Now we have seen many rip-off USB chargers seem through the years, with a lot of them being enthusiastically ripped aside and analyzed by pretty tame electrical engineers. Usually these are apparent scams with clear hearth dangers, massively overstated claims and/or electrocution hazards. That is the place the “600W” multi-port USB charger from AliExpress that [Denki Otaku] checked out is so fascinating, as regardless of solely outputting 170 Watt earlier than reducing out, it’s technically not mendacity in its advertising and customarily well-engineered.
The trick being that the “600W” is successfully simply the mannequin identify, even if you happen to might mistake it for the summed up output energy as listed on the ports. The claimed GaN parts are additionally there, with all three claimed elements counted and current in the primary energy conversion levels, together with the anticipated effectivity positive aspects.
Whereas testing USB-PD voltages and present on the USB-C ports, the supported USB-PD EPR wattage and voltages considerably cut back whenever you begin utilizing ports, indicating that they’re clearly being shared, however that is all listed on the product web page.
The principle PCB of the unit generates the 28 VDC that’s additionally the utmost voltage that the USB-C ports can output, with decrease voltages generated as wanted. On the PCB with the USB ports we discover the step-down converters for this, in addition to the USB-PD and different USB charging management chips. With solely a restricted variety of these to go round, the controller will change the present per port dynamically because the load will increase, as you’ll count on.
Contemplating that this explicit charger may be purchased for round $30, is up-front in regards to the limitations and makes use of GaN, whereas a real 300 Watt charger from a model like Anker goes for $140+, it leads one to query the expectations of the customer greater than something. Whereas not an outright rip-off like these outrageous $20 ‘2 TB’ SSDs, it does appear to prey on individuals who have little technical understanding of what loopy quantities of money you’d must spend for a real 600 Watt GaN multi-port USB charger, by no means thoughts how large such a unit can be.
