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Hyper Recalls HyperJuice GaN Stackable Chargers and 130W Battery Pack Due to Fire Risk
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Likewise. My favorite charger hands down, and I'm going to continue using it. 7 out of 18200, or 0.038%, isn't exactly shocking (no pun intended) or cause for concern. I'm willing to bet that other "quality" manufacturers aren't far off from those numbers or potentially even worse. Except for Apple of course.
Their website has had this up for a while now: "The Hyper Product Team is currently working on an innovative new replacement, but it’s not yet for sale." So yes, they do appear to be working on an update.
Can you recall what you had plugged into it at the time? From what I'd heard via other sources, the problem arrises while using the AC pass-through and USB-C ports simultaneously. Not an uncommon scenario by any means, but I don't use mine that way at all. Mostly just curious.
I love that on the original story, the stop comment is "I hope you have a good fire insurance policy if you get one of these?"
I remember thinking the same thing and I had expressed concern trusting Hyper in the comments. Is this really that surprising? MacRumors really needs to stop shilling their crap. Garbage company that should be ignored at worst, and shut down at best.
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I feel like this will become a more common issue with how much power all these USB-C devices use. My house is only a decade old and I've wondered if I will need to upgrade the wiring, lol. At least my office is good—I had them run higher AMP wiring and breaker when I built it a few years ago. I only have room for one more 240V in my box for when I need to wire my garage for an electric car eventually.
I'm still waiting for a company to deliver a good higher powered charger for my family of four when traveling. Ideally something that can charge a MBP, iPad Pro, a couple iPhones, a couple Apple Watches, AirPods, DJI Mini 2, Sony a7R III battery charger, and a couple kids iPads. I still have to bring multiple chargers. One for a couple higher powered USB-C, one with several regular USB-A ports for the smaller devices, and then a mixed USB-C and A charger for the kids' iPads, drone and camera. Even getting this down to two chargers would be an improvement. Although even when I'm traveling by myself it can be rough. There is just so much stuff to charge.
I remember thinking the same thing and I had expressed concern trusting Hyper in the comments. Is this really that surprising? MacRumors really needs to stop shilling their crap. Garbage company that should be ignored at worst, and shut down at best.
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I feel like this will become a more common issue with how much power all these USB-C devices use. My house is only a decade old and I've wondered if I will need to upgrade the wiring, lol. At least my office is good—I had them run higher AMP wiring and breaker when I built it a few years ago. I only have room for one more 240V in my box for when I need to wire my garage for an electric car eventually.
I'm still waiting for a company to deliver a good higher powered charger for my family of four when traveling. Ideally something that can charge a MBP, iPad Pro, a couple iPhones, a couple Apple Watches, AirPods, DJI Mini 2, Sony a7R III battery charger, and a couple kids iPads. I still have to bring multiple chargers. One for a couple higher powered USB-C, one with several regular USB-A ports for the smaller devices, and then a mixed USB-C and A charger for the kids' iPads, drone and camera. Even getting this down to two chargers would be an improvement. Although even when I'm traveling by myself it can be rough. There is just so much stuff to charge.
It's been sitting in a drawer as a backup. Apparently it's not dangerous enough to kill a user, but unpleasant enough for me to avoid it. The ridiculous part was the documentation I found later from HyperJuice saying, it's safe enough.
Actually those do. Unless Apple changed the design recently, Apple laptop chargers always had earth pin. The adapter that connects to the brick might not have earth pin, but ones with earth pin are available. I'm using an extension cord ver. with earth pin.
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I’ve never used the pass through on mine, just the USB port to charge my iPhone. After a while it would intermittently stop charging and shortly after it started making a squealing sound and smelled like burning plastic.
[joke]
Buy a refurbished Hyperjuice charger, that will be "guaranteed to work without too much of a fire risk"?
