A-514 Ac Adapter

• Charge devices with USB charge function via USB cable without computer
• Includes 4 connectors: Europe, UK, Japan & US, Australia

INTRO: We bought the Olympus A514 unit to power and/or charge the superb Olympus DM-520 voice recorder that I bought for my mate. After some initial difficulty inserting the correct wall jack adapter (they include the most common 4 types), the unit has performed as expected and posed no problem after 2 months of daily use.

DESCRIPTION: The charger is the fairly common USB power brick design providing 5 volts to USB powered and/or charged devices connected by a USB cable that *YOU* provide and insert into the power block's full sized USB female jack. The all black, all plastic block is much smaller than older style dedicated power units but much larger than the tiny iPod charger block.

PACKAGING: The packaging consists of a compact glossy cardboard box containing 5 items: The main power block (without any wall plug) and 4 wall jack adapter plugs one of which you slide into the side of the power block. The mating of the adapters is where the unit loses credits. No USB cable is provided in this package.

OLYMPUS-SPECIFIC FEATURES: When used with an Olympus device like the superb DM-520 voice recorder, this power unit allows you to power the recorder and charge the batteries at the same time or power the recorder only to avoid unneeded recharging. See your Olympus recorder manual for a section on selecting the mode. On theDM-520, you press and hold the STOP button when inserting the USB cable to place it into power with charge mode. Not doing so defaults to power only. Remember, all rechargeable batteries have a finite number of recharges so it behooves you to NOT charge your batteries constantly.

WORK FLOW: We use the unit to power and charge our DM-520 voice recorder as follows. My mate plugs the unit in without holding STOP so it defaults to power only mode. Once every 1-2 weeks, I will re-mate it with the STOP button pressed to initiate the power + charge mode. That should maintain the life of the batteries for a few years and ensure there is always a charge when it is needed to operate the unit naked in the field without a charger.

PROBLEMS: Each wall jack adapter plug slides into a shoe on one side of the power block very similar to how a camera's flash unit male mounting "tongue" slides into the female "hot shoe" on the top of the camera. The problem is that the edges of the included adapters as well as the retaining edge rails on the block's recessed "shoe" area are plastic, simply molded without "rounds" or "fillets", and provides minimal clearance without any features to ease sliding and mating. So, you have to squint a little, line up an adapter, push it in fairly hard and hope there is minimal "flashing" or other plastic defects on the plastic forms so that it will mate completely.

BOTTOM LINE: If you only need to mate the unit to a single wall jack style and carefully insert the adapter correctly, you should be fine and have no aftertaste. We have forgotten the problems and view the unit simply as a power adapter that works. On the other hand, if you need to use different adapters for foreign travel, I'd re-mate all adapters several times to wear any plastic edges or flashing and ensure they work as required.

OUR RATING: We would have given the unit 4.5 stars were it not for the cheaply designed adapter plug plates. However, since they do work after a little playing around, we reduced the rating only by 1 star to 3.5. Since we cannot enter a ½ and it is clearly not 4 stars, we entered 3 stars.

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