Inside an Anker Power Strip with USB Power
28 July 2020
Cords abound in my networking cabinet, and this power strip replaces a small 6-outlet model. Normally, I avoid low-voltage DC outputs on my commodity AC wiring components like power strips, but this time I decided to give it a try. I still won’t wire a USB port into the wall, but I have to say these USB ports on the power strip are pretty handy for keeping things charged up while they sit in the cabinet. USB adapters often end up taking many of the power outlets on our power strips, so the USB ports could mean considerable space savings if we’re okay with the no-frills 5V charging output.
This power strip also includes a 500-volt surge protector and has 3 USB outputs with the Anker “power iQ” logo above them. Tearing it apart reveals a nice DC converter for those ports but nothing special in the way of QuickCharge or USB Power Delivery (which I don’t think even works on type-A connectors). In this case, they seem to be using the logo to mean “beefy DC current capacity”, a total of 3.1A across all three ports.