Talk:AC adapter

"Wall wart"
The phrase wall wart is hardly used outside North America and this article should be merged with AC adapter anyway.  Tu rk ey ph an t 17:42, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, I'm actually from the states and have never heard the term "wall wart" but am more familiar with the term AC adapter(almost all manufacturers i've bought from have called them this) or transformer plug. Firebrandjo (talk) 06:52, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

The phrase is used in the UK, though more by technical people than the general public who tend to call them 'mains adapters' if they are aware of them at all. --80.176.142.11 (talk) 15:14, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

The phrase is used in the German language area. "Wandwarze" (literal translation) yields ~7000 entries in Google. Saxbryn (talk) 16:58, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

How about an explanation of the term, since I never heard it before today and am still not sure what it means? 66.232.240.121 (talk) 01:56, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Power waste
"Inefficiency - typically wall warts waste a lot of electricity"

This isn't really true. Its more of a political football than a reality. If you do the calcs using real world numbers you quickly find the total wasted power is tiny in comparison to other household goods.

There are various sources claiming that if we only did something trivial the human species would be saved, and wallwarts are one of he things they like to latch on to, usually using ludicrous figures to try to establish their point, and avoiding the real issues. Tabby (talk) 12:30, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
 * They still consume more electricity than they should (I.E.: any power at all) when the device they're plugged into is off/fully charged. Power adapters in general aside, the REAL reason I hate wall warts is the two other (physical) problems listed, both of which are easily solved by putting the box part way along the cord rather than at one end. 76.126.134.152 (talk) 09:41, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

You say 'should' - the only thing we 'should' do is pick the best option, and wall warts frequently are that. Thats why theyre so widely used. Other supply types have pros and cons, and these all need to be considered. Making a choice on one aspect alone is not wise decision making.

Putting them on a lead does not alas solve their issues. The only thing it solves is the tendency to fall out with some countries' plugs. It also creates problems, such as increases fire risk. Tabby (talk) 08:47, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

We have a citation: http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/plug-in-transformer.htm To wit: "If you have ever felt one and it was warm, that is wasted energy turned to heat. The power consumption is not large -- on the order of 1 to 5 watts per transformer." Poorly built wall transformers allow too much magnetostriction, which means the iron plates in the transformer core vibrate a lot. Motion like that is a direct energy loss. Please add that citation and let the users decide. Thank you for listening. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.226.126.60 (talk) 01:13, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Link
I've removed
 * Wall Warts - Embedded.com discussion of the problem of wall warts with much discussion about a possible way of replacing them.

because: Tabby (talk) 08:47, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * the article writer shows little understanding of the subject
 * the figures quoted are very inaccurate
 * no basis for the figures is given
 * no source for figures is given
 * the proposed solution is ill considered
 * the article is not an expert source, and offers no expertise.

Survey Finds Consumers Grow Weary of Wall Warts

This one does contain some useful data - though its bias shows through in places. Tabby (talk) 09:10, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * For a start the headline is clearly wrong, what consumers disliked is the incompatiblity of different warts, not warts per se.
 * The claim that laying people's power cords end to end 'might' reach landfill is a farce. I daresay with enough searching one might find 1 or 2 people living next door to landfills where it may be true, but certainly for >99% of the population its a very long way from being true.
 * the 25 million adults figure shows bias: what it really tells us is that the other >200 million would not.
 * the claim that a wart can't be used on any other appliance is patently false.

Tabby is correct. I'm a designer of consumer electronics who just happened to stumble across this today while researching something for a new product.

It looks like a lot of hyperbole. A wall wart that runs warm might consume 2 watts of energy. Compare that to a single 100 watt light bulb. ONE 100W light bulb would draw 50 times the energy, so it looks like a typical home would have a tiny fraction of a percentage of power wasted in wall warts, certainly nowhere remotely close to what is stated and implied.

