Could anybody please tell me if video cameras and other electronic devices needing recharging from a country operating on 120 volts will work safely in Japan, where the standard is 100 volts? (Also, eastern Japan runs on 60 cycles and western Japan on 50 cycles. Is that important?)
Does anybody have personal experience, good or bad, using appliances overseas?
Thank you very much for your help!
There’s many possibilities here.
Firstly, if you’re using a wall plug DC supply provided by the manufacturer, it should have allowable input voltages written on it. Manuals also usually contain a specification page detailing the supply voltages required. You may find your video camera can operate with 100-120V supplies - it saves the manufacturer some hassle to build them that way since they can supply the same units to different countries.
The supply frequency variation is unlikely to be important.
Having said that, if this information isn’t available you may still get away with it, but it could cost you the video camera to find out. There’s also a danger that it may appear to work for a while but the camera is in fact being damaged. Not recommended!
[Technical blurb you probably won’t care about]
Most of these things work as follows - a step down transformer takes the supply voltage and reduces it by a particular ratio. A bridge rectifier and capacitor turns this into rather wobbly DC. A regulator then converts this into clean DC at a lower voltage. This clean DC is used to recharge batteries and/or power the device.
The problems come with the regulator step. If the regulator reduces the voltage by a considerable amount, it will work fine at the lower voltage and the device will never know the difference. If it doesn’t, you’ll be getting poorly regulated DC which may upset the various integrated circuits in the camera.
[/technical blurb]
Electric clocks.
With certain clocks that use 60hz as a reference standard, 50hz has the typical effect of making you late for work, since the clock is running slow.
Perhaps you could buy an inexpensive volt meter and measure the output with a 100v input?
When I moved to Japan from the US I brought a few electronic devices, such as stereos, desktop computers and laptops. They work just fine. In fact, if you go to a cheap computer store in Japan, the power supply will say “115V” on the back - made in Korea and intended for export to the US, I’d guess.
The frequency will only be important for appliances with big motors, e.g. washing machines and vacuum cleaners, as well as appliances that use the frequency for timing, such as clocks (as Tedster said) and simple mechanical timers like those built into toasters. Electronics with AC adapters almost never care about the frequency - the adapter usually outputs DC anyway.
Also, look closely at the AC adapter for your electronics - most of them have the input voltage range written on it, and usually it includes 100V. Then you’ll know for sure that it’ll work. In fact, 100-240V is becoming common nowadays.
Toasters work using thermostats. Frequency is not a problem.
Oops. I guess I was thinking about toaster ovens with a dial to set the time, which I think are frequency dependent. Some cheap appliances in Japan (like my futon dryer) have two scales around the timer dial, one for 50Hz and the other for 60.
I had the impression that a digital electric clock (the standard kind nowadays, with a red LED display) would use the 60 Hz out of the wall for timekeeping. I recall seeing some info about how power companies now keep their frequency within a few cycles over months of time, so this would be much better than using a local crystal oscillator.
But I just checked with howstuffworks.com (at http://www.howstuffworks.com/digital-clock1.htm ), and he says:
So which is it? I think that howstuffworks.com blew this one.