The world’s refusal to standardize on a single type of mains power outlet has led to a vibrant market of so-called travel adapters, all of which try to outdo each other in convenience and universality. This comes at the cost of complexity, something which ultimately reflects in the price. The cheapo $9.26 universal travel adapter that [Brainiac 75] got off an online retailer’s site is thereby a good example of how safety suffers if the overarching goal is to ‘make it cheap’.

The first exciting discovery is that when you plug any of its three sets of connectors into an outlet, the others become live at the same voltage. This would suggest that they’re just wired together, a fact soon confirmed with a quick resistance check between the respective prongs. Though to the adapter’s credit, the prongs are not live when fully retracted into the enclosure. Yet as demonstrated in the video, the retracting of prongs is not enforced, so mistakes here are possible.

The adapter also has two USB ports that claim to provide 5 V at 2.1 A, with as it turns out no hard cut-off. This is probably the best part of the adapter despite not featuring any advanced charging features. After opening the adapter, you can see that the sliding mains prongs connect to a central bus bar when either unfolded or extended, which is definitely straightforward, but doesn’t enforce that only one type of prongs can be used at any given time.

To make it safer, [Brainiac75] removed the less useful US and UK plugs, taping over the empty holes. It’s now just a USB charger with a universal mains port to plug random non-EU plugs into, which is probably relatively safe and a better idea than really using it as a travel adapter.