This feels like an advertisement article…single port USB-C PD chargers with 20-30W output in the <$10 range are not at all hard to find already.
Quality, higher-wattage ones are harder to come by at that price (e.g. 45W and up are $20+ for decent brands), but I can get a 2-pack of name-brand (Anker) 20W chargers for $10-15.
I’m guessing Ikea is just rebranding crappy chargers, so no thank you, I would rather not have my phone, tablet, etc get broken because I was too cheap to spend an extra $10 on a better brand charger.
Big Clive has done teardowns of IKEA chargers before and rates them highly for quality and safety.
Big Clive
Huh, cool channel, I’ll check him out.
What are you basing your ‘guess’ on? IKEA typically design their own products. They already produce Smart home speakers. Why do you suppose that this would be a rebranded product from somebody else?
- Large appliances are manufactured by other companies
- IKEA buys a lot of stuff instead of actually designing everything - so I’d expect them to buy something as simple as a USB charger
They’re making a big bet on smart home stuff, which is why they’re designing that kind of stuff more. They want to keep their customers coming back for smart home stuff so they can build an ecosystem, whereas they probably don’t care about USB chargers nearly as much.
I’m guessing they’re fine (they’re probably testing it), but I highly doubt they’re actually designing the USB chargers, and they’re probably not buying from a known brand (price would be too high).
20W chargers are cheap from name brands (2 pack for ~€10), but 45W chargers aren’t (like €20-30 for a basic 45W charger). So if they’re selling 45W chargers for cheap, they’re just likely rebranded stuff from a cheap manufacturer.
Your sources don’t say anything about the design, only manufacturing. The chargers could still very well be designed by IKEA, but made by another company. That sort of stuff is really common industry and can help keep the price down. This doesn’t mean that the product is cheaply designed or a literal rebrand of an existing product
The second one does, here’s a quote:
More basic items come directly from suppliers to skip the design and conception stage. However, it isn’t as easy as picking out items from a catalog. IKEA works with their world-class buyers to check the quality of the products and negotiate the price.
…
This means that they have to keep their shelves stocked with products to keep up with demand, so using both manufacturers and supplies ensures that new products will consistently make a turnaround.
I would assume a USB charger would fall under the “more basic items” part.
I take this to mean that instead of designing a product to be manufactured elsewhere, they sometimes buy products to relabel and put on the shelves, without going through any form of design process (though I’m guessing they do test this stuff).
Ah sorry, should’ve read further than the first paragraph… In European markets there are strict safety guidelines they have to adhere to, so they will definitely need to test what they sell
But will they test for longevity as well? Or just safety?
As long as it’s not going to fry my phone, I’ll probably give it a shot, but it may still be a better deal to pay a bit more somewhere else.
I’ve reconsidered my view of Anker being a quality brand. I bought a USB C hub of their’s that was supposed to provide 100W power delivery, but it couldn’t keep a 65W Dell laptop happy. So, I powered the Dell separately and still used the hub. After a while the display port started to cut out.
I’ve also bought a USB C PD cable of their’s that was supposed to support 100W power delivery. With my 85W MacBook I noticed that the cable was starting to get hard (non-bendy) spots in it. Soon after my MacBook would report being unplugged when I did anything that would draw significant power.
Ok, so I go over to Amazon and start looking at reviews that are 2 or 3 stars and holy shit. I got the distinct feeling that these were the real reviews. They’re not good.
Huh, I haven’t had issues at all. I have a USB hub with 100W PD and HDMI, and it’s been working fine for almost 3 years now on my MacBook. I also have a battery bank from them and it’s fine, though I’ve only used it like 3-4 times over the few years I’ve had it (just use it for travel as a backup plan). I recently got A surge protector/power strip thing from them as well (pretty recent, like 2 months).
I went with them because of good reviews on Reddit and tech review sites, and the few low reviews on Amazon were easy to chalk up to random QC issues (every product will have some bad ones ship), but the customer support seemed decent from the reviews I read.
Have you ruled out bad cables and your Dell sucking?
I think I’ll look up some tear downs next time though. Good brands can absolutely go bad, so it would be good to see if that has happened here. Unfortunately, the charger landscape is mostly full of Chinese crap that I don’t expect to work properly on day 1, much less after a year or two.
Exactly, this is definitely not going to be quality electronics.
Ikea electronics and batteries are almost always high quality. It’s not their bread winner so it would be stupid to skimp on them and risk their reputation.
The ZigBee lightbulbs I have are definitely not high quality.
ikea needs to stop selling electronics to focus on their core business of shark pillow
Ikea has been releasing some banger electronics at mid-level pricing.
I don’t know the quality, but if it’s similar to IKEAs other stuff, I’m on board. I have furniture from them that’s been going on for 30 years that was supposed to be my “starter furniture”. And with the widespread Chinese knockoff BS that’s all over Amazon, I’m strongly considering it.
IKEA 30 years ago was also making better furniture than they are today though. All their entry-level furniture is absolute shit these days, thin veneer on cardboard strength fiber board and screws made of metal softer than warm butter.
Anything in a quality that will last more than a few years costs almost the same as any other furniture store.
In only have experience with their ZigBee lightbulps, and they suck ass.
Hm, I have several of their smart bulbs and they work great, I did upgrade to the v2 hub though as they were sporadically losing connection, since swapping though they’ve been rock solid.
What’s wrong with the lightbulbs? I have pretty good experience with all their zigbee products. Cheap, reliable, stable, sturdy, works with Home Assistant.
