Hacker News Reader

Comment by ethbro | Hacker News Reader

This is why Anker is successful imho. Not because they offer a better battery / charger / cable. But because they free users from having the think about it.

Most people don't want to have to think about USB power delivery handshakes and resistors. And they don't want to research what they need to look for in a USB 3.0 cable vs that USB 2.0 cable they bought years ago.

Anker seems to be technologically on the ball, but above and beyond that it's a "we promise not to @$^# up the accessory we sell to you" guarantee. Which the Chinese fly-by-nights seem incapable of grasping.

View on HN

In other words, they've cultivated a brand of trust through their product lineup (what they offer vs what they don't offer), product design, and packaging design.

I have their 6-port USB charger in the mudroom of the house. We plug in our phones, tablets and bike lights upon entry. Excellent performance, and yes, I never have to think about it. It just works (at US and Euro line voltage).

I did find the packaging a bit ostentatious for a USB charger. A plain corrugated cardboard box would have been more appropriate for mail-order, though I can see why they might want to "steve-job" the packaging for retail.

What's a mudroom?

> Many suburban American houses have a mud room, a casual, generally secondary entryway intended as an area to remove and store footwear, outerwear, and wet clothing before entering the main house. As well as providing storage space, a mud room serves to increase the cleanliness of a house proper.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entryway

A foyer for the back door. Usually you'll have a tile floor and rougher walls.

You do messy stuff there, like take off your winter boots, or leave your bike.

A (usually back) foyer where you take off/store your muddy shoes.

(It's common in farm houses where it's typical to be out in the muddy fields. Most of America by geographical land area is farm land.)

> Most of America by geographical land area is farm land.

No, total agricultural land is less than 1 billion of a total of 2.3 billion acres.

That's certainly why I do it.

Getting Anker products is so much easier and quicker than the old way of trawling through pagefuls of cables trying to find those that appeared spec compliant (thanks, Benson!), reasonable quality, and don't try any scams like "Fully USB 3.1 compatible" thanks to USB 2.0 fallback.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com