The largest problems and things disliked by consumers are the outlet space that is used and the large variety of wall warts required. From a manufacturing standpoint the largest problem is the large variety of connectors and the fact the voltage, current, and polarity is not keyed to a certain plug style. This means people can plug an incorrect wall wart in, damaging expensive electronics. —Preceding unsigned comment added by W8ji (talk • contribs) 20:22, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

There is an entry Wall plug efficiency in the See also section which does not seem to pertain to wall wart / AC adapter efficiency at all. It seems to relate more to optics & lasers and a related concept called Luminous efficacy. Am I missing something? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.148.132.11 (talk) 02:29, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Compatibility
One real issue with warts today, not yet addressed in this article, is incompatibility. The proliferation is voltages, current ratings, polarity, regulation, and the occasional ac wart all limit the re-use possibilities, and mean that new goods must come with a new wart.

The good news is that despite the lack of any widely adopted standard on this, The migration of the USB connector to power supplies is seeing a move tward greater compatibility. There's still a fair way to go though.

PS its quite incorrect to say that warts can't be reused on any other appliance. Tabby (talk) 09:10, 13 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I hope my edits last month and this month have properly addressed the above issues. There isn't enough yet about the degree to which USB can and cannot help, and this Wall wart article lacks some of the technical information and designer oriented material that is now in Power_supply. Instead it is mostly consumer oriented. I see three ways to go from here:


 * 1) Merge this article into Power supply in order to balance the designer material with the consumer material.
 * 2) Merge most of the external supply section of that article into here, for the same purpose.
 * 3) Move the present article, if it survives, to another name, for example AC adapter.


 * My leaning is towards number two, since wall warts are much more a consumer question than the other kinds of power supplies. About changing the article's name, I have no strong feelings, nor about which other name, if any, should be applied.  Jim.henderson (talk) 02:01, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

"Diversity — Unlike[citation needed] a standard power cord, a lost or failed wart cannot immediately be replaced from the stock of a retail store, but must await delivery from the original equipment manufacturer (if the item has not yet been discontinued)[citation need"

is back in the article, will remove it again. I've reused countless wallwarts on other appliances, the reuse problem is that there are 5 parameters which must all suit the appliance, and this is too complex for the average consumer. Tabby (talk) 01:37, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
 * voltage
 * current
 * stabilisation
 * connector type
 * polarity

Some observations

 * How might one reliably tell if a "device-less" adapter is consuming power? Is this something that can be done with a multimeter (and someone skilled in its use)?
 * Reusability of adapters is limited only by its device-end plug, its output rating, and the requirements of the device. Adapters tend to be reusable within a brand. — Nahum Reduta [ talk | contribs ] 10:36, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Not an ordinary multimeter but one with a current clamp, or else a wattmeter. The former cannot accurately read a wall wart unless you separate the wires, while the latter can.  Anyway the quick check is by the back of your hand.  Warm means it's consuming; cool means not.
 * Any device with a transformer that is plugged into a voltage source is going to consume electricity unless there is a switch that cuts off the voltage source between the transformer and the voltage source. Kemkerj (talk) 17:11, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, last week I swapped warts among three small 21st century Dell laptop computers (none of which reliably retains the plug after a very slight tug; they're all the same crummy mechanical design). However, Dell still makes equipment, including larger laptops, with incompatible warts, and so do most manufacturers of diverse computers, printers, or other products requiring wall warts.  No major class of consumer equipment has anywhere near as comprehensive a standard of compatibility as Power USB.  And last month I fried a (cheap) speaker because the replacement wart I grabbed without reading the numbers had the right plug but wrong voltage.  And grrr, don't get me started on the three different batteries I needed for those three laptops.  Grrr, rechargeable batteries are more diverse than warts and more expensive.  Grrr.  Computers are necessarily complex but power should be simple.  Jim.henderson (talk) 05:36, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Reasons for widespread use
''These are typically packaged with electrical devices that do not contain their own power supply. This can be .... due to the economics of getting devices including an internal power supply certified by government regulatory bodies, such as the FCC in the United States''

