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dk001

macrumors demi-god
Original poster
Oct 3, 2014
11,141
15,494
Sage, Lightning, and Mountains
Like I suspect many here, I have several charging blocks and/or stands setup throughout my house. We use a variety of devices and no, not everything is Apple.

I buy my cables and bricks from various sellers and try to get items that will support the variety of devices. I shoot for 6-10 foot cables and blocks that are 30W and above. Except for two items (iPhone 11 and 13PM), everything uses USB-C. Blocks are made by Apple, Belkin, Anker, RavPower, and OnePlus. I have a couple of Samsung blocks but generally find these to be of poorer quality and wattage.

Last week my grand-daughter had the space heater on in her room - she likes it a bit warmer than the rest. She plugged it into a surge protector (Belkin), not sure why, and then plugged her hair dryer in the same surge protector. Sigh. Yes, fun ensued. She tripped the 20amp associated breaker and various items throughout my place went dead. Found the cause, made sure all was off, then reset the breaker.

Now you might not really think about this, but, from that event, I found that a few of my blocks have gone dead. They were hooked into their own surge protectors in other areas in the house but on the same circuit.

Anker USB C 40W
RavPower 65W 4 Port (2 USB A, 2 USB C)
Stock iPad Charger 18W USB C

Only the Anker had something plugged (Lenovo X280 - it was asleep). It was not affected.

These all died as a result of that incident. Just goes to shows that it doesn’t take much to fry one of these. A good surge protector may not be the protection you think it is for smaller items.

One last watch out - your surge protectors do degrade over time. Not a bad idea to replace every few years or after a number of protection cycles.
 
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