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99 Percent of Fake Apple Chargers Sold Online Fail Safety Tests

keysofanxiety said:
Well this very article refutes what you've just said. You may not have had a problem with the cheap ones, but that doesn't mean they're not dangerous.
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He is not talking about "cheap nobody knows who designs them looks like Apple's" chargers

He is talking about brand name USB chargers. They just aren't Apple's. It's like buying a Belkin charger or for example using a Nikon USB charger from your camera.
 
Zirel said:
I also have a charger from Aukey, costed $20, and it charges everything at once, got rid of all chargers in my bedroom (huge cleanup) and it's even faster!
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The Aukey product line has some very good stuff. Well designed, well priced.
If you like Aukey have a look to Orico. Also good quality products but one price category lower.
I bought a bunch of Orico USB-C cables in Asia for about $1 a pop. High quality even if they would have charged 10 times as much.
 
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Kajje said:
Only if you buy them directly at the Apple store you can be sure they indeed are real.
I have seen a lot of fake Apple chargers and forgeries are getting more difficult to spot.

A couple months ago I bought 15 Lightning cables for $10. They're so well built I had to mark my original cables with a permanent marker. Having bought tons of fake cables over the last years I thought I knew how to spot a fake one. Well, with these ones it is just impossible. They're working great though.
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Not that impossible. One way to spot fake ones is to see if they cost $10 for 15 of them.
 
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Kabeyun said:
Not that impossible. One way to spot fake ones it to see if they cost $10 for 15 of them.
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That's absolutely true, however these are exactly the cables bought in bulk by janky resellers, and sold as Apple originals at Apple retail prices.

EDIT: or as Apple OEM. There's no such thing as Apple OEM.
 
Kajje said:
A couple months ago I bought 15 Lightning cables for $10. They're so well built I had to mark my original cables with a permanent marker. Having bought tons of fake cables over the last years I thought I knew how to spot a fake one. Well, with these ones it is just impossible. They're working great though.
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I think cables are not as bad as chargers. The cable gets 5 Volt from the charger and puts 5 Volt into the device. It shouldn't be able to cause damage to the device, except that a damaged cable could go on fire itself (but not the device). The charger gets 110 or 220 Volt from your wall socket. That can kill you.

What's annoying: It's very easy to build a safe charger if you make it big. What's difficult is making a safe charger that is small. It would be very easy for someone in China to build and sell chargers that are big, ugly, safe and cheap.

Theophany said:
For USB wall chargers, why pay the premium for Apple? I've bought tons of third party USB wall chargers from reputable companies and they cost a couple of quid. Sure, they don't look anything like the real Apple ones, but who cares?
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Obviously if the charger is designed to _look_ like an Apple charger and is sold as a "genuine" Apple charger, then the company is _not_ reputable.
 
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Theophany said:
I totally get it when it comes to buying MacBook chargers as they are proprietary and there's no way I'm going to risk frying a £2,000 laptop for the sake of saving a few quid on a charger, but for the plugs to charge your iPads, iPhones and iPods any old USB wall plug will do.
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Not any more are they proprietary. With USB-C charging there is a whole new field for the 'Dodge(y) Charger' makers to exploit.
(pun intended)
 
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Amazon was just imitating Alibaba. They knew they were opening the floodgates to shoddy products and fraud and didn't really care until it got some traction in the press.
 
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"OMG! I saved a whole $10 even though my house could burn down or I get shocked to death!"

Honestly, stop buying fake crap online and get the genuine gear. Really, don't people care about their own life and property to buy the genuine one?
 
Kajje said:
A couple months ago I bought 15 Lightning cables for $10. They're so well built I had to mark my original cables with a permanent marker. Having bought tons of fake cables over the last years I thought I knew how to spot a fake one. Well, with these ones it is just impossible. They're working great though.
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I'm using fake Lightning cables aswell.
The original ones fail for me constantly and are way more expensive.
There aren't high charges going through them anyway so I don't see any real risk in doing this.

Power supplies are a different story. They receive 240V directly from the wall outlet so I prefer to stick to original or quality brand ones.
 
And some basic safety test results were just unveiled!

VwiP.jpg
 
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OllyW said:
This article is about cheap dodgy counterfeit goods. You will be perfectly safe buying cheaper chargers made by reputable manufacturers that are sold by reputable retailers who are all above board and are not bypassing the safety regulations.
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Except the fake "made for iPhone" chargers sold by Amazon and other retailers. As a rule I 1. look after my chargers so I've never broken one, and 2. only but my chargers from Apple.com
 
Fake goods from Amazon are becoming almost as annoying as the fake "I received this item free or at a reduced cost in return for my honest unbiased review" reviews.....
 
Zirel said:
Brick and mortar stores? No, you'll be price-gouged by the store.

Go to Amazon and buy one from them.
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I've been using Amazon cables for years now. Much cheaper than the Apple ones and the 6 foot one is amazing for using your phone plugged in while in bed. I have found that after a few years the Amazon connector will fail to where it doesn't hold itself in the lightning port as well. This usually takes a couple years to happen.
 
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Mac Fly (film) said:
Except the fake "made for iPhone" chargers...
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I said "cheaper chargers made by reputable manufacturers". I don't know of any reputable manufacturers who make fake "made for iPhone" chargers and I'm sure you don't either.

As an example, I'd have no worries using a Belkin USB charger with my iPhone which costs less than the one sold by Apple.
 
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Just because it fails a Megger test doesn't mean you will get a shock if it is in normal use. It is not a buy and die situation. The problem is in exception handling. The chargers are not designed to handle internal part failures or overvoltage on the mains.
 
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