Kevin Kelly's "Cool Tools" review: APC Universal Plug Adapter

I hauled around multiple sets of five different adaptors on a recent trip to Asia — there were five different flavors of outlets along my travel route, and I had a bunch of tech gear in tow. Sure could have used one of these $16 all-in-one converters. Snip from Keith Smith's review in the latest edition of Kevin Kelly's "Cool Tools" newsletter:


If you've ever traveled to Europe, you've taken or bought a plug converter. If you've traveled much at all, you've probably purchased a set of these things in a lovely (and huge) travel case. Equally likely is that you've either forgotten one or two or lost them somewhere along the road, forcing you to purchase spares that don't fit in the original case.

For this reason, I got tired of a bag of random adapters and went looking for a universal one. I found two or three of them and they all had one thing in common; they were the size of a baseball (I'm obsessive about size and weight when I travel). So when I stumbled across this adapter by APC, I fell in love. It's small (1x2x4 inches), it's packable, it has all the adapters I need, and it works. If you travel overseas and you're sick of a computer bag that weighs more than your luggage, you have to have this.

Link to the APC Adapter at Amazon, and here's the latest Cool Tools with reviews for lots of neat stuff I'd never heard of.