Laptop power supplies are notoriously expensive sometimes commanding prices in excess of £50.  With this in mind many people are tempted into purchasing ’suspicously’ low cost versions from ebay.

Mike from www.electricstuff.co.uk bought himself a ‘genine’ Dell AC adapter from ebay and set about ripping it apart to find out just how badly it was made. As you can see from the picture below, general build quality is less than adequate

Even more concering is the safety aspect of this unit.  It is taking a direct 240V input with little or no protection.  This is an accident waiting to happen, I along with everybody else likes to save a bit of money but this unit is beyond dangerous!

Mike happened to be doing some product testing at an EMC testhouse and thought he would put the unit through its paces to see just how dangerous it was

Every test was a complete failure, although it did output its stated voltage, regulation was very poor.  Heat was also an issue with the unit reaching over 75 degrees in just half an hour.  And that was with the case of.  Whats even more concerning is the obviously fake CE logo attatched to the product.

The moral of the story - If it plugs into the mains, buy genuine!

You can check out Mikes page at www.electricstuff.co.uk/acadapter.html for more detailed information from the test results and some more pictures of the offending unit.

And as if you needed reminding just how deadly these counterfeit products are, heres the unfortunate report of the 7 year old electrocuted by a fake gameboy charger