Yah, lots of old PC keyboards had rather hefty weights in them to increase the quality. IBM, HP, Compaq etc. The manufacturers would claim it was to stop the keyboard from sliding around, but nah, Feel the quality!
Bang and Olufsen used to do this all the time to their remote controls. They always felt heavy due to the large block of metal inside them to weight them down.
@@j.f.christ8421 I liked that. I still buy mice with the adjustable weights because I like them to feel like I won't fling them across the room if I'm not paying attention. The IBM Model M 104 Key keyboard with the mouse nub was my favorite.
Lol, people comparing ergonomic devices like mice or keyboards (where mass can alter the characteristics of the product) to power supplies. One is more scammy than the other.
I've designed this type of circuit for work. The SDC5091 is a saturation flyback driver IC. It has a depletion mode FET that ties the 2.2uF cap as a bootstrap supply. The IC also has a power MOSFET on pins 5-8. These normally have pin 1 and the bottom as ground. The IC turns on the MOSFET, charging the primary side of the flyback transformer. The opto-isolator triggers the IC to turn off the MOSFET when the core of the flyback reaches saturation. As the magnetic field collapses, it is forced into the secondary side, providing power to the output. When the core is no longer saturated and the output starts to dip, the opto-isolator turns off, triggering the IC to turn on the MOSFET again. The odd configuration of the freewheel/snubber circuit is because you want the primary side to be able to reach a highish voltage while the field collapses into the secondary, but not too high that it damages the MOSFET, or puts the body diode of the FET or MOSFET into conduction. This circuit could just be the resistor and capacitor, but there is a high likely hood of unwanted oscillations. So, the diode is added to eliminate any oscillation. It is common for this diode to be a power zener, or a TVS depending on input supply and flyback specs.
And two bridge rectifiers, and not a single abused 1N4148! Still a noncompliant shock hazard with those transformers though, you need that triple insulated wire on the secondary side and flying secondary leads or a bobbin with an extended secondary side terminal strip to properly isolate a winding in a transformer that small.
Clive might want to give that weight a quick wisk with the geiger counter. I've found that 'easter eggs " like this tend to have a higher chance of being metal they wanted to get rid of anyway., possibly even getting reimbursed for its disposal in the process.
Hey Clive. rather than worrying about "plugging expensive devices" into "questionable" PD chargers, you might consider getting some cheap Power Delivery "decoy" boards. These things cost from a couple bucks each up to about fifteen for a fully programmable unit. The most basic ones spoof the PD charger for a single voltage and provide + & - measurement / connection points, slightly more advanced models have short-able pads to select the PD output voltage, and the most advanced modes cost around 15 bucks and use a push-button and colored LED system to program the output. So instead of risking any PD equipment, you can just decoy the different voltages, measure them with a meter & apply a load if you so desire.
I came here to say this. I have one QC trigger that has a button and LEDs on it to choose between four voltages, and came with the option of USB, screw terminals, or barrel jack for output. And I have several others that are just USB-C cables with barrel plugs on the other end that each operated at a fixed voltage. I think there's also some PD trigger stuff in the my drawer too, but I can't remember now. Aliexpress has plenty of choices, which makes me think eBay will too.
@@acmefixer1 Uuhhhhhh.... a decoy board is NOT a load...!!! A decoy board simulates an actual device by negotiating the voltage that the charger will provide... as low as 5 volts for run of the mill USB devices, all the way up to 20 volts for laptops & other high power devices. Extremely useful to have in your kit. The USB test load plugs into the decoy to test if the PD charger can deliver it's ratings.
There are also newer USB volt/amp meters that can act as PD triggers (as well as querying the supply and informing the user of what it supports) like the FN58/FNB58. Might not be a bad time for Clive to upgrade from the old Ruideng meter.
I don't know which one I hate more, this one or the one DiodeGoneWild took apart with an LED voltmeter inside. With a display that uses two wires. Because it only ever displays 5.1V.
The DiodeGoneWild one showed 5.2V no matter what the voltage was, it was just LED segments lit up to a power source. I think that charger didn't supply the full output current either, as well as having various electrical issues (e.g. missing fuse/interference suppression/safety capacitor being 1kV only/transformer with no isolation etc etc).
@@TheSpotify95 Reminds me of the speed indicator LED displays on some old PCs. Didn't measure a thing, just switched between two hardwired 7 segment displays, depending on the level of the "turbo" line.
The company I work for was selling some expensive kit to the CHAPS banking network in the mid 1980s (19" rack stuff, circa £20k each). Apparently the marketing director thought the kit was a bit light for that price so the demo unit had two house bricks added for "Improved value".....
False weight, you love to see it. I once opened a karaoke microphone and found a huge block of solder inside, dumped in there like chocolate inside an ice cream cone. That block of solder took up 80% of the internal space, and also acted as physical support for a small chip just floating around in the housing.
I once bought a lamp from a Chinese manufacturer. Thinking it "felt" quality because of the weight, I took it to bits and also discovered a bar of steel. Once removed the item was featherweight. Funny how we associate weight with quality!
It really is funny. I've had a similar situation for a microphone of a Japanese radio transceiver (Icom HM-219). The microphone is actually quite good, but it has two weights on the inside. With the weights, to me, it feels much more solid in the hand. When I remove the weights, it feels like a piece of plastic junk.
Lamp? If the weight was in the base, it was due to being higher quality than the same lamp would be without it. You don't want your lamp to too easily tip over or scoot around, so making it bottom heavy is the right design choice.
Skipped the transformer autopsy to see whether it falls in the good enough or death trap category. Dumping a chunk of steel into stuff to make it "feel higher quality" is a pretty common trick. I've even seen a review of a Chinese ATX PSU that used a concrete PFC transformer - just a wire cast in concrete.
