AccessoriesReviews

Review: Accell Original PowerSquid surge protector and power conditioner

The Accell Original PowerSquid is a wall-mountable five-port surge protector, power conditioner, and surge protector, with a six-foot extension cord.  It’s designed to not waste any outlets to oversized biscuit-blocks, unlike a traditional extension block where you might only be able to make use of two or three outlets if you’re dealing with large transformers.

The PowerSquid seems designed to tackle an accessory nightmare I live with. My computer speakers use an AC converter block power supply, my cable modem uses a block, my wireless router uses a block, and I have three more blocks related to phone chargers, external hard drive power supplies, and a tablet adapter. I’ve also got block power converters unplugged at the moment for a two battery chargers, and an electric scarf I recently reviewed within close proximity. Throw in a computer and two monitors, and it looks like a hairball.

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For me, this means I have four power strips laying about, completely filled, pulling next to no power (judging by my Kill-A-Watt), off of the two wall outlets I have powering this mess. It’s not pretty.

The PowerSquid also features power conditioning for better audio, and theoretically better video on devices plugged into it. Not having particularly dirty power or line noise that’s noticeable, I can’t comment on that.

The PowerSquid features a “grounded” and “protected” light, as well as a standard power indicator. The ground light will tell you if you’re plugged into a properly grounded outlet or if the house’s previous owner slapped a three-prong outlet in without running a ground wire. The protected indicator lets you know if the power conditioning and surge protection is working properly, if it’s not you’ve just got an extension cord.

Here’s where I start to wonder about this product: It’s built extremely well, the cords are very thick, it feels like you should be running electric chainsaws off of the thing, but it’s for sensitive electronics. It’s far better designed than I feel it needs to be. This engineering tends to add more bulk to the thing, which negates some of the space savings you get from eliminating multiple extension cords.

One of the nicer things about the PowerSquid is the mounting. Most power bars have one or two screw locations on the back that you need to diagram out and screw in screws on another surface, and hope you measured it correctly. While you can do that with the Accell PowerSquid, you can also put one screw into the wall, mount the ‘Squid on it, and then secure the thing with an exterior screw.

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PowerSquid mounting options.

There are plenty of other variations of the PowerSquid, some for higher-end equipment, some for stuff you just don’t care about, and some for things 25 feet away. One even has a rotating flat profile plug, perhaps for Christmas trees or similar on a rotating stand.

The Original PowerSquid is available on Amazon for $24.99.

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Paul E King

Paul King started with GoodAndEVO in 2011, which merged with Pocketables, and as of 2018 he's evidently the owner. He lives in Nashville, works at a film production company, is married with two kids. Facebook | Twitter | Donate | More posts by Paul | Subscribe to Paul's posts

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