What kind of Electricity Converter is best?

Question

I'll be moving to France shortly and staying for a year. I've been looking on e-bay and in local stores at electricity converters. Is there a company or brand name I can trust over others? Thanks!

Answer 1

What do you mean by electricity converter? All you need is an adapter for your plugs, the rest of the electricity is already converted for you. Trust the electricity that is established in the city because you will not be able to choose a different one, hehe, this is ridiculous, you got something wrong in your question.

Answer 2

Here are two links to companies that sell what you need - a transformer:

http://www.arthurspools.com/accessories/...

http://www.starkelectronic.com/st500.htm

Answer 3

The converter I got at Radio Shack has worked fine for me.

Answer 4

I used to work for the U.S. Army in Germany, and we also used power converters to operate special electrical equipment. Those converters, regardless of brand, are good to operate for lifetime. The only thing you should not do is to overload the watts. If a converter is good for 500 watts and you use it for an appliance requiring 750 watts, it will sooner or later go out of order. Also make sure to have the right plug adapters for the french wall plugs.

http://kropla.com/!e.htm

Be aware that Europe is operating on 50 hertz instead of 60 hertz as in the USA. Alarm clocks or timers in any electric appliances will therefore not work correct.

Answer 5

Most electronic equipment that you are likely to carry with you these days (phone chargers, laptop power units, MP3 players, PDAs) use switch mode power supplies that automatically adjust to any voltage between 100 and 250 volts. Take a look at the label on the power unit. So you will only need an adaptor to change the prongs.

If you want to use it for a hairdryer or electric iron then you may need a convertor (but check whether there is a switch on your appliance to adapt for the voltage) that would be rather hefty, in view of the amount of power involved. Personally, I think it would be better to use hairdryers and irons provided by the hotel, or simply to not iron your clothes.