This is genuinely the best plug ever and no one can convince me otherwise.
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.
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.
1. There is little size difference between your choices and BS1363 plugs/sockets. They are large, I concede, but that is in pursuit of the many safety features of the plug.
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.
My only issue with the plug is 3. sort of. I prefer the cable being perpendicular to the plug (prevents accidental removal), but I wish there was a standard dictating which way it should leave relative to the earth pin. Drives me mad when plugging in items to an extension lead and they all come off in different directions.
Agreed. If anything it's an icon of overengineering. The main advantage imo is that you dont need to worry about a kid sticking a fork into the wall socket. I grew up with it so i never really thought it strange that the plugs are 2 or 3 times bigger then necessary. It's an event every time you connect to the National Grid as the plug slots into the wall with a satisfying clunk, so there's that i guess.
Ironically the older BS546† had smaller plugs for lower powered appliances. But each different size of plug needed a different socket, because the fuse was in the socket. This system is still used in India, but I'm not sure how widespread it is.
You're completely right. People love the British plug because it has lots of features but they're mostly obsolete features or required by the equally obsolete ring wiring. So in the end, it's just a pile of useless inconveniences. Don't Britons have RCDs?
As a North American, I'm very jealous of the BS1363. I know some people don't like the mandatory ground pin, but it actually serves a really handy purpose. Because the shutter is engaged by the slightly longer ground pin, the shutter just works with minimal resistance.
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.
I found that there's a surprising difference in quality for what feels like it should be a commodity item. All the outlets in my newish build were tamper-resistant, and pretty much as you described -- at best they were unpleasantly stiff and awkward to use, and some specific outlets would require a worrying amount of force and wiggling to plug anything in.
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.
I live in UK so biased, but yeah, I mostly love British plugs and sockets.
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.
It also has a fuse in it that is completely useless in almost all world except UK. So no thanks, you can keep it. We prefer not to burn our houses down.
> The BS1363 is so massive that it shrugs off power loads of multiple kilowatts
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.
You usually do not plug an oven into a standard 230V socket in Germany. They are connected to 3 phase outlets with 400V and up to 16A, which is nothing to sneeze at.
I think Swiss plugs (type C) might be better. They have a pretty good thonk.
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.
Having lived in both countries for a while, I find the Swiss plugs nowhere near as satisfying, and the flat (non-recessed) wall outlets are also prone to plugs becoming loosened due to weight, similar to the US/CAN/JP plug.
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.
It could be a little smaller, but compared to the USA plug and socket it's pure perfection.
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.
> British kettles and toaster ovens run at up to 3 kW or more
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.
Surprised you've been to ANZ and didn't find their sockets best. Breakdown of things Type-I has:
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.
The ANZ plug is pretty good but when China adopted it they found a way to improve it - they put it upside down so the ground is at the top for slightly improved safety.
Agree with comments below, am observing that the British (commonwealth etc) plug standard is a good common denominator (and a perfect calthrop. grin!).
Living in North America where the 110 V is standard...
the GBR plug/socket is a lovely standard, my brother-in-law gifted us a UK power bar for travel a few years ago, worked great. [[1]]. Since then, it's become common that wallwarts handle 100-240, so recently I just use physical adapters, and if need be wallwarts with multiple charging ports and/or feed-through mains sockets.
[[1]] use whatever physical adapter to power it -- we know that it's ok for 240 V. Then use whatever adapters to charge. I did have a bagful of physical adapters.
It's amazing what you find in buildings old enough to have seen all generations of electrical standards.
The oldest part of my sister-in-law's place dates to the 1790's (I know: in America 100 years is a long time; in England 100 miles is a long way) and it has receptacles that are a never-standardized bastard union of NEMA 1-15 and 2-15, which means you can't be quite certain if you've got an ungrounded hot and a neutral for 120v or two hots for 240v. God only knows why they were ever manufactured. I've never looked at their panel, but I assume it's a horror show.
I've seen live cloth-insulated wire in older homes I've lived in, and found a mystery fuse box in a triple-decker in Boston. As far as I know, I've never lived anywhere with live knob and tube, but I've definitely had it abandoned-in-place.
My all-time favorite was the house I had with a five-gang box populated with switches. I don't need to add that the multi-location circuit wired through that box was wired wrong.
I don’t get the patriotism people from the UK exhibit over their plug. I’ve lived and worked in total 1 year in the UK, two years in Dubai. I’m originally from Sweden were we use Schuko. Now I live in Switzerland.
The UK plug is easily the worst. It’s three times the size of the Swiss plug. You can literally connect three Swiss appliances in the same place you can connect one UK.
It’s absolutely ridiculous to require a single phase AC plug to be plugged in with one particular polarity. The device doesn’t know or care if its power is 180° out of phase or not, you’re just making the user experience worse for absolutely no reason.
Except the live wire is the one that’s switched. So if you plug it in backwards, the neutral is the one that’s switched. And if they aren’t careful with how the wiring is done, you potentially have live voltage on the outside of your metal cased device.
For another example, your standard e26 bulb can have part of the thread exposed. If the neutral and live are swapped, that threaded bit is hooked to live, instead of the proper neutral.
Neither one of this are issues. Devices need to be manufactured so that you cannot touch potentially live connections if they are connected to sockets.
Irrelevant. If neutral gets disconnected, your hypotetical device will have hot case anyway. That is why devices without grounding have to be double insulated
It’s better to just assume neither conductor can be touched.