You don't really need to unwind one that small, just the fact the secondary is plain magnet wire terminated on a regular bobbin is an instant DQ, it should be triple insulated wire terminated away from the windings.
@@TheSpotify95 yes, there are different grades of shit, but it's still all shit. It doesn't matter if they actually used tape, you can't use enough of it with a core window that narrow, think of the winding near the edge, easy arc over the edge of the tape. The solution to that is "margin tape" but like I said, you won't have have room for a winding after installing it in a core that small. AFAIK TIW is the only way to actually make a safe (i.e. approved) one that small, and it's easy to visually ID that thicker usually yellow insulated wire coming out of the transformer.
Does Samsung even make chargers with multiple outlets? most of my devices are Samsung and i have never seen a charger that allows you to charge more than one device (except their wireless pads)
@@dgwdgwwould it not be the case of a product is purporting to be “Samsung” hence counterfeit. Samsung also has legal rights to pursue due to said product claiming to be genuine.
@@Iwishiwasflying good luck to them. You do know the Chinese don't know the meanin of copyright? There are millions (probably billions) of fake Samsung chargers like these.
Some of those USB testers can exhaustively check all power standards. I'd be curious to know if this supply actually communicates over any of those standards or if the chips are just dummy chips. (Stranger things have happened.)
The fact it has the capability to negotiate voltages makes me even *more* wary of this thing! It is a perfectly fine piece of functionality if it works, but... IF... I would not want 16v shunting into my Kindle or rechargeable headset thank you very much!
A few years ago I built a plastic injection mold for the end caps of a high power power amplifier for Pioneer. In each end cap was clip features to hold a section of concrete reinforcing rebar. Pioneer stated that the customer wants to feel the weight as they don't believe a lightweight power amp develops any substantial power. Heavy sells!
I very much doubt it can deliver 65W, or even 20W for that matter. look at those cute tiny transformers! Max 2A each? It's not a Samsung, it's a Samsong.
I bought an rather expensive but great USB tester, FNIRSI FNB48P and it goes from 3.8v (0v if connect extra micro usb for just the tester) to 24v and 0 to 6.5Amps. It can check the charger and cable for every fast charge ability, and also it can force quick charge voltages for any voltage you want then you can test the amp load on the usb c or a output. It also shows voltage ripple graph/oscilloscope down to 3.1 uS and 1mV Can estimate calculate charged current to a 3.6v lipo battery, and is actually within 5% from factory (can adjust conversion efficiency on it for the calculation) I love it and it have revealed one super fake charger
You think the Chinese court would side with a Korean company over their own subsidized company operating in China? The answer to that would be a big no.
Why would you be plugging them into a wall in the first place? Multi-outlet power strip FTW! I can't recall the last time I actually plugged one straight into a wall outlet.
@@stinkycheese804 Power strips plug in and hang from the wall too, though. Also, power strips and extension cords don't solve every problem. I watched a space heater that was powered off spontaneously break out into flames while plugged into an extension cord.
Just note, I tested a cheap charger a few years ago, and found that a Chinese amp is equal to ~1/3 of an amp, in the rest of the world. From one of the Jurassic Park films, when the Jeff Goldblum character sees his kid handling a piece of equipment, He asks, "Is it heavy". The kid answers, "yes", He replies, "then its expensive, put it down". I think the "sacrificial" lawyer has similar interaction, in the first movie.
I found a lump of high quality steel in a charger when I was opening "everything" when I 1st started learning electronics. I thought it was a loose heat sink at 1st till I picked it up. That looks like they didn't skimp on parts.
I'm no USB charger expert, but my 3rd party "Go-To" for chargers and charge cords has consistently been the "Anker" brand!!!...and they seem to always be coming to market with improved charging technology and circuitry!!! I can't say I've ever been disappointed with one of their charging products I've purchased!!!
Yeah I've got a 2 port Anker charger - 5V 2.1A per port - and it seems to work well enough. I also have a 2 port charger from LIDL supermarkets which also works well, with the Type C outlet doing fast charging as well.
Ive tested my anker power bank with usb power meter and the charge circuitry seems very advanced. It def regulates and changes power based on device and battery charge.
To be fair to the random lump of metal, I've got a few things(every remote I own, and a few computer mouses) that would be improved immeasurably by the addition of a lump of metal. Of course, there's a difference between a lump of metal just randomly in a power supply that might possibly lead to undesirable operation and a lump of metal to improve the feel when used.
I remember vwestlife made a video on fake counterfeit chargers a long time ago. He connected the charger to a camera, and the fake charger was causing radio interference.
Over a decade ago I had a knock-off Dell laptop charger come in for repair, similarly weighted down with a steel plate to give the illusion of quality. It was duly disposed of…
At least that long ago, I did desktop PC support for an organization that used all Dell equipment. I remember dismantling one of the slightly nicer mice and finding a weight in it. In that particular case it made sense though, I found the heavier mice easier to handle than the new ones they were shipping us that weighed nothing. The idea of a metal weight floating around loose inside a SMPS is terrifying.
when Texas Instruments first came out with their high end highest priced calculators ($200 to $300 in the '80s) they put steel weights in them too. the calculators themselves were designed well but much lighter without the weights than older style, much cheaper, calculators.
My guess is that this is a chip manufacturer for samsung products and they are selling their own "copy" on the side. Which may explain why it's hard to find documentation.
