1. Too large and heavy to carry around.
2. Requires grounding (third pin), even when devices don't need it. Other standards let devices decide.
3. Doesn't allow the cord to go straight out of the plug, it always go sideways which makes it even clunkier, harder to plug (e.g. behind a nightstand at a hotel), and more prone to cord damage from bending.
CEE 7/3 and CEE 7/5 (known as "French" and "German") are way better IMHO. I doubt they have problems with "wiggling and sparking" -- that wouldn't pass certification. And it's easy to make a plug to fit both of them, with or without grounding. CEE 7/5 can even be plugged upside down.
2. Better have it than not. Plus, it makes for a single uniform plug design and specification that is straightforwardly adhered to.
3. IMO this is a good thing as it allows furniture to be set up considerably closer to the walls.
Funny you mention hotels, because I was in one in France not two weeks ago and it had the worst sockets I've ever seen. My phones took forever to charge, half the sockets didn't even seem to have power, and they all had this unintuitive setup where there was a spring loaded panel in the socket that needed to be twisted to get the plug in.
Now, I've seen some odd BS1363 setups, but never one this strange.
2. No, there's simply no point in having it for devices that don't need it.
3. My point is Europlugs give you choice, there are plugs that bend and ones that are not, your choice. BS1363 is always bent.
> My phones took forever to charge
Dude, that's not how chargers work. They either charge at full power your charger can, or do not charge at all. Well, unless your charger can supply 2000+ W to your phones, but I've yet to see a phone capable of more that 37 W. Which means one plug can charge _at least_ 50 phones at the same time, maybe even 100. Any plug is _way_ more powerful than USB can deliver.
I generally would agree it is the best plug standard for safety, but clunky and painful to step on..
My worst experience was in a hotel in the US, with the weight of my adapter and plug they just fell out of the socket. Luckily, for once Jesus saved me; the ubiquitous bible in the nightstand drawer was just the right size to prop up the adapter and I was able to charge my laptop!
Never had a problem with Schuko plugs falling out by themselves, FWIW, if anything the springs are often so tight you need two hands to pull it out so you don't wiggle the socket.
Sounds like dust protection and/or "Kindersicherung"(Child safety/protection)
One can get them as an add on, to retrofit 'Schukos'.
https://www.dezeen.com/2012/02/20/folding-plug-by-min-kyu-ch...
In the US and Canada, the electrical codes now require tamper resistant receptacles in most residential settings, to stop children from poking metal objects into them. Because the ground pin is optional on plugs that connect to the standard NEMA 5-15R receptacle, you can't use the ground pin as a keying feature like you can with the BS1363. Instead, there is a mechanism that is supposed to only allow a plug to be inserted when both hot and neutral pins are present. It is probably the worst thing ever designed. Sometimes it works fine, a bit of extra pressure and the plug goes right in. But most of the time, it stubbornly binds up and you're left trying to fiddle with the plug to find the perfect combination of pressure and angle that allows the shutter to open. It can be horrendously frustrating.
After a couple of high-usage outlets got jammed to the point that nothing could be plugged in, I replaced them with ones from the hardware store, and they are a big improvement. The existing outlets are unbranded, and I guess were from a bulk box of the cheapest that the electrician could source.
In my experience, Leviton are OK (much better than what was originally fitted), but Eaton are great -- they require slightly more force than non-TR outlets, but they're consistent, reliable, and I've never had to try more than once to plug anything in.
11 years living in the UK. I don't think even once I thought of it as _minimal resistance_. At best it requires a firm push. At worst, a couple of hammerings with the side of the fist.
Note that I don't mind the ground pin or having things grounded by default. Even if it wasn't more or less essential due to the mind blowing lack of safety of the ring circuit, it's still a nice and cheap enough extra bit of protection.
