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Comment by delta_p_delta_x | Hacker News Reader

This is genuinely the best plug ever and no one can convince me otherwise.

I've toured continental Europe (France, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Italy), the US, India, and ANZ, and all of their plugs are downgrades in comparison to the icon of engineering that is Type G/BS1363. The former somehow all tend to end up with loose contact, wiggling and sparking, degraded power/current, or a cable that sticks out perpendicular to the wall, or some other annoyance. People argue for the Schuko but it is as large as, if not larger than BS1363 plugs. The earthing setup is odd.

The BS1363 is so massive that it shrugs off power loads of multiple kilowatts—British kettles and toaster ovens run at up to 3 kW or more. One could possibly even charge their EV with BS1363 without needing any automotive cable standard[1].

The BS1363 has a satisfying 'thonk' that no other plug has. It feels like you're powering up some futuristic space craft, not your vacuum cleaner.

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/ElectricVehiclesUK/comments/1gta12f...

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It is genuinely the worst IMHO:

1. Too large and heavy to carry around.

2. Requires grounding (third pin), even when devices don't need it. Other standards let devices decide.

3. Doesn't allow the cord to go straight out of the plug, it always go sideways which makes it even clunkier, harder to plug (e.g. behind a nightstand at a hotel), and more prone to cord damage from bending.

CEE 7/3 and CEE 7/5 (known as "French" and "German") are way better IMHO. I doubt they have problems with "wiggling and sparking" -- that wouldn't pass certification. And it's easy to make a plug to fit both of them, with or without grounding. CEE 7/5 can even be plugged upside down.

1. There is little size difference between your choices and BS1363 plugs/sockets. They are large, I concede, but that is in pursuit of the many safety features of the plug.

2. Better have it than not. Plus, it makes for a single uniform plug design and specification that is straightforwardly adhered to.

3. IMO this is a good thing as it allows furniture to be set up considerably closer to the walls.

Funny you mention hotels, because I was in one in France not two weeks ago and it had the worst sockets I've ever seen. My phones took forever to charge, half the sockets didn't even seem to have power, and they all had this unintuitive setup where there was a spring loaded panel in the socket that needed to be twisted to get the plug in.

Now, I've seen some odd BS1363 setups, but never one this strange.

That unintuitive setup is a common child safety measure. It's not part of the socket design, the construction is usually an inlay.

1. Are we talking about the same plugs? Europlugs are significantly smaller and fit into both [1]. Grounded is larger but still way smaller than BS1363.

2. No, there's simply no point in having it for devices that don't need it.

3. My point is Europlugs give you choice, there are plugs that bend and ones that are not, your choice. BS1363 is always bent.

> My phones took forever to charge

Dude, that's not how chargers work. They either charge at full power your charger can, or do not charge at all. Well, unless your charger can supply 2000+ W to your phones, but I've yet to see a phone capable of more that 37 W. Which means one plug can charge _at least_ 50 phones at the same time, maybe even 100. Any plug is _way_ more powerful than USB can deliver.

[1] https://www.plugsocketmuseum.nl/Europlug1.html

On 2/ there is a safety point in having the grounding pin on all plugs, and it being longer than the live/neutral: in the socket side, the grounding pin opens up latches that block live/neutral, so kids can’t stick things into them..

I generally would agree it is the best plug standard for safety, but clunky and painful to step on..

> Funny you mention hotels, because I was in one in France not two weeks ago and it had the worst sockets I've ever seen.

My worst experience was in a hotel in the US, with the weight of my adapter and plug they just fell out of the socket. Luckily, for once Jesus saved me; the ubiquitous bible in the nightstand drawer was just the right size to prop up the adapter and I was able to charge my laptop!

Never had a problem with Schuko plugs falling out by themselves, FWIW, if anything the springs are often so tight you need two hands to pull it out so you don't wiggle the socket.

> there was a spring loaded panel in the socket that needed to be twisted to get the plug in.

Sounds like dust protection and/or "Kindersicherung"(Child safety/protection)

One can get them as an add on, to retrofit 'Schukos'.

i really like Min-Kue Cho’s folding plug

https://www.dezeen.com/2012/02/20/folding-plug-by-min-kyu-ch...

Agreed. If anything it's an icon of overengineering. The main advantage imo is that you dont need to worry about a kid sticking a fork into the wall socket. I grew up with it so i never really thought it strange that the plugs are 2 or 3 times bigger then necessary. It's an event every time you connect to the National Grid as the plug slots into the wall with a satisfying clunk, so there's that i guess.

You forgot to add that when the fuse does go it can melt the plug and sometimes the wall socket.

Really? I haven't lived in UK so long to see it, but isn't the whole purpose of a fuse to prevent fires.

If you run 13 amps through a cheap plug it will get very hot.