No need to, there's a wealth of existing tech for SMPS so no real need to copy samsung especially if they wish to alter the circuit to a lower price point. Remember, it's China, if they want to make a custom IC to do an exact thing like this, they can, and produce it dirt cheap as well, It's just not sophisticated enough tech to need to rip IP off of anyone else to do it.
Clive, coming back to this video now that I know a bit more about things... The reason the feedback circuit doesn't just flip in different resistances is so the supply can vary the output voltage as the device requests, via the Programmable Power Supply (PPS) feature added in the USB PD 3.0 spec. The idea is optimizing the input voltage to best charge the battery. As for the two independent supplies, this makes sure one of the outputs can supply max wattage, while the other two are splitting up the wattage capability of the other supply. The other two ports have to be at the same voltage, and if you connect something, the other port will temporarily shut off while it re-negotiates. There's definitely some excess duplication, though, and no way can this do 65W. As for not wanting to plug expensive devices in, there are newer USB testers that can query and negotiate with PD and QC2.0/3.0 supplies. It's great for seeing what they support, and triggering the higher voltages to feed into a load tester. I personally like my FNB58, but there are other options on the market.
This sort of stuff is why I use apps and extensions like Cultivate to let me see where the product is from. If it’s from China, I scroll on. No way I’m letting my house burn down because of chinesium charger.
I've come across weights like that inside the plastic 'pull cord' things used for window blinds. Maybe they had too many of them left in the factory and needed to get rid of them!
Years ago I got an Sandisk SD card that was fake. But not only did it work at the advertised size but it also ran just a little faster than the real Sandisk.
The perception of quality thru pure weight of the overall component has been a mainstay of the devices presented from Asian sources for some time now….amazing that the product should require such an “upgrade” to impress the end user!
Watching Fran trying to open a Sinclair portable television yesterday makes me appreciate the odd One Moment Please from Clive for a destructive disassembly...
I've noticed OnePlus chargers give a massive shock if you accidentally touch the pins after unplugging so I assume (it'd be cool if you could tear one down) they have no discharge capacitor to stop the shock. I've been shocked a few times by it and it's quite a shock! Which means first party isn't always the safest or nicest chargers around.
That means they bothered to install an across the line interference capacitor (great!) but no shock prevention bleeder resistor, which is not great, but that probably won't kill anyone.
I bought several ikea chargers thanks to your videos! Maybe you could also tear down the IKEA ÅSKSTORM charger. It has the same form factor as their other 3 port charger but instead has 1 USB A and one USB C PD3 port. Could be interesting to compare them. I also got Ikeas new Power Bank, might be interesting to tear that down as well and see if the quality is as good as with their chargers.
And the icing on the cake is that that thing doesn't have a *real* ground, sorry, earth. Hope you discharged the capacitors. Even those small ones pack a punch. 🐻
I know you like to take apart crap you find on ebay and the like. But I would love to donate for a teardown of brands like "anker" or "ugreen" etc to see what is under the hood and how they stack up.
Also, official chargers would usually come in a sale hanging box package, even if you order it online. Usually, through the Amazon website from the Samsung storefront there.
It's not that simple. Aside from retail packaged product, they have had chargers to bundle with products and will have excess stock once the warranty is over for a generation of product. The question is then what happens to that stock. I'd bought white box major brand products several times over the years, as well as samsung phones that had chargers just in a little plastic baggie.
I used to have a handheld game player ( PSP!/MP5! 10,000 games! ) that was basically a Nintendo-onna-chip with a few support ICs to give FM radio, MP3 playback and ( limited ) video playback. It was surprisingly good for NES/SNES/GB/GBC/GBA emulation. The radio worked, with headphones, and MP3 playback was acceptable. Good battery life too. The screen was clear and bright. One day though, it failed to charge. 'Spicy pillow' was my first thought. Sure enough, the battery needed either Benadryl or Viking funeral. It got the latter. Nestled between the battery and back panel was a strip of heft adding steel. It didn't need it. It was a good product at a keen price. I mackled a BL-5C clone battery in and got another years use from it before mislaying it somewhere. That strip of steel made me chuckle at the time. That it's still being done a decade or so later?, not quite so funny.
A clasic example of cheap or not so cheap fakes from China. The clue is in the multiple outputs, any genuine Samsung chargers that i have seen only have one Type C socket.
I have seen weights in many cheap knock off electronics. The idea is to make it feel like the authentic brand. Its a crooked method but not a new practice. I remember buying a cheap Getto Blaster once that contained weights hot glued into it. That was back in the 80's. My guess is the chips you couldnt identify are also knock offs.
Ok bro, you dont mock our good universal American "accent" ... "is it gonna come ooffff?"... and i wont keep impersonating SeanconneryCliveGerardbutlerEwanMacGregor saying im Irish.... hah!
Very nice fake reveal clip. Watching this an ideea come to my mind so I decide to ask you here. Those days I was looking into some 2 TB (even 16 TB) ssd memory stick from Aliexpress labeled as a Kingston/Samsung etc wich cost somewhere like 2 to 10 dollars something like this, some ridiculous cheap amount of money. So maybe you can have a look and crack down another fake brand labeled video in the near future. 😊
It's suddenly struck me as an odd omission from our 'strict' electrical regulations. We cannot have an appliance connected by plug that does not have a suitable rated fuse in it to protect the cable but we can have an appliance plugged directly into a wall socket with no fuse protection other than the main circuit fuse. Maybe those who constantly work to invent new ways to frustrate us 'illegal' electricians and invent ever more ways to protect wiring, from events it does not necessarily need to be protected from, should address the matter of fusing of directly plugged in devices (and I include those USB chargers installed in wall plates).
@@barrieshepherd7694 Why care about that? I have never once in my life seen a blown fuse in a piece of mains powered consumer electronics that was actually the issue, always shorted parts in the power supply or some other serious fault that junks it anyway.