1. small form factor – BS1363/EU no, US yes
2. grounding not required – BS1363 no, EU/US yes
3. good contact / not much wiggle (in type-I due to angling) – BS1363 yes, US/EU no
4. cable can either be parallel or perpendicular to the wall. You claim this is a failing but having options is good. Having a cable perpendicular to the wall is never an option with BS1363 and not having options is clearly worse (like with grounding) – BS1363/EU no, US yes
5. no risk of plugging in upside down – EU/BS1363 yes (BS because of required grounding), US no (need one pin to be larger which is error prone)
6. wall/female side can be flush – US/BS1363 yes, EU no
There is literally no downside to ANZ plugs imo. You say having required grounding is good but eh, many things don't need it. Even if we do think grounding is necessary, then the best option would still be type-I (because it is smaller then BS1363 and has the parallel/perpendicular options).
Schuko is terrible because needing a cavity in the wall in order to have good contact is a poor design and makes the plugs larger than necessary and I think that is the most important requirement.
They do have a higher current rating than the French and German standards (30A vs. 16A) but even those do support up to 4 kW. Ovens also run at 3 kW or so in France and Germany.
In France even though they're not usually plugged into a standard socket, all the ovens I've used ran on standard single phase current. Houses are almost never wired for 3 phase anyway.
Parent was talking about toaster ovens though, and those are (as far as I know) always plugged to normal sockets.
I think your complaint with them is that they stick out perpendicularly from the wall but IMO this is a good tradeoff.
It means you can fit more plugs in the same wall space, so Swiss wall sockets typically come in groups of 3 instead of 2, and extension strips can fit many plugs without being very large.
Conversely if you need the cable to lie close to the wall you can get hinge adapters to make this work, they are convenient and reliable.
Since I lived in Switzerland I have not had a fuse blow, I don't know how that works. Having the fuses in a standard place in the British plugs is very nice.
I do quite like the compactness and aesthetic of the three-prong plug with three plugs in a typical wall fixture, and the compatibility with the two-prong Europlug is convenient. However, using even one adapter with a foreign plug often obstructs the other two plugs in a three-plug fixture, particularly as the adapter usually isn’t reversible if grounded, which is quite annoying if that’s the only socket in a room.
I guess the UK plug being large enough to subsume most foreign plug adapters is one silver lining of its size.
https://www.workshopshed.com/2024/09/why-do-we-have-fuses-in...
> So this is why there is a need for a fuse, it is there to protect the cable running between the plug and the appliance. The alternative would be to have 32A tolerant cables on every device.
> they make it impossible to use correctly rated MCBs.
It looks like UK is 32A standard but US us 20 or 15A - is that a significant enough difference that the US is safer? 15/20A is still chunky.
UK is 32A @ 220v. A massive difference in wattage.
In the UK we can put a fuse of e.g. 3A in the plug of a device that is suited for the devices expected draw, but if I understand correctly this could be 15A for the same device in the US?
US (and really, everywhere except the UK/Singapore/Malaysia, and I think HK) doesn’t use plug fuses, preferring circuit level protection, because they typically have non-insane circuit power levels.
It does result in more branch circuit wiring (albeit thinner gauge) and breakers though, and saving on copper post WW2 was the primary motivation for UK style ring circuits anyway.
Many houses in the US were 50A/120V (for the whole panel/house!) until the 60’s, because that was a lot of power - 6kw. It wasn’t until electric appliances that it started to change, and the modern 200A split phase panels (typically 22/44kw)didn’t start to become the norm until whole house HVAC became normal. Think 80’s/90’s. A lot of houses still don’t have modern panels.
A single UK ring circuit at 32A@220v is 7kw, or more than enough to run a very beefy welder, and more than a whole house service in the US at the time.
A breaker on each of those ring circuits is essentially a ‘whole house breaker’, and would not trip on a whole host of ‘everything is melting’ situations.
So you need per-appliance fuses to protect the wiring for appliances and not burn the place down, or run 6 gauge wire everywhere in your appliances too, which would remove any cost savings in material.
