gauvins

When travelling in North America, I carry a foldable Anker 30W. Roughly 1 cubic inch.

What would be the most compact charger compatible with UK and continental Europe outlets?

[EDIT] Found 3 interesting options. A simple, cheap US -> EU will do the trick. [\EDIT]

Tourist in MSN

If your charger says it is good for up to 240v and 50hz on the label, just get a UK and an EU adapter for the one you already have.

znomit

The UK uses a honking big plug unfortunately. If you just want a single device then one of those universal travel chargers might be the best bet.
https://www.amazon.com/EPICKA-Univer.../dp/B078S3M2NX

gauvins

I hear you. EU adapters are reasonably small. UK adapters are a different story. For some reason a UK folding charger seems like a better idea.

gauvins

Absolute disaster, yes. Do you know of a small plug adaptor like this one that would work from a UK charger?

Iride01 

You could just wait till you get over there and buy one. Maybe even in a shop as you make your way from the airplane to the baggage section of the airport. Though it'll probably be pricey at the airport.

gauvins

Looks like there are 3 interesting options:

1. Micro Novelty's EVO, which includes 2 USB-A ports and can be plugged in most countries. This is a universal charger -- you cannot connect your devices, other than USB powered. See
   here
2. The Road Warrior adapter, which is strictly a compact, modular adapter kit. (see
   here
   )
3. Or a simple US to Europe adapter, which sells for about $5 and can actually be used in the UK. Turns out that EU plugs do fit in a UK socket, as long as you have depressed the locking mechanism. Several videos on YouTube illustrate this. (see
   here
   )

I believe that 3 is best for my use case.

Tourist in MSN

If you get the EU to USA plug adapter like you cited, make sure it is one like you showed, that has a wider slot on the left side than the slot on the right in the photo.



USA plugs often have one prong wider than the other if it is a polarized plug. But China plugs do not have a wider prong. I made the mistake of buying some China adapters and discovered that some of my devices with wide prongs did not fit in the adapters that I bought.

Thanks for posting video number 3, I was unaware that a UK adapter was not needed. I have not been to UK, but just before Covid I started planning a UK trip, bought the giant adapter.

Before my last Europe trip, I bought a three port USB charger that had an EU plug so I could skip the adapter, in the photo I have two Eneloop NiMH AA chargers and one Li Ion battery charger for my camera batteries. But my charger lacks the high amperage you are seeking.

2_i 

Those compact high-power adapters tend to last a limited time, even when from reasonable brand names, dying from chips overheating.

gauvins

I use them sparingly and draw just a few Watts. No problem so far (1+ year). There are a few negative reviews on Amazon, similar rate to, say, 60W full-size charger. The NYT (WireCutter) picked the nano as its top choice.

2_i 

Indeed, I think that if you stay away from the nominal rating, you should be OK. I suffered myself from a similarly compact power supply dying after being operated for a while near the rating and, as a replacement, I got one rated at nearly twice the power I usually need.

JohnJ80

Mmm, not so much if you using a charger made with GaN components. The whole point in using them is that they can handle much higher heat without failure. The GaN chargers are typically pretty small and they work super well. I've been using them since they first came out and I had some experience in developing products with GaN. I'd not hesitate to put them to their rated outputs.

Anger makes some really nice small and reliable units. Amazon has them.

2_i 

The one that died on me at the most inopportune moment was a GaN from SlimQ. It was just weeks past warranty. Interestingly, their next model for the same power was bulkier, so I figure that have overdone making that earlier adapter compact. In the next round, I was ordering different brands from Amazon and using them in my typical context and checking how much they heated. I sent back several until I settled on a Satechi that was just warming up - this for a laptop, but also charging whatever I carry around. This life on the edge got to be far more common for different electronic devices consuming high power in small sizes. Yes, they withstand the high temp, but just over the time of the order of a year.

JohnJ80

That was just a bad design. I have a SlimQ charger and it buzzes which probably means the transformer is shoddy and the windings are not secured. I'd bet a fair bit of money that the GaN power chips were just fine and that they were using crap components and/or a poor design in the rest of it. So to my point, it's not that high power compact chargers fail (GaN or otherwise) it's that chargers with crappy designs fail. I would agree with you that the SlimQ chargers are not the best by a long shot.

All that said, I have quite a number of Anker and Mopoint chargers - all GaN and most at least 60W some at 100W and none of them have failed. And I beat them hard, often using the to charge a portable battery at the full rating of the charger (100W) to charge the battery fast. I use the battery for travel and I use the single 60W or 100W charger also to charge my laptop and phone simultaneously.

Oh, and my blasted spell checker keeps changing "Anker" to "Anger." I've had good luck with Anker chargers.

J.

znomit

I always carry one of those tiny apple 5W chargers as well, just in case.

2_i 

Part of the bad design can be packing components that generate high heat into a small volume. Even if the particular GaN chip withstands the heat, other components in the surrounding age at an accelerated pace.

Another category of devices dying on me repeatedly have been cable modems, by all sign from chip overheating and similar lifetimes, of 1-2 years, albeit operating continuously, unlike the typical laptop adapters. One more line, of devices expecting to die at a young age, though not yet with actual experience, have been usb c docking stations heating up like irons. I have been checking them out and sending back, not willing to take the risk, even that of burning the hand when grabbing one accidentally with an open palm.

JohnJ80

"Can be" but if what you say is true, I would have had all these chargers fail and that is simply not happening. You had a bad charger. There are bad chargers out there. I agree that it looks like SlimQ doesn't have the best designs. But that doesn't mean that every small high power GaN charger is going to fail in 1-2 years. Some of them that I have, for example, are at least that old and were some of the first GaN chargers out there and have run continuously for that period. The circuit design, the heat sink design and the quality of the components all contribute to the quality of the design.

To give you some context on this, I'm an electrical engineer in the semiconductor industry. I have a lot of experience with failure analysis of semiconductors and including accelerated aging/life testing and product qualification. Just because a chip gets hot or warm to the touch, doesn't mean it fails or that it's going to fail prematurely. If it's a quality chip, in a quality design and operated within it's specified temp range, it's going to last a long time unless it's a crap component (and there are a lot of fakes out there in Asia). Commercial temp is 0-70C. 70C is pretty darn hot (158F). It's insufficient to say that just because it's small and it's high power that it will be unreliable. That's simply not true.

2_i 

I pull out from this discussion.