@@johndododoe1411 it's not the semiconductors themselves, but rather the fact that everything is more denstly packed and requires extra thermal dissipation (heatsinks) inside the GaN chargers which makes then heavier. Go have a look at a teardown of a 100 W GaN charger and compare it to a teardown of a traditional charger and you'll understand. You might save a third of the size, but none of the weight. As this is fake GaN charger, they added the metal lump to increase the weight to make it feel the same as a 65 W GaN charger.
They would have to be directly connected and not with something between the weight and the transformer. I'd suspect it to be thermally important thought
Transformer cores wrap around and provide a full flux path, so I doubt that much would go through the weight. Plus any flux leaking at the high switching frequencies might just heat the iron.
@@NinoJoel So it's a heatsink then?, a valid addition to its functionality ?, a purposeful design feature ?, not a lump of steel inserted to fool the buyer at all ??.🤔
That reminds me, I have some unbranded. USB chargers that I bought from Amazon some years ago. They worked perfectly for several years but were then subject to a product recall by Amazon due to the risk of electric shock. I was refunded in full but never had to return them. I keep meaning to send them to you for analysis, but I never got around to it! The only point of this comment is to fix it in my mind again. Great video by the way.
To be fair, the rated 15W may have been at QC-voltages, like 12V. You'd need a load tester that is capable of testing QC specifically. However, the fact that USB-C load wasn't tested, probably means it was just as crap.
The chunk of steel how you know you're getting what you paid for. The cheap stuff doesn't include _any_ bonus steel, and anyone being worse about it would've probably given you lead instead.
SDC 5091, 20 Watt Switching Power Supply controller with intergrated power switch. Similar to TNY 2xx series, different pinout, IC for fast chargers. 65 W is from space, paper can accept everything.
It really bothers me that any manufacturer would go to the trouble of deceiving the purchaser by adding weights to the device. Thanks, Clive.
This has been common forever
Yah, lots of old PC keyboards had rather hefty weights in them to increase the quality. IBM, HP, Compaq etc. The manufacturers would claim it was to stop the keyboard from sliding around, but nah, Feel the quality!
Bang and Olufsen used to do this all the time to their remote controls. They always felt heavy due to the large block of metal inside them to weight them down.
@@j.f.christ8421 I liked that. I still buy mice with the adjustable weights because I like them to feel like I won't fling them across the room if I'm not paying attention. The IBM Model M 104 Key keyboard with the mouse nub was my favorite.
Lol, people comparing ergonomic devices like mice or keyboards (where mass can alter the characteristics of the product) to power supplies.
One is more scammy than the other.
I've designed this type of circuit for work. The SDC5091 is a saturation flyback driver IC. It has a depletion mode FET that ties the 2.2uF cap as a bootstrap supply. The IC also has a power MOSFET on pins 5-8. These normally have pin 1 and the bottom as ground. The IC turns on the MOSFET, charging the primary side of the flyback transformer. The opto-isolator triggers the IC to turn off the MOSFET when the core of the flyback reaches saturation. As the magnetic field collapses, it is forced into the secondary side, providing power to the output. When the core is no longer saturated and the output starts to dip, the opto-isolator turns off, triggering the IC to turn on the MOSFET again. The odd configuration of the freewheel/snubber circuit is because you want the primary side to be able to reach a highish voltage while the field collapses into the secondary, but not too high that it damages the MOSFET, or puts the body diode of the FET or MOSFET into conduction. This circuit could just be the resistor and capacitor, but there is a high likely hood of unwanted oscillations. So, the diode is added to eliminate any oscillation. It is common for this diode to be a power zener, or a TVS depending on input supply and flyback specs.
Great explanation! Thanks!
Obviously you are speaking Arabic as I understand none of this
Funny that's what I was thinking😂
Hey I know some of these words!
This kind of a detailed technical explanation can only come from some who has More Head😁
Wow they didn't spare any expense here, they even added the metal fake weight. True quality right there
And two bridge rectifiers, and not a single abused 1N4148! Still a noncompliant shock hazard with those transformers though, you need that triple insulated wire on the secondary side and flying secondary leads or a bobbin with an extended secondary side terminal strip to properly isolate a winding in a transformer that small.
not a metal fake weight... it's a real weight!
@@zebo-the-fat - It's a built-in load.
Clive might want to give that weight a quick wisk with the geiger counter. I've found that 'easter eggs " like this tend to have a higher chance of being metal they wanted to get rid of anyway., possibly even getting reimbursed for its disposal in the process.
... sum of its parts ...
Hey Clive. rather than worrying about "plugging expensive devices" into "questionable" PD chargers, you might consider getting some cheap Power Delivery "decoy" boards. These things cost from a couple bucks each up to about fifteen for a fully programmable unit. The most basic ones spoof the PD charger for a single voltage and provide + & - measurement / connection points, slightly more advanced models have short-able pads to select the PD output voltage, and the most advanced modes cost around 15 bucks and use a push-button and colored LED system to program the output. So instead of risking any PD equipment, you can just decoy the different voltages, measure them with a meter & apply a load if you so desire.
I came here to say this. I have one QC trigger that has a button and LEDs on it to choose between four voltages, and came with the option of USB, screw terminals, or barrel jack for output. And I have several others that are just USB-C cables with barrel plugs on the other end that each operated at a fixed voltage. I think there's also some PD trigger stuff in the my drawer too, but I can't remember now. Aliexpress has plenty of choices, which makes me think eBay will too.
Clive already has a variable load to test USB chargers.
