@Ek-Hou-Van-Braai German Schuko of course.
All outlets should just be replaced with IEC C13. Robust and compact.
Well the answer is obviously the UK plug some of those others are just plain bad. The question is are they all made largely obsolete by USB C ? and is that the closest we are likely to get to a universal plug and socket?
The UK plug is nice. Very robust, it connects to ground before it reaches the power line and has a switch but it’s clunky.
Still trying to figure out why Germany is listed separately from the EU.
I have a strong preference for the German and Swiss types, but I think we can all agree that Japan massively fucked up. They took the already shitty American plug and just forgot about the ground.
The British one. It has a switch and a fuse, and later versions have age-verification so your kids can no longer plug in your adult toys.
Had me in the first half. Well played.
And your adult toys must be licensed, of course. To protect the kids.
Its important you don’t allow them access so you need to keep them on your person in a place thats very hard to access. So hard.
Your last sentence is a double entendre?
double in your entendre.
I’m actually kinda surprised that more don’t have switches, but I suppose if you have radial rather than ring circuits you don’t have to play ‘hunt the appliance that tripped all your switches’ quite so hard
My toys are wireless…
You’ll need a broadcasting licence for that, mate.
Only if they’re charged.
P.S.: since battery cells need to be disposed properly, they are now an 18+ purchase.
Age verification on batteries?
These are the best anyway
Nah, they’re too power limited. What you really want will require a 3 phase hookup to the bedroom.
Just be careful, three phase hookups = potential hurt feelings and messy drama.
Real
Hey now, let’s not give BSI and NESO any ideas mate.
Name a more painful thing to tread on than the British plug. Bonus points if it’s incorrectly wired to be live.
This is the most definitive argument that type J is superior to all others:
Image showing an arrangement of 3 swiss plugs in the same footprint as one french one
Type I.
ElectroBoom (Youtube) made some points about Australia’s Type I. Seems it was very hard for him to electrocute himself. Lots of breakers on the outlets. I mean he did electrocute himself, but he was always going to.
It’s obviously the one in the country I live in. All the others that I have had zero experience with are from Satan.
There was two different ways you could have ordered this alphabetically, and you failed to do either.
Swiss Type J, because you can have three of them, taking up no more space than one German or French plug.
I would argue that neither of the plugs shown in the picture nor those mentioned by others are the best.
Ignoring current adoption, I think that IEC 60906-1 is the best plug. It is very similar to the Swiss plug and was intended to, at least in the EU, replace other plugs. It has quite a few advantages over the other plugs. It is rated at 16 A, has a compact form factor, is polarised, and has almost all the common protections except fuses (which are pretty much useless anyway). Currently it only is used in South Africa without major changes to the plug.
Compared to the Schuko (Type F):
- Much smaller. You can fit three plugs in the same space as a single Schuko plug (similar to Swiss triple outlets).
- It takes less force to plug in. Above 2.5A, Schuko plugs require a lot of force to plug in and pull out. To some extent, this is actually good for safety, but I would argue that, in the case of Schuko plugs at least, it’s too much
- It is also easier to plug in without seeing the plug since it isn’t round. Everyone who has tried to plug in a Schuko plug without seeing the holes knows how difficult it is
- It’s polarised/directional. In some very specific cases, there is a security advantage to using a polarised plug, but I think it’s also a hassle to only be able to plug in a plug one direction. It also fits Europlugs (the thin, small plugs with only two pins that are very common in Europe, e.g. on phone chargers)
Compared to (Typ G)):
- Wayyy smaller
- Not a stepping hazard
- Rated for 16A (instead of 13 A)
- No Fuse (Again, pretty unecessary)
Regarding three-phase power, I would argue that Swiss type 15 (10A) and type 25 (16A) plugs are the best. These are really cool because while beeing the same size as Schuko (Typ F) plugs, they can transfer three-phase power (so 11 kW; 230 V / 16A on all three phases). They also fit standard Swiss single-phase and Euro plugs. This makes plugging in large appliances like electric stoves much easier than in other countries.
I would find it quite cool if most countries switched to one common plug, and I think IEC 60906-1 would be best for that. It would also be possible to build hybrid sockets for many common plugs during the transition phase.
My favourite is this one, it makes things go brrrrrr.
Couldn’t find a good photo of the socket online, only the plug. Cba to go take a photo of the socket right now, but I do have it at home and it’s fully functional.
Edit: Searching in Estonian yielded results for the socket too. Someone was auctioning a set 7 years ago.
