Standardized Power Plugs
By
Staten Island, NY Posted: 4/26/2015 1:00:00 AM
Why aren't there any standards for power plugs?
This drives me crazy. There are absolutely no standards for power plugs. This means that if you accidentally mix up your power adapters, and even find a plug that fits your device, there's a good chance it's the wrong one, and it can even damage your device. How dumb is that?
Without standards, when a manufacturer builds a new product, the deciding factor in what kind of power connector a device uses is based on the amount of space and whatever plugs they could get for the best price. So, regardless of what connector they use, the power going into the device could be just about any voltage or polarity. In fact, there isn't even a difference in connector styles for AC vs DC. This makes it easy to accidentally plug a 12 volt power source into something that only requires 5 volts.
I'm not saying that every product needs to have the same plug / connector, just that for any given connector, there should be one specific power specification that goes with it. This way whenever you plug something in, if it fits, it's the also the right voltage.
While it's too late to create standards using these older connectors, the next generation of power adapters should uniquely identify the exact power specifications. So, a 12 volt plug shouldn't even fit into a port designed for 5 volts and vice versa.
Thankfully, a lot of newer devices are using USB connectors, which DO have standards, and in particular the newer USB-C (3.1) standard finally cranks out as much as 10x more power than the previous generation, so we may be seeing light at the end of the tunnel, especially since Apple became the first major manufacturer using it in a major product line.
Joe Crescenzi, Founder
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