It can happen if a high power device is used continually. This is against the regulations, but sometimes people do things like connect a 3kW weather heater with a 13A plug, or connect several devices adding up to that power through a power strip.

I've only seen this happen when the plug was fitted badly (pinched or damaged wires inside the plug) or someone use a nail in place of the fuse. People do stupid things like that all the time but it's not the fault of the standard, a fuse should blow if it's run over-current for too long.

Nobody else uses fuses.If someone does overload their circuit you have a fusebox for that exact reason.

It can when you overload a socket, which i have done accidentally. And it just melts the socket it doesn't set it on fire.

My only issue with the plug is 3. sort of. I prefer the cable being perpendicular to the plug (prevents accidental removal), but I wish there was a standard dictating which way it should leave relative to the earth pin. Drives me mad when plugging in items to an extension lead and they all come off in different directions.

You're completely right. People love the British plug because it has lots of features but they're mostly obsolete features or required by the equally obsolete ring wiring. So in the end, it's just a pile of useless inconveniences. Don't Britons have RCDs?

Ironically the older BS546† had smaller plugs for lower powered appliances. But each different size of plug needed a different socket, because the fuse was in the socket. This system is still used in India, but I'm not sure how widespread it is.

† https://www.plugsocketmuseum.nl/OldBritish1.html

BS546 is very uncommon now, but can still be found in some relatively modern british homes and businesses where the sockets are used to "code" for connected appliances. For example, the 5A socket may be wired up to a switched lighting circuit to connect lamps but prevent connecting higher power appliances. I've also seen the 15A sockets being placed in communal areas of flats to provide cleaning and maintenance staff power while discouraging tenants from using them.

If a device doesn't require grounding the third pin is often just made of plastic so it opens the shutters.

4. Hurts when you step on it.

Understatement of the century. It legitimately makes stepping on legos seem like a spa day.

There are newer design with foldable pins. Other than size I dont see anything you mentioned as downsides. Especially Earth Pin.

As a North American, I'm very jealous of the BS1363. I know some people don't like the mandatory ground pin, but it actually serves a really handy purpose. Because the shutter is engaged by the slightly longer ground pin, the shutter just works with minimal resistance.

In the US and Canada, the electrical codes now require tamper resistant receptacles in most residential settings, to stop children from poking metal objects into them. Because the ground pin is optional on plugs that connect to the standard NEMA 5-15R receptacle, you can't use the ground pin as a keying feature like you can with the BS1363. Instead, there is a mechanism that is supposed to only allow a plug to be inserted when both hot and neutral pins are present. It is probably the worst thing ever designed. Sometimes it works fine, a bit of extra pressure and the plug goes right in. But most of the time, it stubbornly binds up and you're left trying to fiddle with the plug to find the perfect combination of pressure and angle that allows the shutter to open. It can be horrendously frustrating.

I found that there's a surprising difference in quality for what feels like it should be a commodity item. All the outlets in my newish build were tamper-resistant, and pretty much as you described -- at best they were unpleasantly stiff and awkward to use, and some specific outlets would require a worrying amount of force and wiggling to plug anything in.

After a couple of high-usage outlets got jammed to the point that nothing could be plugged in, I replaced them with ones from the hardware store, and they are a big improvement. The existing outlets are unbranded, and I guess were from a bulk box of the cheapest that the electrician could source.

In my experience, Leviton are OK (much better than what was originally fitted), but Eaton are great -- they require slightly more force than non-TR outlets, but they're consistent, reliable, and I've never had to try more than once to plug anything in.

Good to hear about the Eaton receptacles - next time I need to replace a few around the house I'll give those a shot.

> the shutter just works with minimal resistance

11 years living in the UK. I don't think even once I thought of it as _minimal resistance_. At best it requires a firm push. At worst, a couple of hammerings with the side of the fist.

Note that I don't mind the ground pin or having things grounded by default. Even if it wasn't more or less essential due to the mind blowing lack of safety of the ring circuit, it's still a nice and cheap enough extra bit of protection.

I live in UK so biased, but yeah, I mostly love British plugs and sockets.

They do take up too much space, and are painful to stand on if you leave one unplugged.

But they are still just really satisfying. Plugs just don't fall out of sockets. They are solid and feel reliable. The safety feature of the longer pin opening the socket for the live wires is good. Always found EU and US style plugs and sockets to be worryingly flimsy and the plugs sometimes dangle a bit out of the socket.

It also has a fuse in it that is completely useless in almost all world except UK. So no thanks, you can keep it. We prefer not to burn our houses down.

A fuse? The plug accepts fuses rated from 1A to 13A. It can be tailored to the requirements of the appliance

Can you explain how an added safety feature of a fuse increases the risk of a house burning down?

