Hungary’s consumer protection authority rejected 156 of the 186 USB chargers it tested in 2026, a failure rate of about 84%. Just 30 met the safety requirements. Problems included electric-shock hazards caused by inadequate separation inside the charger, something a shopper couldn’t readily spot from the outside.
Laboratory checks by the Nemzeti Kereskedelmi és Fogyasztóvédelmi Hatóság (NKFH), Hungary’s National Authority for Trade and Consumer Protection, focused primarily on whether the chargers could expose users to electric shock. In a poorly designed unit, components carrying mains electricity may sit too close to parts the user can touch. In severe cases, this can cause a life-threatening shock, according to the authority’s report.
The results follow several years of high failure rates in this product category: 85% in 2023, 92% in 2024 and 87% last year. Those findings prompted the authority to expand its sample and test more chargers than ever before. Its 2026 inspection covered nearly 200 USB chargers across two rounds.
Government offices collected samples from electronics stores, specialist retailers, small shops operated by Far Eastern businesses and online stores. The findings apply to the sampled products, but they suggest that potentially dangerous devices have a substantial presence even in an everyday category such as USB chargers.
For shoppers, the difficulty is that the separation between mains-powered components and accessible parts is hidden inside the casing. The NKFH strongly recommends buying chargers primarily from specialist shops or electronics stores. It advises choosing a trusted seller where possible and avoiding suspiciously cheap products of unknown origin.
If a charger behaves abnormally or overheats, stop using it. Official proceedings concerning the dangerous products are ongoing, as is their removal from the market.
