USB: Com­ing Soon To An Out­let Near You

More and more de­vices these days are re­ly­ing on USB plugs for pow­er. Imag­ine if your smart­phone could sim­ply plug in­to the wall di­rect­ly, with­out a need for that ex­tra trans­former! All it would take is a slight change to your out­let to add USB plug-in ca­pa­bil­i­ty, which should be pret­ty sim­ple- so why aren’t these in ev­ery home or ho­tel yet?

Well, ex­pect them to spread... but per­haps not as quick­ly as you might think. We tried out the first UL list­ed op­tion, the New­erTech Pow­er2U USB Out­let, and found it to be a bit of a mixed bag. When it works, it’s nifty- but does re­quire some wiring and plan­ning and pos­si­bly more.

We popped open the pack­age and found an out­let where ev­ery­one charges their phones. Af­ter read­ing the in­struc­tions, we no­ticed this fine print: "Elec­tri­cal box­es typ­i­cal­ly range from 15 to 16 cu­bic inch­es. To de­ter­mine the size of the elec­tri­cal box you in­tend to in­stall a Pow­er2U in­to, turn off pow­er to out­let, re­move face­plate cov­er, and mea­sure height, width, and depth of the box. Mul­ti­ply­ing those mea­sure­ments to­geth­er will equal the cu­bic inch­es or vol­ume of the elec­tri­cal box. If you are un­sure of how to do these and/or can­not fol­low all safe­ty pre­cau­tions, you should con­sult an li­censed elec­tri­cian."

Sev­er­al of our box­es were 15 inch­es, though we did man­age to find one with 16 to spare. Then we re­al­ized that one of the box­es wasn’t re­al­ly deep enough. Af­ter some scur­ry­ing about, we did get it in­stalled... But we had some trou­ble with one of the USB ports not pro­vid­ing pow­er, un­til we jig­gled the con­nec­tion just so, and it seemed to work. Of course, DIY skills are great, but we def­i­nite­ly would cau­tion an av­er­age renter against at­tempt­ing to in­stall these at home. We could use the oth­er out­lets then, free­ing them up (for some things, like lamps, larg­er plugs may block ac­cess to the USB ports). And we were able to charge our iPad 1 and 2, iPhones, Black­ber­ry, and even GPS de­vices.

Note that the Pow­er2U on­ly comes in a bright white, which may not match your ex­ist­ing fix­tures. But for $30, it’s a nice way to ditch the wall warts and plug your smart­phones and oth­er de­vices di­rect­ly in­to the wall.

Greg May - Trulynet.com