My wife still likes to go, and now we mostly buy the higher end stuff because we like the design and hate the hassle of other furniture retailers with sales people and whatnot.
harder than you would expect. partially due to inflation
It took me one google search, and a filter at the first vendor that popped up to find one.
my mistake
Yup, I even saw a 2-pack from a reputable brand for $15.
What reputable brand?
Anker. Here’s one example listing on Amazon.
I’ve had a good experience with their other products.
Yep. It’s completely obvious
This dual-port charger can only output 45W of power when using one port at a time, with the output halved at 22W to each device when plugging in two simultaneously.
Yes. That’s literally how max power ratings on devices like this work. And, to be that guy, even when plugging in two devices and getting 22.5W on each socket, the charger is still outputting 45W.
This feels like a paid advert written by Ikea’s press department - not The Verge itself.
45kW wall charger holy hell lol
You could run like 5 houses off that chsrger
Lol. The perils of replying to Lemmy posts while in work mode.
Helluva Thunderbolt cable, eh?
Lmao I tried if DALLE could come up with such a cable, but it just generated some random shit
It’s even better, using the much superior kolowats over the deprecated kilowatts
That’s some excrepioncal capaaacity right there.
WHUT EXCREPOLITY
I wonder what it’s trying to tell me 😳
Anyone speaking SimLLMish?
Not to be nitpicky but 45kW? That seems like a hell of a charger and I’d like to see the ISB-C cable that can handle that ;)
Thunderbolt v3 handles up to 100W. I have a 90W USB-C port on one of my monitors for just that purpose.Edit: lol. I see my mistake. Edited. I deal in kW and MW for my job. I’ll call it muscle memory.
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Would be interesting to see a tear down of these to see how safe they are.
First thing I found on the ikea website is a recall of the older USB charger.
It says right there in your screenshot that it’s the CABLE that can become damaged.
Like 90% of all the apple cables I’ve ever seen. But I guess that’s different.
But I guess that’s different.
Yes, because they’re talking about the mains supply cable which carries hazardous voltages, not the charging cable.
Nobody gives a crap if 5 volts is exposed. Many more craps are given once you get above a hundred volts.
It says right there
This is the point where I start to worry about my reading comprehension. It’s too late for a severe case of ADHD, and too early for a dementia. What the fuck, brain!?
Someone needs to get one in the hands of BigClive
IIRC he’s given a big thumbs up to IKEA chargers in the past.
im not as concerned with a safety situation but i am fully prepared to see crap quality. it wouldnt surprise me.
So electrical fires and melting/burning plastic agent a concern?
I’m guessing IKEA will actually test these, so yeah, maybe safety isn’t as large if a concern. But I’m definitely not bullish on long term reliability.
The secret to itIKEA is my favorite electronics store.
Their rechargable batteries are so incredible deal.
Rebranded Eneloops. That is why.
This is definitely a paid advert
It doesn’t need to be paid. Many journalists are happy to receive a pre-written article that they can just push out with zero effort.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Ikea is now selling a pair of its own USB-C chargers that start at just $7.99.
Ikea’s chargers are compatible with Power Delivery (PD 3.0), Quick Charge (QC4+), and Programmable Power Supply (PPS) specs.
Both chargers come with a sheet of colored stickers that lets you “personalize” them — useful in households where kids or flatmates can easily mix them up.
At the time of writing Anker’s most affordable single-port USB-C charger has an MSRP of $13.99 and offers 20W of power, while getting 30W of power typically costs $19.99 (though both are currently discounted).
Although you should always check the small print for the charging standards (and voltage / current) your device needs to charge at its fastest, 30W should be enough to fast-charge some Samsung devices and iPhones, and even matches the wattage of the base charger Apple supplies with its M2-powered MacBook Air.
45W should be able to handle some faster-charging devices too — though, again, be sure to check the fine print.
The original article contains 241 words, the summary contains 166 words. Saved 31%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
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I’ve never seen one with that much power for phones… at 5v that would be 6A for the 30watts one… must be designed for laptops
Basically every phone made in the last 5 years will charge at over 5v for “quick charging”.
The USB is typically only up to 3 amps max at any voltage less than 20.
My cheap(ish) phone has ~30W charger too. It’s something like 2,5A/12V or 1,5A/18V, which is pretty common these days. I believe I’ve seen phones with up to 100W charging capability (not sure about longevity though).
My work laptop (MacBook) is ~100W charging, but only ~5A at ~20V, and ~3A at anything under 20V.
I’m guessing phones with super fast charging work similarly.
Indeed, just check some PD charger specs, there are usually all the different volt/amp readings the charger can produce.
Depends on the phone. Oneplus has a 65 watt charger.
It looks like it’ll only do 3A over 5V which is typical. You’ll need to connect something that can accept 15 or 20V to get the full 45W. The upside of these is it supports 15V for devices that don’t go higher, since it seems to be the least common supported voltage for usb pd chargers.
Looks like now I don’t need a ton of money to set a good firework show. Nice
You’re kidding right? IKEA is recognized to make top notch USB chargers, someone on the net buy all kind of USB chargers, disassemble them, reverse their schematic, and test them. And the IKEA ones are super safe especially because they respect all american, european, and basically every countries laws/certifications.
Yes I was joking. Or maybe it’s called sarcasm idk. I’m not good at social stuff. It’s just Ikea is known as a brand of low quality stuff here where I live, even though it actually isn’t one (at least not anymore). And I’m surprised that their products are not just decent enough to pass minimal standards but actually safe. It’s great to know that at least some companies aren’t saving on safety now
Ikea makes very good products for the price point - better than pretty much anyone else.
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