of the line now? For example I saw [1] and bought one but then cancelled the order because there was no precise shipping details (waited more than 5 days for shipping information after the payment). [1] https://eu.ugreen.com/collections/gan-chargers/products/ugreen-nexode-200w-usb-c-desktop-charger?variant=40293723078739 https://eu.ugreen.com/collections/gan-chargers/products/ugre...
    - threeseed 4y ago
      I have that exact one and it has been solid given the power it is putting out. Satechi just released a competitor which isn't shipping yet but is a good brand: https://satechi.net/products/6-port-gan-charger?variant=40197715492952 https://satechi.net/products/6-port-gan-charger?variant=4019...
- 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

ysleepy 4y ago

Other USB Charger review repositories: https://lygte-info.dk/info/ChargerIndex%20UK.html https://lygte-info.dk/info/ChargerIndex%20UK.html https://www.chargerlab.com/category/reviews/reviews-chargers/ https://www.chargerlab.com/category/reviews/reviews-chargers... Both are great. I especially love the Oscilloscope analysis of the noise characteristics and safety review on lygte-info.dk

ajb 4y ago

The USB situation continues to deteriorate. We needed some usb hubs that would charge a device (that we are prototyping) at a decent rate and at the same time allow us to talk to it via usb. Found a grand total of one, everything else only had separate fast charge and data ports. And even that one would only charge at 12.5W, nothing does USB PD (to a downstream port) and data at the same time. Not only that, but it was really hard to tell what a hub supports from the specs (plenty will charge an upstream port, eg your laptop, but not a downstream port, but this is hard too tell from the description)

SAI_Peregrinus 4y ago
Acroname has several, though they aren't cheap. Their S99-USBHUB-3C-PRO does 100W (20V 5A) PD to each downstream port and 10Gbps data. Edit: And if you're just analyzing one device and don't need a true hub, TotalPhase has some very capable analyzers. I've used their "Beagle USB 480 Power Protocol Analyzer", it captures USB frames and monitors voltage & current. Very handy for low-level USB stack debugging. Also very pricey. Used it in combination with a 2GHz bandwidth oscilloscope, which is even pricier, try not to have to troubleshoot USB signal integrity issues it gets expensive fast.
- ajb 4y ago
  This is pretty useful information to me, but I was actually commenting that even ordinary fast charging of devices on usb hubs at the same time as data seems to be pretty rare. The only one we found that could do it was a startech HB30C5A2CSC.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 4y ago
    What's "ordinary fast charging"? USB-PD 3 or USB-PD 2 or the older Qualcomm QuickCharge? Because the older Qualcomm versions (very common, pre-dates USB-PD 3) uses the data lines to communicate and thus requires a multiplexer to disable the normal data connection for it to work. USB PD 2 works similarly to Qualcomm. There are a lot of "USB-C" devices (including hubs) that only actually use USB 2.0 signalling, and don't support USB-PD 3.

51Cards 4y ago

I still have several of those HP Touchpad chargers. After I originally read this article years ago I tracked a bunch down when the Touchpad was having its big sell off. A little limited by today's standards but all of them still working really well.

winrid 4y ago

If you like this kind of stuff you'd like BigClive on YT, who does lots of teardowns of cheap chargers and other stuff.

jbverschoor 4y ago
The IKEA one was very good he said
- squarefoot 4y ago
  I can confirm about IKEA chargers and power supplies: they have a high quality/cost ratio, plus a reasonably clean output. They also rebrand really good LED lamps, and batteries; maybe not like Eneloops but still good quality while a lot cheaper.

reiichiroh 4y ago

10+ years outdated This is a much better roundup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa4SLWXtwi0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa4SLWXtwi0