So I bought a cheap dual port USB wall plug. I just started using it, when I noticed my phone signaling that it was charging more often than it should. I then found that the plug was painfully hot to the touch. The burning plastic smell (not sure that’s what it was, but it did smell bad) was what got me to stop using it.
From my online research (which went worse than normal because I got a lot of hits for stuff like laptop charging bricks), getting hot is normal, but the smell isn’t, right? I don’t want to return it if this is something that is common. The research also said that the cheapness is likely an actual issue in this case. But how cheap is “too cheap”?
Warm is fine. Painfully hot is too hot. Coincidentally, things start to go south for electronics around 50 deg C, and the human hot pain threshold is usually fairly close to that (somewhere around 43 to 45 deg C for most folks).
The bad smell is also not normal. Excessive heat plus a bad smell means “STOP USING THIS DEVICE RIGHT NOW!!!” So you were right to stop using it.
Check the current specs for the charger and compare them to the phone. A lot of them don’t list specs and instead list which phones that they are compatible with. Make sure your phone is on their list.
A USB laptop charger can get “painfully hot to the touch” (let’s even say 60 degrees) if you max out the rated wattage, but that should not be nearly hot enough to mess up the plastic. That sounds like you had a problem.
I don’t know how much you should be spending because it depends what you want. These days the plug is often “smart”, allowing for faster charging without damaging your device. But that costs more than old fashioned slow chargers. Having recently acquired three USB-charging laptops (two are mine, one is my employer’s) i now have a bunch of giant, and rather expensive, charging bricks that also work great for my phone.
So the fair price varies immensely by what features your are getting.
But any plug that smells bad should be removed and discarded. And no, they shouldn’t get hot, either.
I read someplace–which is always a source of totally reliable info, right?–that cheapo cords and chargers do not have a built-in circuit breaker like the name-brand stuff has.
True or no, I stopped buying cords at gas stations, and pay a little more.
What you linked is a hella capable 15 amp dual USB-C charge point. I’m actually impressed they can fit that in a wall socket; $45 seems like a fair deal to me.
OP, depending on what you’re charging, you may need fewer amps and might expect USB-A slots rather than C. But yes, hot + weird smell would disturb me.
Me, I’ve had USB-A 5V outlets before, I paid $20 and then never used them because for one reason or another I charged my devices some other place in the house.
It’s not the connector, it’s how many watts they can deliver. Newer devices want 15 or even 20 watts to charge = 3 or 4 amps at USB 5V. The old outlets couldn’t keep up.