How to pick a quiet ac adapter

[tooki]

Right, those transformer ac adapters are no good.  I have a bunch of those.  They never give out the correct voltage.

So, what are the "reputable manufacturers"?  This is a myth like the Big Foot.  Buying electronic is like playing Russian Roulette nowadays.

Delta, XP Power, Artesyn are probably a little more upper-end. If you are genuinely concerned by noise, I feel you might have a better shot starting off in a little higher price bracket.

Mean Well seems to have a bad rep around here. But, Mean Well usually has the competition beat in terms of price by quite a lot. And, since people are probably buying the cheapest power supply that meets their needs (on paper), there's probably a lot more people buying Mean Well compared to from other suppliers. So, maybe disproportionate bias against Mean Well is due to larger pool of adopters.

That said, I've known Mean Well to cut it pretty close in the EMC department.

Huh? No it doesn’t! It routinely comes up here as a brand recommended as being a nice balance between price and quality. Is it in the same league as Delta, TDK Lambda, etc? No. But it’s much closer to them than to no-name junk, and costs a lot less.

[TimNJ]

Right, those transformer ac adapters are no good.  I have a bunch of those.  They never give out the correct voltage.

So, what are the "reputable manufacturers"?  This is a myth like the Big Foot.  Buying electronic is like playing Russian Roulette nowadays.

Delta, XP Power, Artesyn are probably a little more upper-end. If you are genuinely concerned by noise, I feel you might have a better shot starting off in a little higher price bracket.

Mean Well seems to have a bad rep around here. But, Mean Well usually has the competition beat in terms of price by quite a lot. And, since people are probably buying the cheapest power supply that meets their needs (on paper), there's probably a lot more people buying Mean Well compared to from other suppliers. So, maybe disproportionate bias against Mean Well is due to larger pool of adopters.

That said, I've known Mean Well to cut it pretty close in the EMC department.

Huh? No it doesn’t! It routinely comes up here as a brand recommended as being a nice balance between price and quality. Is it in the same league as Delta, TDK Lambda, etc? No. But it’s much closer to them than to no-name junk, and costs a lot less.

https://www.google.com/search?q=meanwell+EMI+eevblog+site:www.eevblog.com

Alright, well...I've definitely seen at least a handful of threads of people complaining about EMC issues when using Mean Well. I am not saying that these complaints are always justified, and as I noted, there is probably some bias against Mean Well due to a lot of people using them compared to other manufacturers. On the other hand, I have not seen many threads opened about EMC with other manufacturers. Anecdotal, small sample size? Yes. But, that was my observation.

I am not anti-Mean Well. I think Mean Well does a great job for the price.

[bobcat2000]

Huh... So... And...

Mean Well is no good even if they mean well?
It will hum my am/fm radio badly.

[MathWizard]

when i'm in a hurry for smps with low rf noise, i pick usually some router smps power supply (12V/2.5-3A) and it just do the job (last week i did this for dvb-t and fm amplifiers and it worked, another smps suppliy was noisy)
or just the transformer ones, you already got the idea, the 'heavy' bulky ones
i think the future is smps, old fellas will tell you smps is toooo noisy for this and for that, that's not true, there are sensitive stuff powered with smps, just good smps supplies

Yeah I used to have a junk box full of wall-plug SMPS, most all of them from internet providers or satellite boxes. I never properly measured the noise on them, but they were fine on breadboards. I trusted them way more than any I got from ebay with some gadget.

[james_s]

Some thrift stores will have a bin of random AC adapters, I usually take a poke through that and grab any that look like high quality units in useful output ratings. Used to be one that only charged 99c for them, unfortunately that place has been gone for a few years but there are lots of others.