I purchased one of these recently from eBay at a cost of £45 and from what I can see it was shipped from China, although seller states UK as location.
Upon receiving it, I was quite excited at the thought of being able to charge all 3 batteries, remote controller and my iPad mini 4 all at once with this device. I had 2 batteries and the remote that needed charging, 3rd battery was still on full charge. Once I connected it all up and switched it on, it looked like everything was fine until about 5-8 mins into charging, it just blew with smoke and burning smell coming from the unit. I’m not sure if I was just unlucky or these things are generally unsafe. Has anyone else purchased one and how did yours go?
For my 2 pence worth. Generally the cheaper Chinese electricals tend to be inherently dangerous. All European electricals carry the CE mark (European conformity). They have been very stringently tested and are safe to be used, and thus ok (and legal) to be sold to all members of the European community. Any item not carrying the CE mark has not passed the safety tests and your life or property is at risk. (Remember the hundreds of Chinese imported battery powered wheelie boards that were reported in papers going up in flames after Xmas, not such a bargain after all?) Just one of the headaches of Brexit will be that anything electrical that we manufacture in this country will not be able to carry the CE mark and thus not be able to sell to any country in the EU. It’ll be open season for shoddy goods to be sold in this country, I hope everyone’s insurance is up to date, or the smoke alarm is working (CE approved of course)
There’s actually not any testing needed for CE marking. The manufacturer just needs to declare that the product conforms to regulations.
We should still be able to use the CE mark if our products conform to the regulations, just like American, Korean or even chinese companies do at the moment.
The charger does show the CE and ROHS mark but whether it actually complies is another story.
I had seen this charger but held off for some reviews. Not a good start.
Bring back.BEAB … even though they were a PITA to deal with.
It looks fundamentally like one that was (is?) available for the MP, that had internal wiring and lack of earthing that even scared Americans on Mavic Pilots.
I purchased the one for the Mavic Pro, so far I have had no problems with it.
I did modify it to include an Earth point near the mains connector, took me about 15 minutes to do.
I would recommend anyone buying from China to check it has been earthed.
I have the one for the MP and have had no issues with it, from memory it was only around £25 and arrived within two to three days, I’m guessing it must have been UK based.
I also have a black one for the P4 series and when I first received that I checked for the earth and there wasn’t one, easy fix and never had an issue with that one hence why I bought the one for the MP.
The first thing I did when it arrived was to check for an earth and it was already done.
Mine are both branded YX but look identical otherwise.
At work we affectionately call all Chinese chargers ‘fire starters’, the build quality differs massively between the ‘genuine’ Apple (for example) stuff and the many many others that are offered everywhere else, even on usually trusted sites like Amazon even though they all originate in China.
It really does make you sit back and think when you see what a dodgy charger block/cable can do to a student bedroom in only a couple of minutes ;o(
It was the P4 one I earthed and that was over a year ago so without taking it apart I can’t remember where sorry, I think I found a video on YouTube through a forum.
I’ll have a look to see if I can find anything.
hi Njoro
I would not expect an earth to be on a Pcb board as it would not pose any requirement for protection only if it had old style wound transformer case
Earth should be connected to the metal cover to protect you from shorts with in the enclosure.
