Hyper officially recalls its stackable (and overheating) GaN chargers after all

In response to the CPSC, Hyper has obtained seven stories of its stackable GaN chargers overheating “leading to injury to the altering items,” plus two stories of the battery pack overheating and inflicting “smoke, melting, and property injury.” No accidents had been reported because of defects in both gadget. In response to the federal government company, Hyper bought over 18,200 stackable GaN chargers in North America between October 2020 and August 2022, and over 13,800 of the battery packs between October 2018 and April 2022. 

What’s unusual is how Hyper responded to preliminary stories of its stackable GaN chargers overheating earlier this 12 months. At first, the corporate advised The Verge that it had recognized some points with each the 65W and 100W items, had eliminated them from sale, and was providing to interchange units inside guarantee with various items to anybody that requested one. However shortly afterwards, the corporate’s CEO Daniel Chin acquired in contact to disclaim that the merchandise had been deliberately pulled from sale due to any defect, and as a substitute blamed a components scarcity. Chin downplayed the complaints, admitting that whereas there had been some points with early variations of the 65W charger, any stories of issues with the 100W model had been merely “a part of the conventional defect fee.” 

“We’re not issuing a full recall as a result of we’re not seeing a systemic failure,” Chin advised us in June.

We had been very excited by Hyper’s stackable GaN chargers once they had been first introduced in 2020. In addition to working like an ordinary USB charging brick (the 65W model affords two USB-C and one USB-A ports, whereas the 100W mannequin has an extra USB-C port), every charger additionally has an extra energy outlet on its prime. That’s what lets you stack them to get much more charging ports, as much as a complete of 16 bricks for a most mixed 1600W of charging energy.