There is no use case touching neutral conductors or neutral connected metal cases. No functionality is lost by having devices be double insulated, and in practice most if not all devices on the UK market are made to also be marketable in countries with non-polar connectors.
I used to live in the UK (also lived in the US and Europe), and I HATE the UK plugs. They are too large and too complex (fuse in every plug, this silly shutter, etc).
European plugs (especially German style) are far superior, and European two pin plugs never fall off sockets. That is only a problem with US plugs.
The shutter prevents someone (including children) shoving something metal into the live/hot. I have never heard of it failing. Newer US outlets (TR/tamper resistant) are way more finicky because of the optional ground pin. Sticking the little plastic covers over the outlet is a workaround.
The reason for a fuse is because of the high current capacity of ring circuits vs branch/radial. The fuse protects the power cable of appliances catching fire as they can’t handle the current available on the circuit .
Ring circuits are a thing due to minimizing copper usage when rebuilding after ww2.
Not only do they fall out, they also like to slide out part way, exposing the hot part of the plug while still being hot. In EU and these British ones, once it slides out a bit, it will lose contact before you can touch the metal.
I can't imagine any 2 pin plug being as mechanically stable as a 3 pin. Certainly here in Asia I am regularly being driven bonkers by 2 pin plugs dropping out of sockets the moment a butterfly shakes its wings on the other side of the planet.
One common complaint I get from my newly arrived expat colleagues is that their PC gives them slight electric shocks when they use it. IANAE (I am not an electrician), but I assume that this is because of some capacitor voodoo in the PC's power supply. The problem is cured by grounding the assembly.
The British plug/socket embodies the British ethos: nanny state, 'cannot be too careful' etc. In British parlance it is 'belt and braces'. But yes I agree it may be overkill.
Yes, the schuko seems to be a nice in-between of the compactness of the US plug and the mechanical robustness of the British plug and the bonus is that it can still take the Europlug. They definitely could have made it a bit smaller but it's good enough.
If you have, then why was it unplugged? A plug should be plugged in (in which case it is safe) or it is superfluous.
I've managed to struggle through to the age of 54 without treading on one of our thrusting tri-pronged plugs. It is surprisingly easy to avoid stepping on them.
Yeah, those are the same standard - they're still legal. The large ones were used in theatre lighting until recently (wiring is radial and you don't want a fuse to blow 5m above the stage in any case).
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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...
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.
† https://www.plugsocketmuseum.nl/OldBritish1.html
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AS/NZS_3112
Apple made a very elegant USB charger with foldable pins. It’s like a fidget spinner, impossible to stop playing with.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A4RxWEycdj4
Living in North America where the 110 V is standard...
the GBR plug/socket is a lovely standard, my brother-in-law gifted us a UK power bar for travel a few years ago, worked great. [[1]]. Since then, it's become common that wallwarts handle 100-240, so recently I just use physical adapters, and if need be wallwarts with multiple charging ports and/or feed-through mains sockets.
[[1]] use whatever physical adapter to power it -- we know that it's ok for 240 V. Then use whatever adapters to charge. I did have a bagful of physical adapters.
A lot of the round pin wiring was rubber/fabric insulated. The fuzeboard was scary. Tar insulated mains cables.
The oldest part of my sister-in-law's place dates to the 1790's (I know: in America 100 years is a long time; in England 100 miles is a long way) and it has receptacles that are a never-standardized bastard union of NEMA 1-15 and 2-15, which means you can't be quite certain if you've got an ungrounded hot and a neutral for 120v or two hots for 240v. God only knows why they were ever manufactured. I've never looked at their panel, but I assume it's a horror show.
I've seen live cloth-insulated wire in older homes I've lived in, and found a mystery fuse box in a triple-decker in Boston. As far as I know, I've never lived anywhere with live knob and tube, but I've definitely had it abandoned-in-place.
My all-time favorite was the house I had with a five-gang box populated with switches. I don't need to add that the multi-location circuit wired through that box was wired wrong.
The UK plug is easily the worst. It’s three times the size of the Swiss plug. You can literally connect three Swiss appliances in the same place you can connect one UK.
For another example, your standard e26 bulb can have part of the thread exposed. If the neutral and live are swapped, that threaded bit is hooked to live, instead of the proper neutral.
There is no use case touching neutral conductors or neutral connected metal cases. No functionality is lost by having devices be double insulated, and in practice most if not all devices on the UK market are made to also be marketable in countries with non-polar connectors.
I just had my house in Vietnam fitted out with universal sockets that will accept all plugs tyoes. Life changing decision.
European plugs (especially German style) are far superior, and European two pin plugs never fall off sockets. That is only a problem with US plugs.
The reason for a fuse is because of the high current capacity of ring circuits vs branch/radial. The fuse protects the power cable of appliances catching fire as they can’t handle the current available on the circuit .
Ring circuits are a thing due to minimizing copper usage when rebuilding after ww2.
One common complaint I get from my newly arrived expat colleagues is that their PC gives them slight electric shocks when they use it. IANAE (I am not an electrician), but I assume that this is because of some capacitor voodoo in the PC's power supply. The problem is cured by grounding the assembly.
The British plug/socket embodies the British ethos: nanny state, 'cannot be too careful' etc. In British parlance it is 'belt and braces'. But yes I agree it may be overkill.
If you have, then why was it unplugged? A plug should be plugged in (in which case it is safe) or it is superfluous.
I've managed to struggle through to the age of 54 without treading on one of our thrusting tri-pronged plugs. It is surprisingly easy to avoid stepping on them.
I think India still uses them, too.