PicoPSU clones on eBay?

nandystam · Post by **nandystam** » Sun Oct 19, 2008 7:58 pm

Did a bit of browsing to see if this had been brought up before, but recently I've seen these DC-DC adapters for sale that look suspiciously like the PicoPSU and PW-200 units:

PicoPSU clone

A PW-200-M lookalike

And another PW-200-M clone

Anybody know much about these? Would they be as reliable or well designed as the originals they're based off?

Gojira-X · Post by **Gojira-X** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 1:16 am

The only way to find out would be to buy them and test them.

I suspect that the electronics companies who made them wanted to cash in on the extremley small dc-dc converter (aka pico-psu) market, and made their devices sufficiently different (5 changes) to look like a different product.

Another possible reason is that the makers of the pico-psu wanted to branch in to other areas and made the clones as a result of diverging the basic design.

LucB · Post by **LucB** » Tue Nov 25, 2008 5:44 am

I bought 5 PicoPSU on ebay, and i received fakes.

LucB · Post by **LucB** » Tue Nov 25, 2008 5:45 am

Here is what i received:

Not only it's fake, but it's also dangerous to use!

tehcrazybob · Post by **tehcrazybob** » Tue Nov 25, 2008 9:15 am

LucB, you might want to update the captions on your Flickr photos. You've got the real and fake PicoPSUs labeled as each other (either that, or the cheap knockoff is significantly better-made than the genuine original). You have captions saying "Right: real PicoPSU. Left: fake." when in fact the real one is on the left and the fake one is on the right. It'd also be easier to tell the differences if the pictures showed the same side of each unit for comparison, rather than opposite sides; I realize that this is harder to fix than the captions, though.

victorhortalives · Post by **victorhortalives** » Tue Nov 25, 2008 10:20 am

Deleted

Strid · Post by **Strid** » Tue Nov 25, 2008 11:03 am

LucB wrote:Not only it's fake, but it's also dangerous to use!

What is dangerous about them?

LucB · Post by **LucB** » Tue Nov 25, 2008 1:37 pm

tehcrazybob wrote:LucB, you might want to update the captions on your Flickr photos. You've got the real and fake PicoPSUs labeled as each other (either that, or the cheap knockoff is significantly better-made than the genuine original).

Indeed! I guess i can't tell my right from my left

I corrected the captions.

Strid: soldering of the wires unprotected and too close to each other. Also, connections are not precise and break very easily.

xan_user · Post by **xan_user** » Tue Nov 25, 2008 1:43 pm

Strid wrote:
LucB wrote:Not only it's fake, but it's also dangerous to use!
What is dangerous about them?

from the link posted above...

"These PSU can be found on ebay as "PicoPSU". These are fake: no brand, no wire/soldering protection (meaning that it can burn anytime), components are not the same, assembly is not nearly similar to real PicoPSU."

Wow fakes on ebay! whats next, email scams from Nigeria?