That "added safety feature" is only because of ring circuits, which are a cute hack sure, but not only have real fun failure modes, they make it impossible to use correctly rated MCBs. Your breaker won't trip unless you exceed total ring capacity.

Everything I am reading says the fuse is there to protect the device, or more specifically the cable between the plug and the device.

https://www.workshopshed.com/2024/09/why-do-we-have-fuses-in...

> So this is why there is a need for a fuse, it is there to protect the cable running between the plug and the appliance. The alternative would be to have 32A tolerant cables on every device.

> they make it impossible to use correctly rated MCBs.

It looks like UK is 32A standard but US us 20 or 15A - is that a significant enough difference that the US is safer? 15/20A is still chunky.

The US is 15/20 at 120v.

UK is 32A @ 220v. A massive difference in wattage.

If anything that argues in the other direction since an equivalent US appliance at the same wattage will draw almost twice the current as a UK one. If we’re talking about the risk of overheating then current is the big factor.

In the UK we can put a fuse of e.g. 3A in the plug of a device that is suited for the devices expected draw, but if I understand correctly this could be 15A for the same device in the US?

It would need to be a 6A fuse in the US. Watts = Amps * Volts, or Watts / Volts == amps.

US (and really, everywhere except the UK/Singapore/Malaysia, and I think HK) doesn’t use plug fuses, preferring circuit level protection, because they typically have non-insane circuit power levels.

It does result in more branch circuit wiring (albeit thinner gauge) and breakers though, and saving on copper post WW2 was the primary motivation for UK style ring circuits anyway.

Many houses in the US were 50A/120V (for the whole panel/house!) until the 60’s, because that was a lot of power - 6kw. It wasn’t until electric appliances that it started to change, and the modern 200A split phase panels (typically 22/44kw)didn’t start to become the norm until whole house HVAC became normal. Think 80’s/90’s. A lot of houses still don’t have modern panels.

A single UK ring circuit at 32A@220v is 7kw, or more than enough to run a very beefy welder, and more than a whole house service in the US at the time.

A breaker on each of those ring circuits is essentially a ‘whole house breaker’, and would not trip on a whole host of ‘everything is melting’ situations.

So you need per-appliance fuses to protect the wiring for appliances and not burn the place down, or run 6 gauge wire everywhere in your appliances too, which would remove any cost savings in material.

> It would need to be a 6A fuse in the US. Watts = Amps * Volts, or Watts / Volts == amps.

My point was that the (up to) 3A UK device gets 3A fuse in the plug in the UK. In the US that device becomes a 6A device but (essentially) gets a 15A fuse in the breaker box, is that the case? Because that seems worse.

A fault in the device blows the plug fuse in the UK. The same fault needs to trip the 15A one in the US.

> A breaker on each of those ring circuits is essentially a ‘whole house breaker’, and would not trip on a whole host of ‘everything is melting’ situations.

I don’t know what this means. It will trip for currents greater than its rating. Nothing should be melting under its rating.

The rating on a UK ring circuit breaker is so high that you can literally melt significant quantities of steel without tripping the breaker, and certainly can turn typical appliance wiring incandescent, also without tripping the breaker.

The rule for electrical systems is that any downstream wiring/circuit that would catch on fire in the event of a fault, needs to have a breaker in the circuit before that point, that will interrupt the circuit before the point it would catch on fire.

In the US, every device is just constructed to be safe up to 15/20amps, which uses a bit more copper but is not really a major problem.

But the current is so much higher in the UK, and that is why the fuses on the plugs, because without the fuses providing a lower cut-off point, at a minimum the wires to a typical lamp or whatever, at least to the point it has a fuse or circuit breaker, would need to safely be able to carry the full 32A/220v load without catching on fire.

Which is a very thick cable. And quite a bit more expensive than the tiny bit of extra copper needed to get to 15/20A from 6A.

Does that make sense? The UK plugs essentially distribute the job of overcurrent protection to every single devices plug, where everywhere else it is more centralized at the (lower capacity) circuit level.

As to if this is better or worse is more a matter of opinion and specific local economics that have changed over time than a resolvable ‘fact’.

It all makes sense in that it confirms the crazy thing I couldn’t believe was true at the beginning - US appliances have the ability to sink a ton more current than they would ever need under normal operation, which seems like a safety issue. Would you want your electric toothbrush charger sinking 15A in some fault condition?

A UK device blows its own fuse under these circumstances. The wasted copper in every US appliance cord is just insult to injury.

> The rating on a UK ring circuit breaker is so high that you can literally melt significant quantities of steel without tripping the breaker

That’s fine, as long as everything is rated to that draw and doesn’t melt. If the wires couldn’t handle it then the breaker would be rated lower.

> certainly can turn typical appliance wiring incandescent, also without tripping the breaker.

