Faulty 120W charger analysis (Anker GAN Prime) [video]
51 comments
·May 21, 2025rwmj
progbits
Indeed, this is way different than the cheap aliexpress stuff bigclive usually tears down, where 1mm track clearance separates you from death by mains voltage.
You do get what you pay for.
tgsovlerkhgsel
You often do get cheap when you pay cheap, but paying more doesn't guarantee that you don't get the same cheap thing with a different brand on it.
Unfortunately at least two of the popular known-to-be-good brands, Aukey and RavPower, misbehaved in ways that got them banned from Amazon (IIRC fake reviews). IIRC Anker also had some scandal, recall or exploding product or other reason why I stopped trusting them (in addition to the Eufy scandal, where they released a supposedly privacy-friendly/local-only/e2ee camera that was everything but that, then lied about it for months when caught).
rft
DiodeGoneWild also has quite some of those: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfUGOPyKWwiriWhjmdtvj...
The worst has to be the charger without any isolation between mains and output: https://youtu.be/qTpVhNCot3Y?t=81
Edit: just to make it obvious, check the upload date for the second link
londons_explore
I would be interested to know - has anyone ever died when a consumer charger becomes faulty and connects the AC to the DC side?
rwmj
Lots of cases where cheap chargers cause house fires. Whether that's specifically because the AC & DC sides were connected would be hard to tell after the fact. https://www.bbc.co.uk/search?q=house+fire+charger&d=HOMEPAGE...
1oooqooq
the video is a total joke for people with any clue. yes, Anker throw the kitchen sink at problems, but not for quality. their only metric is reviews. so now warming up is much more important than working after two months, etc.
the cherry is the top port receiving 5v that will then go to the negotiated c ports
i don't know why you took it as an endorsement
amelius
On the other hand, the guy said "bloody complicated", and that's not a good sign.
hnlmorg
Complicated designs are neither a good nor bad sign. Sometimes complicated designs are just the result of solving complicated problems. And USB-C is anything but simple.
amelius
If you have ten types of charger, all of them working fine, and one of them is 10x as complicated as the others, then that's at least a bit suspicious, since more components means more opportunities to fail.
Workaccount2
If anyone is interested in bonus GAN content. Electrarc240 recently did a very accessible teardown of a similar GAN power supply, while explaining all the bits and pieces as he goes along and comparing to an old non-GAN style supply.
rlpb
My Anker GaN chargers seem finnicky with cables, resulting in drop-outs and flapping phone charging on my Pixel 6 Pro. Anker customer service were happy to send me replacements but they weren't any better.
I tried Ugreen GaN chargers and they seem to work much better. And a couple of my Anker GaN chargers have failed now, not long out of warranty. Since then, I've stopped buying Anker. I just can't get them to reliably charge all my devices, whereas Ugreen chargers seem to work better.
rincebrain
Conversely, it could also be the case that the Anker chargers are noticing too much resistance on the cable (I've had a number of nice and poor quality USB-C cables break in strange ways which indicate some portion of the wiring is damaged, like cables that only charge one orientation, or only negotiate data one way, or ...), and degrading to avoid risk while still working.
You'd need a tester with some fine detail to be able to tell the difference prior to a problem, though...
Workaccount2
I'm impressed that someone with such electronics knowledge has opted for pliers over hot air for removing chips. I suppose it worked though...
greggsy
He’s clearly an engineer and not a technician, and even jokes about his ‘sophisticated technique’.
He does use a hair dryer later on.
2muchcoffeeman
Very interesting video even though I only did a little bit of electrical engineering. These videos where they don’t wear gloves or seemingly have no protection really stresses me out though.
dogma1138
There aren’t gloves you can wear at this scale that would offer any protection and allow you to do anything.
The only protection you need is for it to be unplugged and if it has large caps you want to make sure those are discharged.
2muchcoffeeman
I don’t mean protection from electricity.
He’s sawing into plastic and electric components and has no cut resistant gloves or a vacuum to suck away dust. At one point he also had a soldering iron quite close to bear fingers. Parts where he’s just prying things off with pliers wouldn’t need maximum dexterity with both hands.
stavros
The protection is that it's not plugged in.
cmcaleer
True in this case, but this isn't universal. Some devices with high voltage caps will absolutely still kill you even if they've been unplugged for days. This is why people can and do die while messing about with unplugged microwaves in particular.
Gigachad
Should be quite unlikely though. They are meant to have resistors to drain the caps. Can also short the cap with a screwdriver if you want to be extra sure.
stavros
This is true, but people handling those devices generally do protect themselves. In this case it wasn't necessary, so no need to stress!
enaaem
I have bad experiences with two of my last multi-port GAN chargers. One Anker was DoA and then I got a Baseus which burnt within one year. Small powerful multi-port chargers sound great in theory, but I will stick to 'normal' chargers for now.
SillyUsername
Nandor up skilled!
On a serious note isn't all that pink stuff a fire risk due to insulating high wattage components?
I doubt it's flammable but it's still eventually burnable and insulating everything else.
elaus
Going by the comments on the YouTube video: It seems to be for hear dissipation, so quite the opposite of insulation.
curiousgal
I genuinely thought the audio was playing backwards...
stavros
The accent took some getting used to for me. It sounds Italian, but not quite.
fractallyte
Czechia
His website: https://danyk.cz/index_en.html
stavros
Ahh very interesting, thank you. I know other Czech people but they don't draw the vowels out this much , I wonder if it's a local thing or just specific to this person.
amelius
This video started to get comical as he started breaking away components.
ttkari
That PCB transformer design is interesting.
amelius
Was this done to save costs? I can't imagine any other reason.
guerrilla
What is this accent? It sounds kind of Indian but also not at all... Iranian?
michalhosna
Czech.
His website: https://danyk.cz/index_en.html
guerrilla
Strange. I've never heard a Slavic person talk like that.
rob_c
Not sure how this hits as a hn story given the large amount of YouTube electronics from agile greenhouses out there doing full teardowns to wearing through fabrication processes, but ok...
I think this justifies my habit of buying Anker chargers. They're expensive but seem decently engineered. If they were cost-cutting, they wouldn't have 2 temperature sensors, input filtering, properly rated & branded components, etc. Even if this one failed, it seems to have failed safe.
Also the transformer manufactured from a multi-layer PCB is pretty wild [about 20 mins into the video], I've never seen that before.