Forget your charger on that long trip you just left for? Stop in at any gas station or corner drug store and you’ll be sure to find chargers for only a few dollars. But what makes them cheaper than the chargers or cables you find at Best Buy, Target or Walmart?
Which charger would you trust your expensive smartphone with?
1 – Surge Protection
Some wall adapters have surge protection built in. This helps prevent excessive amounts of electrical current from hitting your phone all at once causing it to fry. Many generic or gas station chargers lack this feature. They just have a USB on one side, and a wall plug on the other to get electricity from point A to B.
Charging your device with an approved and reliable charger can result in better battery life over a longer period of time.
2 – Smart Charging
Many chargers these days are built to fill up your battery in under an hour. A feature that many “name brand” chargers have is called Smart Charging or Adaptive Charging. This adjusts the voltage depending on the charging situation. Having a charger go full speed ahead when you are at 98% full doesn’t make sense. A smart charger is much like you changing the angle of a milk bottle while pouring it into a cup as it gets closer to the top of a glass. You wouldn’t keep the bottle at a nearly upside down angle. Much like that, Adaptive chargers taper the current back depending on the amount of battery charge needed.
3 – The Build Quality
Now we take build quality seriously on our phones themselves, but what about the chargers? Some lower quality chargers can be
very poorly put together. This can result in exposed electronics, or the charger getting excessively hot. This can permanently damage the charger, your wall socket and even YOUR PHONE!
Belkin’s MixitUP Lightning cables feature the MFi certification by Apple.
4 – Cable Certification
Cheap charging cables, generic no name ones especially can work unreliably, or break off inside the charging port of your super expensive device! You paid hundreds of dollars for your phone. Don’t skimp on something as important as charging it. It would be similar to buying an expensive high end Ferrari, and putting the cheapest generic tires on it. Most major manufacturers use the MFi(Made for i-Pad/Phone/Pod) certification for Apple devices. These chargers and cables have all gone through a validation process with Apple, and are licensed to be fully compliant within the lightning or 30-pin standard. Micro USB and USB C are universal and don’t require any certifications with any device manufacturer. However choosing cables from reputable manufacturers is strongly suggested. Due to the design of the connectors, lower quality cables can actually damage the contacts and pins inside.
In conclusion, you get what you pay for in the world of electronics. Even though it may seem unnecessary, spending the extra few dollars on quality cables and chargers can save you alot of headache and heartache down the line. Gophermods offers high quality Belkin Chargers, and cables for both Micro USB, and Lightning in store.