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Frame from Teardown of an IKEA Koppla USB power supply. Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

Teardown of an IKEA Koppla USB power supply.

11 videos recommended on HN
YouTube
2 HN users recommended this explainer2 months2017–2021 score 2
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

Cited as a teardown of a well-made, safe USB charger, and as evidence for why quality chargers matter.

Big Clive takes apart an IKEA Koppla USB power supply to assess its safety, looking at isolation and transformer construction.

“Big Clive also did a fairly comprehensive teardown of the IKEA charger and was pleasantly surprised with the design” (HN, 2021)

2 recommendations · 1 citations · Explainers · intermediate

3 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@BrailleHunting Mar 2017 Recommends
on HN thread Man dies charging iPhone while in the bath
TL;DR: spend the $19 to buy a real, big brand USB charger because they have more to lose than grey market no brand. Tragic. Probably cheap USB without mains isolation or maybe enough water dripped down length of cable and socket to create a circuit, because USB is supposed to be 5V DC. Watch these USB charger teardown horror-shows to further understand why it's rational to pay for proper, authentic CE+UL, high-low isolation and quality components (ie insulated tape in transformers): [link] [this video] [link] [link] [link] [link]
Teardowns show why quality chargers matter.

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Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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