@@acmefixer1 Uuhhhhhh.... a decoy board is NOT a load...!!! A decoy board simulates an actual device by negotiating the voltage that the charger will provide... as low as 5 volts for run of the mill USB devices, all the way up to 20 volts for laptops & other high power devices. Extremely useful to have in your kit. The USB test load plugs into the decoy to test if the PD charger can deliver it's ratings.
There are also newer USB volt/amp meters that can act as PD triggers (as well as querying the supply and informing the user of what it supports) like the FN58/FNB58. Might not be a bad time for Clive to upgrade from the old Ruideng meter.
I don't know which one I hate more, this one or the one DiodeGoneWild took apart with an LED voltmeter inside. With a display that uses two wires. Because it only ever displays 5.1V.
The fake volt meter was awesome.
The DiodeGoneWild one showed 5.2V no matter what the voltage was, it was just LED segments lit up to a power source. I think that charger didn't supply the full output current either, as well as having various electrical issues (e.g. missing fuse/interference suppression/safety capacitor being 1kV only/transformer with no isolation etc etc).
@@TheSpotify95 Reminds me of the speed indicator LED displays on some old PCs. Didn't measure a thing, just switched between two hardwired 7 segment displays, depending on the level of the "turbo" line.
@@tubastuff I remember those, mine had jumpers on the back that could be changed to make it display whatever numbers you wanted.
@@uzlonewolf I jumpered mine to to show "Hi" and "LO"--I figured that was more honest. :)
The company I work for was selling some expensive kit to the CHAPS banking network in the mid 1980s (19" rack stuff, circa £20k each). Apparently the marketing director thought the kit was a bit light for that price so the demo unit had two house bricks added for "Improved value".....
False weight, you love to see it. I once opened a karaoke microphone and found a huge block of solder inside, dumped in there like chocolate inside an ice cream cone. That block of solder took up 80% of the internal space, and also acted as physical support for a small chip just floating around in the housing.
That's a nice bit of lead for the landfill...
FYI: The SDC5091 is acc. to one Aliexpress seller a 20W switching power supply PD fast charge chip.
Oh and they only sell it in a pack of 4,000.
A Chinese Watt must be around ⅔ of the rest of the world's Watt. 🙃
i dont like how these scammers dirty the name of well respected companies.
You should tear apart those "polymer" capacitors and see if they really are polymer.
Yeah, At least one reliable brand of electrolytics look exactly the same .
I once bought a lamp from a Chinese manufacturer. Thinking it "felt" quality because of the weight, I took it to bits and also discovered a bar of steel. Once removed the item was featherweight. Funny how we associate weight with quality!
It really is funny. I've had a similar situation for a microphone of a Japanese radio transceiver (Icom HM-219). The microphone is actually quite good, but it has two weights on the inside. With the weights, to me, it feels much more solid in the hand. When I remove the weights, it feels like a piece of plastic junk.
Lamp? If the weight was in the base, it was due to being higher quality than the same lamp would be without it. You don't want your lamp to too easily tip over or scoot around, so making it bottom heavy is the right design choice.
Skipped the transformer autopsy to see whether it falls in the good enough or death trap category. Dumping a chunk of steel into stuff to make it "feel higher quality" is a pretty common trick. I've even seen a review of a Chinese ATX PSU that used a concrete PFC transformer - just a wire cast in concrete.
You don't really need to unwind one that small, just the fact the secondary is plain magnet wire terminated on a regular bobbin is an instant DQ, it should be triple insulated wire terminated away from the windings.
@@Broken_Yugo There are some transformers that don't have any isolation at all whatsoever...
@@TheSpotify95 yes, there are different grades of shit, but it's still all shit. It doesn't matter if they actually used tape, you can't use enough of it with a core window that narrow, think of the winding near the edge, easy arc over the edge of the tape. The solution to that is "margin tape" but like I said, you won't have have room for a winding after installing it in a core that small. AFAIK TIW is the only way to actually make a safe (i.e. approved) one that small, and it's easy to visually ID that thicker usually yellow insulated wire coming out of the transformer.
Does Samsung even make chargers with multiple outlets? most of my devices are Samsung and i have never seen a charger that allows you to charge more than one device (except their wireless pads)
If that was priced correctly (£1-2) it would just be a fake. But because they charge £15 it would be classed as counterfeit.
Because they charge £15 _and print "SAMSUNG" on the label_
@@dgwdgwwould it not be the case of a product is purporting to be “Samsung” hence counterfeit. Samsung also has legal rights to pursue due to said product claiming to be genuine.
@@Iwishiwasflying good luck to them. You do know the Chinese don't know the meanin of copyright? There are millions (probably billions) of fake Samsung chargers like these.
No, both would be fake, regardless of the price. Because they slapped the Samsung logo on there, it is a counterfeit.
Yess, all hail Chamchung 😂 I also bought one from the local store and once I connected it poof it went 😅
I remember back when most electronic devices had lead weights added to give the illusion of quality.
With RoHS, they've had to improve their products and use _steel_ weights instead.
I know it was done with cameras, but the weight was kind of functional as an anti shake device.
It'd the sort of sneaky Jerry trick that thst crook Alan Sugar used to do in his shite products
Some of those USB testers can exhaustively check all power standards. I'd be curious to know if this supply actually communicates over any of those standards or if the chips are just dummy chips. (Stranger things have happened.)
"Quality Feel Lump of Steel" would be a good t-shirt
when someone says "i know a guy who knows a guy who knows electronics", this is that guy
The fact it has the capability to negotiate voltages makes me even *more* wary of this thing! It is a perfectly fine piece of functionality if it works, but... IF...
