British General

[imroberts]

I've been toying with the idea of some USB sockets for various rooms in the house. Previously I've only used MK or, more recently, Crabtree accessories as I much preferred the quality.

I had an offer leaflet from Screwfix today advertising some BG ones for just £7.49 - way cheaper than the £25 for the equivalent MK.

Can they be that bad?

 

[PrenticeBoyofDerry]

I find that BG products are of a reasonable quality

 

[Iggifer]

Fitted a few of their USB sockets. Nothing obviously wrong with them. I fitted MK for myself, but I only needed one so £25 was acceptable. If you want more than one, it soon adds up

 

[JohnW2]

I had an offer leaflet from Screwfix today advertising some BG ones for just £7.49 - way cheaper than the £25 for the equivalent MK. Can they be that bad?

Gone are the days when the big difference between prices of MK (and similar) and much cheaper brands meant an equally big difference in quality. FWIW, my personal experience is that BG accessories are usually not too bad.

Kind Regards, John

 

[imroberts]

Fitted a few of their USB sockets. Nothing obviously wrong with them. I fitted MK for myself, but I only needed one so £25 was acceptable. If you want more than one, it soon adds up

Yes, exactly. I'm probably after 4 of them so I'm looking at £100 vs £30. Maybe I'll give them a try.

 

[AndyPRK]

MKs need 35mm back boxes

 

[Iggifer]

MKs need 35mm back boxes

That is the major downside with MK, kind of a disappointment as they took so long to get them to market. I can only assume there's a technical reason they went with a bigger unit

 

[chris_o]

Fitted a couple of these for myself at the weekend, they seem decent enough, and very good value for money

 

[winston1]

Don't get ones where the USB sockets are above the 13A sockets. Cos if you plug in a power supply with the lead emerging from the top you won't be able to use the USB socket.

 

[Taylortwocities]

Well, I hate to burst anybody's bubble, but looking at the BG/Nexus website. They have a 10,000m² UK Warehousing and distribution facility located in Telford, but the products are made in Jiaxing, China……. see manufacturing at http://www.nexusinds.com/about
I am waiting for BAS to assert that these goods also cannot be trusted, as he has in another thread recently - post #10, etc

 

[Echo the husky]

We used to use BG for thier metalclad range. The design changed for BG gear recently, last year? There was a noticeable drop in quality. The old socket terminals could easily take 2x 6.0mm² cables, but the new designed ones are much smaller and are the same stupid small square shape as the terminals in the new design Crabtree sockets.

 

[dpm_dpmartin]

I've just refurbished a house with BG Nexus throughout, including 5 x USB sockets dotted around... they appear to be really good to me. I'd buy them again.

 

[Iggifer]

We used to use BG for thier metalclad range. The design changed for BG gear recently, last year? There was a noticeable drop in quality. The old socket terminals could easily take 2x 6.0mm² cables, but the new designed ones are much smaller and are the same stupid small square shape as the terminals in the new design Crabtree sockets.

We used BG Nexus Chrome plated everything on a big refurb project last year, and the quality was pretty awful. I had the plastic backing to switches falling off, spurs with no neutral continuity, the earth lugs on the light switches are TINY; so if you've got a 3 gang switch, looped at the switch, you can forget it, you're using a connector block, the light switch modules foul on the top and bottom lugs of a 25mm box with 4 lugs, they all scratch if you so much as look at them wrong, none of the 'designer' screws were long enough for anything, and the terminals on the light switches and fan isolators were pretty poor too.

/rant over.

That being said the USB sockets aren't too bad.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Well, I hate to burst anybody's bubble, but looking at the BG/Nexus website. They have a 10,000m² UK Warehousing and distribution facility located in Telford, but the products are made in Jiaxing, China……. see manufacturing at http://www.nexusinds.com/about
I am waiting for BAS to assert that these goods also cannot be trusted, as he has in another thread recently - post #10, etc

That will be this one then:

The seller is in China. He is Chinese. The light is not made in Devon, or even in the UK. It is made in China. And sold by someone in China. How many examples of such situations leading to people getting shoddy and dangerous goods do you have to encounter before you accept that the only sensible course of action is not to buy stuff sold by people in China?

I've added a bit of highlighting in the hope that you will read those salient parts this time, and realise just what Chinese goods I urge caution over.

 

[RF Lighting]

I've fitted a good few of the BG white plastic twin sockets with usb outlets. I've had one which the charger part packed up on, but it was exchanged with no problem.

They seem about the best budget socket to me.