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Comment by dnpp123 | Hacker News Reader

Same here. Those killed a couple of my (expensive) devices. Strongly advise against it.

Chargers, cables, batteries - you literally get what you pay for. In this category, the ultimate risk is nothing less than burning down whole house. I ain't rich enough for that cheap crapware. Anker it is for me.

Isn't Anker the definition of cheap crapware (sold under a brand name)?

They are not that cheap, and most stuff I've seen from them works as advertised.

This is news to me and doesn't confirm my own experience. Ie their pretty basic 65W wall charger is much better than 65W usb-c chargers from both HP and Dell they give to their laptops - much smaller and doesn't heat up at all with full day work from it, plastics are really solid so whole device just oozes quality, compared to properly cheap stuff from say aliexpress claiming the same.

Their 20,000 mah battery charger works exactly as advertised, has exactly the charge we expect, keeps working few years after purchase just as new.

So, to end suspense - what are actually high end manufacturer(s) in this area? I don't mean gucci-style appearance or some useless branding inflating the price, I mean actual internals.

I don’t closely follow the space, but Anker has always seemed like reasonable quality at a reasonable price. Maybe I’m easily marketed to or something. But I’ve had quite a few adapters and cables and such from them and have never had an issue.

Anker replaced a tablet computer that a defective USB cable fried.

I now love and trust Anker.

How did you prove to them their USB cable fried your computer? Did they ask for the devices for investigation?

I recorded a cell phone vide where I used a USB cable tester to show their cable was wired 1-8, 2-7, 3-6, 4-5, 5-4, 6-3, 7-2, 8-1 instead of straight-through. I also showed another cable testing correctly.

I showed that when the SmartQ q7 tablet computer was plugged into my PC's USB port using the cable my PC threw a warning about excess power drain, but when another cable was used, it did not throw an error. I proved that by recording a cell phone video.

I might have also used a USB power meter but I do not remember.

Here is more on the ancient tablet: https://www.engadget.com/2009-05-27-smart-q7-reviewed-deemed...

Where did you purchase it?

Fry's Electronics (this was long before they shut down)

Alternatively that means they sell cheap chinese crap at such a markup that they can easily afford to just replace the ones that break. Basically customer QA

Just wondering, do you know of a better alternative? I've pretty much only bought Anker recently because they haven't failed me yet. Trying to determine what is quality online now is very difficult.

For cables, I usually go for TrippLite. I have some Anker power banks and chargers and they work well, but a few cables from them just stopped working after a while.

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