I would not want 16v shunting into my Kindle or rechargeable headset thank you very much!
I like how the "steel bar of power" hadn't even had its sticky surface revealed. The Chinese time and motion guy saved a full half second there !😂
A few years ago I built a plastic injection mold for the end caps of a high power power amplifier for Pioneer. In each end cap was clip features to hold a section of concrete reinforcing rebar. Pioneer stated that the customer wants to feel the weight as they don't believe a lightweight power amp develops any substantial power. Heavy sells!
I very much doubt it can deliver 65W, or even 20W for that matter.
look at those cute tiny transformers! Max 2A each?
It's not a Samsung, it's a Samsong.
Ah yes, the Vice of Knowledge. My favourite tool.
Don't forget the big hammer of truth!
I bought an rather expensive but great USB tester, FNIRSI FNB48P and it goes from 3.8v (0v if connect extra micro usb for just the tester) to 24v and 0 to 6.5Amps.
It can check the charger and cable for every fast charge ability, and also it can force quick charge voltages for any voltage you want then you can test the amp load on the usb c or a output.
It also shows voltage ripple graph/oscilloscope down to 3.1 uS and 1mV
Can estimate calculate charged current to a 3.6v lipo battery, and is actually within 5% from factory (can adjust conversion efficiency on it for the calculation)
I love it and it have revealed one super fake charger
Smasnug should figure out who is manufacturing these things and sue them into bankruptcy
They could spend all their time and money doing that. There are dozens of places making knockoff Samsung phones and chargers etc.
@@SashazurThey could have a separate team of bounty hunters funded mostly by the lawsuit profits .
You think the Chinese court would side with a Korean company over their own subsidized company operating in China? The answer to that would be a big no.
You have the Perfect Voice for potcasts
Now I have your "Cheap sh!tty pink USB charger from China song" stuck in my head. Going to have to listen to that again.
Your power plugs in the UK are great. In the US, a heavier charger box leans away from the wall and eventually exposes the prongs.
Why would you be plugging them into a wall in the first place? Multi-outlet power strip FTW! I can't recall the last time I actually plugged one straight into a wall outlet.
@@stinkycheese804 Power strips plug in and hang from the wall too, though.
Also, power strips and extension cords don't solve every problem. I watched a space heater that was powered off spontaneously break out into flames while plugged into an extension cord.
I just love your channel through explanation and circuit description.
It's nice when they include a lump of genuine chinesium for the high qualities weighting... :P
Just note, I tested a cheap charger a few years ago, and found that a Chinese amp is equal to ~1/3 of an amp, in the rest of the world.
From one of the Jurassic Park films, when the Jeff Goldblum character sees his kid handling a piece of equipment, He asks, "Is it heavy". The kid answers, "yes", He replies, "then its expensive, put it down". I think the "sacrificial" lawyer has similar interaction, in the first movie.
I found a lump of high quality steel in a charger when I was opening "everything" when I 1st started learning electronics. I thought it was a loose heat sink at 1st till I picked it up. That looks like they didn't skimp on parts.
I'm no USB charger expert, but my 3rd party "Go-To" for chargers and charge cords has consistently been the "Anker" brand!!!...and they seem to always be coming to market with improved charging technology and circuitry!!! I can't say I've ever been disappointed with one of their charging products I've purchased!!!
Yeah I've got a 2 port Anker charger - 5V 2.1A per port - and it seems to work well enough. I also have a 2 port charger from LIDL supermarkets which also works well, with the Type C outlet doing fast charging as well.
I also mainly buy Anker brand.
Yes I use those too. They always charge at an acceptable rate and don’t get hot in the process!
They are well manufactured and come at reasonable prices.
The internals look well designed as weol
Ive tested my anker power bank with usb power meter and the charge circuitry seems very advanced. It def regulates and changes power based on device and battery charge.
You need to get one of those fancy molten hairdryers so that you can make an autopsy of the transformers.
There's a lot more components than I was expecting.
To be fair to the random lump of metal, I've got a few things(every remote I own, and a few computer mouses) that would be improved immeasurably by the addition of a lump of metal.
Of course, there's a difference between a lump of metal just randomly in a power supply that might possibly lead to undesirable operation and a lump of metal to improve the feel when used.
Such clarity showing falsity...Big C... you ROCK! .. across the pond.. DVD:)
It might be interesting to look inside one of the recent chargers from Lidl.
I remember vwestlife made a video on fake counterfeit chargers a long time ago. He connected the charger to a camera, and the fake charger was causing radio interference.
Not usually a good sign when they've had to add the "feel the quality, feel the weight" lump of metal. 🤣
Watt or Whaaaatt? Yeah, you just never know. Thanks Clive for throwing some light on this.
Over a decade ago I had a knock-off Dell laptop charger come in for repair, similarly weighted down with a steel plate to give the illusion of quality. It was duly disposed of…
At least that long ago, I did desktop PC support for an organization that used all Dell equipment. I remember dismantling one of the slightly nicer mice and finding a weight in it. In that particular case it made sense though, I found the heavier mice easier to handle than the new ones they were shipping us that weighed nothing.
The idea of a metal weight floating around loose inside a SMPS is terrifying.
when Texas Instruments first came out with their high end highest priced calculators ($200 to $300 in the '80s) they put steel weights in them too. the calculators themselves were designed well but much lighter without the weights than older style, much cheaper, calculators.
You should get one of those usb power delivery triggers to test such things safely
It sounds like it's time for an improved USB power tester that can negotiate various voltages for test under load.
My guess is that this is a chip manufacturer for samsung products and they are selling their own "copy" on the side. Which may explain why it's hard to find documentation.