And that’s where the fuse “shines”!

Seems like the UK method uses less copper and gives finer control in over current scenarios. I don’t see any benefits of the US style.

The US style also has much smaller and cheaper plugs, and the cords are all basically the same size anyway. I don’t recall any UK appliances being notably less bulky or anything either (though when running 220v, you can have electric kettles which aren’t lame, which is nice).

Notably, pretty much everywhere else in the world also uses similar branch circuit type designs and 220v and their plugs and appliances are also not notably more bulky either.

The difference in wire diameter between say 6amps and 15 amps isn’t that noticeable. 15 and 30 is.

Yeah mate, lost count the of number of times I've burnt my house down using these plugs over the past 30 odd years.

> The BS1363 is so massive that it shrugs off power loads of multiple kilowatts

They do have a higher current rating than the French and German standards (30A vs. 16A) but even those do support up to 4 kW. Ovens also run at 3 kW or so in France and Germany.

You usually do not plug an oven into a standard 230V socket in Germany. They are connected to 3 phase outlets with 400V and up to 16A, which is nothing to sneeze at.

Isn't this the common thing in (most of?) Europe? At least here up north it seems to be the standard.

3 phase for ovens? That seems totally overkill to me.

In France even though they're not usually plugged into a standard socket, all the ovens I've used ran on standard single phase current. Houses are almost never wired for 3 phase anyway.

Parent was talking about toaster ovens though, and those are (as far as I know) always plugged to normal sockets.

Ovens in the UK are usually wired in. Plugs go up to 13A, suitable only for small (e.g. tabletop) ovens.

I think Swiss plugs (type C) might be better. They have a pretty good thonk.

I think your complaint with them is that they stick out perpendicularly from the wall but IMO this is a good tradeoff.

It means you can fit more plugs in the same wall space, so Swiss wall sockets typically come in groups of 3 instead of 2, and extension strips can fit many plugs without being very large.

Conversely if you need the cable to lie close to the wall you can get hinge adapters to make this work, they are convenient and reliable.

Since I lived in Switzerland I have not had a fuse blow, I don't know how that works. Having the fuses in a standard place in the British plugs is very nice.

Having lived in both countries for a while, I find the Swiss plugs nowhere near as satisfying, and the flat (non-recessed) wall outlets are also prone to plugs becoming loosened due to weight, similar to the US/CAN/JP plug.

I do quite like the compactness and aesthetic of the three-prong plug with three plugs in a typical wall fixture, and the compatibility with the two-prong Europlug is convenient. However, using even one adapter with a foreign plug often obstructs the other two plugs in a three-plug fixture, particularly as the adapter usually isn’t reversible if grounded, which is quite annoying if that’s the only socket in a room.

I guess the UK plug being large enough to subsume most foreign plug adapters is one silver lining of its size.

It could be a little smaller, but compared to the USA plug and socket it's pure perfection.

USA plugs have prongs that are so thin they bend. The prongs act as a hinge that lets the plug pivot away from the wall to expose the live prongs! And most USA sockets don't have ground on top to block anything resting over those exposed live prongs.

> British kettles and toaster ovens run at up to 3 kW or more

Not "or more" if it's using a BS1363. The absolute max at 230V with a 13 amp fuse is 3kW. The Schuko spec actually goes a bit higher (16amps) though in practice appliances >3kW are rare.

Surprised you've been to ANZ and didn't find their sockets best. Breakdown of things Type-I has:

1. small form factor – BS1363/EU no, US yes

2. grounding not required – BS1363 no, EU/US yes

3. good contact / not much wiggle (in type-I due to angling) – BS1363 yes, US/EU no

4. cable can either be parallel or perpendicular to the wall. You claim this is a failing but having options is good. Having a cable perpendicular to the wall is never an option with BS1363 and not having options is clearly worse (like with grounding) – BS1363/EU no, US yes

5. no risk of plugging in upside down – EU/BS1363 yes (BS because of required grounding), US no (need one pin to be larger which is error prone)

6. wall/female side can be flush – US/BS1363 yes, EU no

There is literally no downside to ANZ plugs imo. You say having required grounding is good but eh, many things don't need it. Even if we do think grounding is necessary, then the best option would still be type-I (because it is smaller then BS1363 and has the parallel/perpendicular options).

Schuko is terrible because needing a cavity in the wall in order to have good contact is a poor design and makes the plugs larger than necessary and I think that is the most important requirement.

The ANZ plug is pretty good but when China adopted it they found a way to improve it - they put it upside down so the ground is at the top for slightly improved safety.

And ANZ tap-on plugs

ANZ plug prongs are SO easy to bend: it's much thinner metal than UK plugs.

That feature where less powerful plugs can be inserted into higher rated sockets but not vice versa is very cool.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AS/NZS_3112

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