This I understand is the principal reason why a lot of them are used (although the regularory issues are more related to Electrial safety rather than EMC certification). But surely a better approach would be to produced sealed pre-certified PUPS modules (Point of Use Power Supply) which could be fitted internally to the devices in question. AC supply could be via a an IEC series C connector (preferably grounded e.g. c7/c8 or c15/c16) on the PUPS module with a suitably placed access hole on the device ? There would be no need for recertification of the device. 86.112.254.104 (talk) 11:18, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The above might be a design approach that a certification body could accept but it would need whole new economic and safety assesments. This page is for discussing improvement to the article not for proposing a new design.Cuddlyable3 (talk) 13:18, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Efficiency
> But many of these inefficient devices are low powered (e.g. devices that are used for Battery chargers), so although they have a low efficiency, the amount of energy they waste is less than 1% of household consumption of electric energy.

reference needed

> Switch-mode adapters, being more efficient, will not release noticeable heat even while being used. The drawback of switch-mode adapters is that they are considerably more expensive in production.

Wrong on all counts. Some smpsus are less efficient than their iron counterparts, some are cheaper and some run hot.

Its also quite wrong to equate warmth with inefficiency. There are some very inefficient supplies that run cold simply because the output power is small, and very efficient ones that run hot because output power is high for their size.

Unfortunately this is the sort of material the average person thinks they know about, but doesnt, making it hard to maintain a reasonable level of accuracy on this topic on wiki. Tabby (talk) 02:22, 9 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Tabby your claim "Wrong on all counts" attacks a correct statement about switch-mode adaptors. For a given load rating a switch-mode supply IS more efficient than its analog counterpart and it DOES cost more to produce because of its greater complexity. Your claimed counter-examples are the case already noted where the load is insignificant, or the case of a supply that is badly matched to the load. You seem to think "iron" content defines an analog supply but that is incorrect because switch-mode supplies may contain iron or ferrite cores. For an adapter connected to its design load, its subjective warmth is a good guide to its relative efficiency. Your last sentence where you seek to disparage average people as ignorant reflects on its speaker. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 20:46, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

ITU recommendation for USB chargers
There must be a standard number or a document number or *something* we can reference, aside from the ITU's own press release, that formally describes the USB "Universal charging system" plan. The ITU Web site is not helpful, couldn't find it in their weekly updated catalog of publications. --Wtshymanski (talk) 18:07, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I added a ref today to the OMTP standard (which is the one the ITU announced support for = "Common Charging and Local Data Connectivity").  The ITU announced their support for the GSMA common charger proposal which was codified / standardized by the OMTP with their publication of "Common Charging and Local Data Connectivity" I believe.  See also the "GSMA / OMTP Universal Charging Solution (UCS) / Common Charging Solution (CCS)" section of the Common External Power Supply wikipedia article.  Pugetbill (talk) 20:24, 24 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Update - the 2009 ITU Recommendation is ITU-T L.1000, "Universal power adapter and charger solution for mobile terminals and other hand-held ICT devices" specifying a charger similar in most respects to that of the GSMA/OMTP proposal and of the Chinese charger and the EU's common EPS.   Pugetbill (talk) 01:29, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

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Ferrite bead
A ferrite bead is visible near the output plug of the power brick illustrated. Someone please write a sentence or two about this component. When a bead is present, it is always or almost always next to the output plug. Suggesting that the noise being blocked originates in the powered device. Thanks, ... PeterEasthope (talk) 16:59, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

"AC/DC adapter" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect AC/DC adapter and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. fgnievinski (talk) 05:38, 9 December 2022 (UTC)


 * Prompted by discussion at the above RfD listing, I have removed "AC/DC converter" as an alternate name. The reference given was referring to the US patent US5245220A, details of which can currently be found at (should anyone wish to add it back as a source), which fails to verify the supposed alternate name of "AC/DC converter". There is a separate patent referring to a device with such a name but as it's not an area I'm overly familiar with I'll leave it here for anyone interested . A7V2 (talk) 23:28, 11 December 2022 (UTC)