My point was that the (up to) 3A UK device gets 3A fuse in the plug in the UK. In the US that device becomes a 6A device but (essentially) gets a 15A fuse in the breaker box, is that the case? Because that seems worse.
A fault in the device blows the plug fuse in the UK. The same fault needs to trip the 15A one in the US.
> A breaker on each of those ring circuits is essentially a ‘whole house breaker’, and would not trip on a whole host of ‘everything is melting’ situations.
I don’t know what this means. It will trip for currents greater than its rating. Nothing should be melting under its rating.
The rule for electrical systems is that any downstream wiring/circuit that would catch on fire in the event of a fault, needs to have a breaker in the circuit before that point, that will interrupt the circuit before the point it would catch on fire.
In the US, every device is just constructed to be safe up to 15/20amps, which uses a bit more copper but is not really a major problem.
But the current is so much higher in the UK, and that is why the fuses on the plugs, because without the fuses providing a lower cut-off point, at a minimum the wires to a typical lamp or whatever, at least to the point it has a fuse or circuit breaker, would need to safely be able to carry the full 32A/220v load without catching on fire.
Which is a very thick cable. And quite a bit more expensive than the tiny bit of extra copper needed to get to 15/20A from 6A.
Does that make sense? The UK plugs essentially distribute the job of overcurrent protection to every single devices plug, where everywhere else it is more centralized at the (lower capacity) circuit level.
As to if this is better or worse is more a matter of opinion and specific local economics that have changed over time than a resolvable ‘fact’.
A UK device blows its own fuse under these circumstances. The wasted copper in every US appliance cord is just insult to injury.
> The rating on a UK ring circuit breaker is so high that you can literally melt significant quantities of steel without tripping the breaker
That’s fine, as long as everything is rated to that draw and doesn’t melt. If the wires couldn’t handle it then the breaker would be rated lower.
> certainly can turn typical appliance wiring incandescent, also without tripping the breaker.
And that’s where the fuse “shines”!
Seems like the UK method uses less copper and gives finer control in over current scenarios. I don’t see any benefits of the US style.
Notably, pretty much everywhere else in the world also uses similar branch circuit type designs and 220v and their plugs and appliances are also not notably more bulky either.
The difference in wire diameter between say 6amps and 15 amps isn’t that noticeable. 15 and 30 is.
They do take up too much space, and are painful to stand on if you leave one unplugged.
But they are still just really satisfying. Plugs just don't fall out of sockets. They are solid and feel reliable. The safety feature of the longer pin opening the socket for the live wires is good. Always found EU and US style plugs and sockets to be worryingly flimsy and the plugs sometimes dangle a bit out of the socket.
Not "or more" if it's using a BS1363. The absolute max at 230V with a 13 amp fuse is 3kW. The Schuko spec actually goes a bit higher (16amps) though in practice appliances >3kW are rare.
USA plugs have prongs that are so thin they bend. The prongs act as a hinge that lets the plug pivot away from the wall to expose the live prongs! And most USA sockets don't have ground on top to block anything resting over those exposed live prongs.
I've toured continental Europe (France, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Italy), the US, India, and ANZ, and all of their plugs are downgrades in comparison to the icon of engineering that is Type G/BS1363. The former somehow all tend to end up with loose contact, wiggling and sparking, degraded power/current, or a cable that sticks out perpendicular to the wall, or some other annoyance. People argue for the Schuko but it is as large as, if not larger than BS1363 plugs. The earthing setup is odd.
The BS1363 is so massive that it shrugs off power loads of multiple kilowatts—British kettles and toaster ovens run at up to 3 kW or more. One could possibly even charge their EV with BS1363 without needing any automotive cable standard[1].
The BS1363 has a satisfying 'thonk' that no other plug has. It feels like you're powering up some futuristic space craft, not your vacuum cleaner.
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/ElectricVehiclesUK/comments/1gta12f...