[/joke]
Yeah, they don’t anymore. You can connect the long power cable, which includes a ground pin, to the charger which has provision for passing through ground, but the duck bills that come with the chargers have no ground, at least in the US.
My 100W burned up charging a MacBook Air without anything plugged into the passthrough port.
Kudos to MacRumors for posting about the recall, but I will never forget that MR shilled this company for years when their users warned them that they made dangerous products.
Speaking of the recall... what a load of crap. I do not want a store credit so that I can get another Hyper piece of junk that I have to worry will burn my house down. This should be illegal.
For reference, I posted this a year ago on Reddit:
That’s like the lowest possible bar. Wow. I’m glad I never bought one, though I was indeed tempted.
These sounded cool when they were announced but being able to stack them seems like asking for trouble.
same here. Just did some research, looks like their products are on crowd funding sites. Probably too aggressive on the design and marketing, then realized they hit the wall.
No doubt Samsung could sell these items as accessories for their Burn, Baby Burn line of cell phones.
I don't recall exactly, but it was probably a 14" MBP and an iPhone. The only other thing that could possibly have been plugged in was an Apple Watch. I didn't have the chargers stacked.
They admit to a potential fire hazard and failure of the device AND the fact that they’re doing this in line with the CPSC and they don’t offer a full refund. America, what the **** is wrong with you ? They would t get away with that for a second in Europe.
Equally, I notice MacRumours don’t pick on this point even though it’s GLARINGLY obvious. No refunds for something that could potentially burn your house down? Seriously ?
Equally, I notice MacRumours don’t pick on this point even though it’s GLARINGLY obvious. No refunds for something that could potentially burn your house down? Seriously ?
I get that macrumors needs money to run the show, but this company is 💩.
I wouldn’t under any circumstances buy another. I bought their batteries back in 2011 and two failed immediately. One worked but left a scorch mark on my dresser. Called the company and they refused to refund me. Only send me more garbage replacements. Took them to a battery disposal facility.
They don’t care about customer service or their product. Plenty of companies make batteries and chargers, ones that are much safer.
I wouldn’t under any circumstances buy another. I bought their batteries back in 2011 and two failed immediately. One worked but left a scorch mark on my dresser. Called the company and they refused to refund me. Only send me more garbage replacements. Took them to a battery disposal facility.
They don’t care about customer service or their product. Plenty of companies make batteries and chargers, ones that are much safer.
The sad thing is, I can't replace my stackable charger. Satechi has something similar but it's notably more expensive, bigger, and has a cable.
No one else has a similarly small 100w charger with the perfect combination of 3x USB-C and 1x USB-A and foldable plugs.
They responded and said:
No one else has a similarly small 100w charger with the perfect combination of 3x USB-C and 1x USB-A and foldable plugs.
Funny enough, when I first received my stackable charger from the crowdfunding project, I emailed Hyper and asked specifically if it was ETL, UL, or CSA approved.
They responded and said:
I responded with:Hyper Support said:
I then received this and got ghosted.Email from me said:
Hyper Support said:
Their newer charges are ETL certified so that stands in for the UL/CSA marks. The stackable ones were never approved though. So any sales to Canada were illegal as would have been most sales to Europe. I just ignored that fact until the reports of potential fires came forward.
I'm going to press for a refund now since I'm in Canada and the regulatory compliance issue exists.
I don't really blame MacRumors for not picking on the no refunds policy, since that isn't abnormal in the North American recall context.
Over and over Macrumors has touted Hyper. On the comments, now and in past articles, users have warned about Hyper's safety issues and disregard for their customers. Denial of refunds for products that either fail or do not do what is advertised have been publicly reported. Macrumors is well aware of these repeated reports and yet continues to prominently promote Hyper. I appreciate Macrumors needs and is entitled to revenue. Sometimes the revenue is not worth it when it stains credibility. I think Macrumors is a great site, however I disagree, they clearly should have picked up and criticized the no refund policy on a clearly dangerous product. This is ripe for a class action suit.