No need to, there's a wealth of existing tech for SMPS so no real need to copy samsung especially if they wish to alter the circuit to a lower price point. Remember, it's China, if they want to make a custom IC to do an exact thing like this, they can, and produce it dirt cheap as well, It's just not sophisticated enough tech to need to rip IP off of anyone else to do it.
Clive, coming back to this video now that I know a bit more about things...
The reason the feedback circuit doesn't just flip in different resistances is so the supply can vary the output voltage as the device requests, via the Programmable Power Supply (PPS) feature added in the USB PD 3.0 spec. The idea is optimizing the input voltage to best charge the battery.
As for the two independent supplies, this makes sure one of the outputs can supply max wattage, while the other two are splitting up the wattage capability of the other supply. The other two ports have to be at the same voltage, and if you connect something, the other port will temporarily shut off while it re-negotiates. There's definitely some excess duplication, though, and no way can this do 65W.
As for not wanting to plug expensive devices in, there are newer USB testers that can query and negotiate with PD and QC2.0/3.0 supplies. It's great for seeing what they support, and triggering the higher voltages to feed into a load tester. I personally like my FNB58, but there are other options on the market.
The fact that the packaging has the old samsung logo already makes me suspicious. They stopped using the oval like a decade ago
Somebody should compile all Clive’s schematics into ‘Big Clive’s Book of Revelations’
This sort of stuff is why I use apps and extensions like Cultivate to let me see where the product is from.
If it’s from China, I scroll on. No way I’m letting my house burn down because of chinesium charger.
I've come across weights like that inside the plastic 'pull cord' things used for window blinds. Maybe they had too many of them left in the factory and needed to get rid of them!
Years ago I got an Sandisk SD card that was fake. But not only did it work at the advertised size but it also ran just a little faster than the real Sandisk.
The perception of quality thru pure weight of the overall component has been a mainstay of the devices presented from Asian sources for some time now….amazing that the product should require such an “upgrade” to impress the end user!
Watching Fran trying to open a Sinclair portable television yesterday makes me appreciate the odd One Moment Please from Clive for a destructive disassembly...
I would solder the steel blob as a resistor or attach it to a transistor as a heatsink. That way it would just be a very good component.
I've noticed OnePlus chargers give a massive shock if you accidentally touch the pins after unplugging so I assume (it'd be cool if you could tear one down) they have no discharge capacitor to stop the shock.
I've been shocked a few times by it and it's quite a shock!
Which means first party isn't always the safest or nicest chargers around.
That means they bothered to install an across the line interference capacitor (great!) but no shock prevention bleeder resistor, which is not great, but that probably won't kill anyone.
Id suspect a faulty model.
Never had that kind of issue but then again it has been a while using this brand
Apple laptop chargers have done that for the past 12 years. Cheap ass bastards
Never had this issue with my realme charger; 65W charger right? 10V 6.5A?
Almost at 1 million subs! Well done.
I bought several ikea chargers thanks to your videos!
Maybe you could also tear down the IKEA ÅSKSTORM charger. It has the same form factor as their other 3 port charger but instead has 1 USB A and one USB C PD3 port. Could be interesting to compare them.
I also got Ikeas new Power Bank, might be interesting to tear that down as well and see if the quality is as good as with their chargers.
Åskstorm has in fact 2 USB A and one USB C Ports. But I agree, that it would be nice to see a test!
@@victorandersson9737 there are 2 different askstorm chargers. The 40w is much larger and has 2 usb a ports, the 23w only one
@@LotosHans Yes, checked there Web and you are right! The version I bought have 3, but there is a smaller version wit 2!
Plot twist the tester and load simulator is also fake :P
And the icing on the cake is that that thing doesn't have a *real* ground, sorry, earth. Hope you discharged the capacitors. Even those small ones pack a punch. 🐻
Class 2 double insulated adapter, doesn't need to be earthed/grounded.
I know you like to take apart crap you find on ebay and the like. But I would love to donate for a teardown of brands like "anker" or "ugreen" etc to see what is under the hood and how they stack up.
Always a good day when the Vice-of-Knowledge comes out to play!
26 grams additional mass makes the end user feel the quality. Great video.
Also, official chargers would usually come in a sale hanging box package, even if you order it online. Usually, through the Amazon website from the Samsung storefront there.
It's not that simple. Aside from retail packaged product, they have had chargers to bundle with products and will have excess stock once the warranty is over for a generation of product. The question is then what happens to that stock. I'd bought white box major brand products several times over the years, as well as samsung phones that had chargers just in a little plastic baggie.
I wish there was a way to test and evaluate my chargers without breaking them open
Fraud in a smart looking suit.
Uses Murphy's hammer to unscrew the case. Classic!
I used to have a handheld game player ( PSP!/MP5! 10,000 games! ) that was basically a Nintendo-onna-chip with a few support ICs to give FM radio, MP3 playback and ( limited ) video playback.
It was surprisingly good for NES/SNES/GB/GBC/GBA emulation. The radio worked, with headphones, and MP3 playback was acceptable. Good battery life too. The screen was clear and bright.
One day though, it failed to charge. 'Spicy pillow' was my first thought. Sure enough, the battery needed either Benadryl or Viking funeral. It got the latter. Nestled between the battery and back panel was a strip of heft adding steel. It didn't need it. It was a good product at a keen price. I mackled a BL-5C clone battery in and got another years use from it before mislaying it somewhere.
That strip of steel made me chuckle at the time. That it's still being done a decade or so later?, not quite so funny.
Bypass the cutout control and load it until the magic pixies escape.
An Amazon special. Have tried to purchase these chargers multiple times from amazon and received at least 3 of these.
