USB Car Charger for Clip+

Hi,

Just want to get an opinion on using a USB Car Charger I’ve got to charge my Clip+.

It’s an HP in-car USB charger with the following info on the side:

Input: 12 ~ 24 Vdc

Output: 5.5Vdc; 700mA

I seem to recall reading elsewhere on the forum pages that the maximum safe output from a charger for the Clip+ is 5V.

Will using this charger fry my Clip?! (not something I wish to risk really!) or is the extra 0.5V OK?  I haven’t risked it yet.

I don’t know if it makes any difference but the charger was designed for use with an old HP Smartphone and plugs straight into a car DC socket.

Thanks a lot in advance for your sage advice.

By the way had my Clip+ for about a month and think that it’s a great device.  Many thanks also to the contributors of this forum whose knowledge and expertise have, up to now, answered all my questions.

Mark 

As long as it conforms to the USB standard , which it should, being an HP branded product, you should be fine. Note that the voltage rating may be for an open-circuit condition, before applying an actual real-world load to the device.

HP has an affinity for precision, making things like atomic clocks and laboratory reference gear.  The Sansa likes a USB 2.0 connection, as it can draw a few hundred milliamps while charging the battery.  With 700ma, it will charge just fine.

The Sansa regulates charging internally.

microsansa

It’s been Sansa-blessed.   :wink:

Hi  microsansa,

Thank you for that knowledgeable answer - will give it a try today and let you know if it all works OK!

Apologies for the delay in getting back to you - events…!

Mark 

Theoretically, just about any USB charger with the correct mini-B connector should work for the Clip+.  700mA is way more than the Clip+ needs, I think (it’s enough to fast-charge a Blackberry, which has a much larger battery.)

In practice, some chargers may be better-made than others, thus some may have better-regulated output power than others.  Dunno how sensitive the Clip+ is to that.  The charge regulation electronics are in the Clip+, mostly.

All vehicle USB chargers I’ve seen in the last several years are made in China.  They have become commodity products that are designed and manufactured by Chinese manufacturers, branded for all the various corporate brands who buy them wholesale to resell to consumers with the various respective retail market brand names on them.

So, even the HP charger is probably just another Chinese-made commodity USB charger, with “HP” on it.  Probably came from the same factory making such chargers for many other brands.

Because these chargers are commodities, you can find them dirt cheap on the web.  I’d never buy one from a retail store, they really rip you off on these.  (Similar story for cables, but that would be for another thread.)

HP used to be a very different company.  Then they turned into just another greedy large consumer electronics corporation paying very-low-cost Asian contract manufacturers to design and build mass market electronic products with “HP” logo, to resell with a FAT profit in the retail consumer market.  A common business model nowadays.  They may still have some low volume high-end technical equipment expertise, but the USB chargers are not in this category.