On Fri, 24 Aug 2012 04:29:01 -0700 (PDT), Richard Russell wrote:

On Aug 23, 11:07*pm, The Other Mike
wrote:
The chargers on Braun toothbrushes (ours is the 2000 model) are
rated at one and a bit VA.

Our Braun Oral-B charger is labelled as 1.2 Watts (*not* VA), and of
course as far as the shaver socket is concerned it's current
consumption that matters rather than power. Nevertheless I've never
had a problem with leaving a toothbrush on charge 'continuously'.

The same cannot be said for all appliances. We tried using a Philips
LED nightlight in a bathroom shaver socket; the quoted power
consumption was well below the transformer rating, but it used a
simple 'capacitor dropper' technique and the power factor was
terrible. The transformer rapidly overheated and shut down
(fortunately it was an auto-resetting thermal cutout).

But I would hope that a toothbrush charger, designed for use in a
bathroom, would have a more sensible power factor (quoting the VA
rating on the product would be helpful however).

Richard.
http://www.rtrussell.co.uk/

On my Braun's charger, which gets almost imperceptibly warm in a 13A socket
even in Summer, the plug-in meter gave no reading on W or VA (no mantissa).
--
Peter.
The gods will stay away
whilst religions hold sway