"6606" is most likely FP6606 USB PD controller or similar.
A clasic example of cheap or not so cheap fakes from China.
The clue is in the multiple outputs, any genuine Samsung chargers that i have seen only have one Type C socket.
I have a transformer in an old stereo box that makes the damn thing so heavy it puts a microwave to shame.
I have seen weights in many cheap knock off electronics. The idea is to make it feel like the authentic brand. Its a crooked method but not a new practice. I remember buying a cheap Getto Blaster once that contained weights hot glued into it. That was back in the 80's. My guess is the chips you couldnt identify are also knock offs.
Ok bro, you dont mock our good universal American "accent" ... "is it gonna come ooffff?"... and i wont keep impersonating SeanconneryCliveGerardbutlerEwanMacGregor saying im Irish.... hah!
i fell asleep to this knowledgeable video cause the voice is too soothing..
Do you notify ebay of the dangerous deception or would that be a wasted effort?
Very nice fake reveal clip. Watching this an ideea come to my mind so I decide to ask you here.
Those days I was looking into some 2 TB (even 16 TB) ssd memory stick from Aliexpress labeled as a Kingston/Samsung etc wich cost somewhere like 2 to 10 dollars something like this, some ridiculous cheap amount of money.
So maybe you can have a look and crack down another fake brand labeled video in the near future. 😊
The vice of knowledge is back at last
Yep. The Ikea usb wall warts are my gold standard at the moment too 🖖
It's suddenly struck me as an odd omission from our 'strict' electrical regulations. We cannot have an appliance connected by plug that does not have a suitable rated fuse in it to protect the cable but we can have an appliance plugged directly into a wall socket with no fuse protection other than the main circuit fuse.
Maybe those who constantly work to invent new ways to frustrate us 'illegal' electricians and invent ever more ways to protect wiring, from events it does not necessarily need to be protected from, should address the matter of fusing of directly plugged in devices (and I include those USB chargers installed in wall plates).
Properly designed wall warts do use a fuse or fusible resistor...
@@Broken_Yugo Properly designed - yes but few (around my house at least) seem to be.
The first electrical component BC identified in this brick was a combined fuse and inrush limiter .
My observation was about the general absence of user replaceable fuses in these types of components.
@@barrieshepherd7694 Why care about that? I have never once in my life seen a blown fuse in a piece of mains powered consumer electronics that was actually the issue, always shorted parts in the power supply or some other serious fault that junks it anyway.
Sometimes it is worth paying the full RRP for something at the phone carrier's store...
6606ACA is FP6606ACA, a USB-PD controller. FP6606AC into google will bring up the datasheet, the 'A' suffix signifies 18W.
Haven't seen the vice of knowledge in a while, glad to see it is OK.
I wish I could understand all this. I still like these things, thougb.
It's as if they tried to fake it being a GaN power adapter, that weighs a lot more than traditional chargers.
Why would more efficient semiconducters with less waste heat be heavier?
@@johndododoe1411 Everyone knows weight = quality.
@@johndododoe1411 it's not the semiconductors themselves, but rather the fact that everything is more denstly packed and requires extra thermal dissipation (heatsinks) inside the GaN chargers which makes then heavier. Go have a look at a teardown of a 100 W GaN charger and compare it to a teardown of a traditional charger and you'll understand. You might save a third of the size, but none of the weight. As this is fake GaN charger, they added the metal lump to increase the weight to make it feel the same as a 65 W GaN charger.
Funny how Clive exposing another Chinese eBay's scam gets only comments discussing the electrical circuitry. Geeks!
Could it not magnetically couple the field of both transformers? Be interesting to see a power output test with and without said weight
They would have to be directly connected and not with something between the weight and the transformer.
I'd suspect it to be thermally important thought
Transformer cores wrap around and provide a full flux path, so I doubt that much would go through the weight. Plus any flux leaking at the high switching frequencies might just heat the iron.
@@NinoJoel So it's a heatsink then?, a valid addition to its functionality ?, a purposeful design feature ?, not a lump of steel inserted to fool the buyer at all ??.🤔
@@brucepickess8097 id say it is for cooling.
If it was just for weight they would not have bothered to put the sadly not attached tape there
i understood maybe 1% of that, yet watched the whole video.
Pretty sure the metal it's just to add weight to make it feel more premium or to weigh as much as a similar product
That reminds me, I have some unbranded. USB chargers that I bought from Amazon some years ago. They worked perfectly for several years but were then subject to a product recall by Amazon due to the risk of electric shock. I was refunded in full but never had to return them. I keep meaning to send them to you for analysis, but I never got around to it! The only point of this comment is to fix it in my mind again.
Great video by the way.
Smash them and throw them away, ensures nobody else will use them.
@@SashazurWhat? Why do that when we could get free content from them here?
To be fair, the rated 15W may have been at QC-voltages, like 12V. You'd need a load tester that is capable of testing QC specifically.
However, the fact that USB-C load wasn't tested, probably means it was just as crap.
The chunk of steel how you know you're getting what you paid for. The cheap stuff doesn't include _any_ bonus steel, and anyone being worse about it would've probably given you lead instead.
SDC 5091, 20 Watt Switching Power Supply controller with intergrated power switch. Similar to TNY 2xx series, different pinout, IC for fast chargers. 65 W is from space, paper can accept everything.
I've learned its best to buy memory cards, gaming controllers, and charging bricks all directly from reputable distributors. Never from ebay.
Steel cheaper than concrete?
Might be time to upgrade your USB load to one that can demand higher voltages.
Actual metal dummy weight is how you know it's quality chinesium. The cheap ones would be packed with contaminated soil or compacted waste.