In article , Bruce Sinclair
wrote:

You just need to know that you bought a cheap,
off-brand charger that was made in a country that is infamous for
producing shoddy and dangerous electrical devices

Try to find almost any USB charger that isn't made in China.
Even Apple chargers are, I think, made in China.
And that's as name brand as you get.

the issue not where it's made, but that it was an *off-brand* charger.

name brand chargers, and not just apple, are made to certain quality
standards.

Um ... what data do you have to back up that assertion (which seems
completely
wrong IME ). Chargers that come with apparently "quality" kit seem to crap
out about as often as the non brand ones from what I've seen.

Beware particularly the "switchable voltage" supplies ... where it is
possible
to select 2 voltages at the same time (not good for the plug pack I can
assure
you ).

open them up and look. the noname **** is usually garbage.

http://www.righto.com/2014/05/a-look-inside-ipad-chargers-pricey.html
Safety probably isn't something you think about when you plug in your
charger, but it's important. Inside the charger is 170 volts or more
with very little separating it from your iPad and you. If something
goes wrong, the charger can burn up (below), injure you, or even
kill you. Devices such as chargers have strict safety standards[14] -
if you get a charger from a reputable manufacturer. If you buy a
cheap counterfeit charger, these safety standards are ignored. You
can't see the safety risks from the outside, but by taking the
chargers apart, I can show you the dangers of the counterfeit.

in the chargers, he finds that the apple charger has a 5.6mm gap
between high and low voltage sections but only a 0.6mm gap in the
noname charger, which is so little that he considers it unsafe.

the transformer wires on the apple charger are triple insulated, while
on the noname charger, they're uninsulated except for a varnish.

and that's not the only problem. the output is crap:

Lab measurements of the output from the chargers shows a couple
problems with the counterfeit. First, the counterfeit turns out to
provide at most 5.9W, not 10W. Second, the output voltage is
extremely noisy and full of spikes.

noname chargers are not safe to the point where apple even offers a
discount on a genuine charger to replace the ****ty ones.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...e-Cheap-phone-
chargers-burn-house.html
ŒThere are plenty of reputable companies that make accessories for
Apple products, and as long as you go with one of them, you should be
fine,¹ says David Price, online editor at macworld.co.uk.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/cheap-iphone-charger-burns-man/
Charging your phone is a safe activity, but even plugging a device
into a wall carries some risk. A Chinese woman reportedly died when
she*answered a call on her iPhone 5 while it was charging and an iPad
giving a man such a strong shock that it*sent him flying across the
room. There have been enough high-profile incidents around iOS
devices that Apple stepped in to provide discounts for its official
ones. Even so, that didn¹t stop Tim Tyrrell from getting a knock-off
charger for his iPhone 5 and suffering the consequences.

Tyrrell didn¹t want to spend the $25 * $30 that chargers from Apple
usually cost, so he opted for a $10 combo from eBay that included two
wall chargers and a car charger. Unfortunately, one of the wall
chargers exploded, leaving Tyrrell with a nasty electrical burn.
³Basically, the charger turned black and, it¹s where the USB cord
connects to the outlet, had a mini explosion,² said Tyrrell. ³It kind
of bruised the fingers inside where I plugged it in.²

noname chargers don't care about quality. they care about how cheap
they can make it, so they end up cutting corners, which means they're
generally crap.

Chargers/power supplies are really simple things. Yes, manufacturers could
cheap out and use nasty capacitors (saving a few cents) ... and yes I'm sure
that happens. But why do you think this *doesn't* happen in the 'brand' or
expensive ones ? Paper work and quality resultsa can be faked (easily).

actually, they're not that simple anymore. most of them are much more
than a transformer and a voltage regulator.

nothing is perfect, but the chance of problems with a reputable name
brand charger is *much* less than with a noname charger because
reputable companies have *way* too much to lose if they ship garbage.

nobody will notice if a noname company goes away, and it will reappear
with a different name next month shipping the same crap.