Power bricks are often so big they partially cover adjoining outlets and make it difficult to plug all your gear onto a single power strip. Here are our favorite solutions for dealing with chunky plugs.
It almost seems like every company is a part of a secret competition to see who can make the biggest power brick, which leads to consumers trying to find creative ways to plug all of them in like you’re trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle. The jigsaw metaphor feels particularly appropriate when different plugs have different plug-prong orientations that result in long narrow plugs covering multiple outlets on the strip. Overall it’s a pretty frustrating experience just about anyone can relate to.
A Word of Caution
Before we dive deep into some awesome solutions for your power bricks, a word of caution is in order before you go plugging everything you own into your new power strip.
Just because you can plug a whole bunch of stuff into a single outlet, doesn’t mean that you should. An electrical circuit can only handle so much current, and if you end up plugging a bunch of power-hogging devices into the same outlet, there’s a good chance you’ll overload the circuit and trip the breaker. Or even worse, start a fire.
So before you go crazy parking everything on one power strip, take stock on what devices you have and whether any of them use a lot of electricity (what you care about here is the watts used by each device on the strip. Stuff like a space heater or a gaming PC use a lot of energy. Stuff like a cellphone charger (even a whole power strip worth of them) uses very little energy. The real benefit to using these strips isn’t the ability to run 20 high-watt items simultaneously, but to plug all your gear in at once so you’re not crawling under your desk to unplug your printer so you can use your paper shredder.
Now, let’s get into our top picks for the best power strips to handle all those dumb power bricks.
Bestten 24-Outlet Heavy Duty Metal Power Strip ($48)
If you want a power strip with the most outlets, this Bestten 24-outlet power strip is your best bet.
It has an aluminum body, so it’s great for a garage or workshop where it’ll be exposed to some rough conditions, but it’s also perfect for casual usage in a home office where you need to plug in a bunch of stuff.
The outlets aren’t spaced apart to leave room for power bricks, but the nice thing is that there’s still plenty of space to plug in plenty of devices. So even if a power brick covers up adjacent outlets, you still have plenty of other outlets at your disposal.
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