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Yep mine are all in place of the cigarette lighter. It was a poorly designed cigarette lighter & it probably wouldn’t have worked to light one anyways vs a zippo so I slapped the USB into that space.
I replaced my cigarette lighter with a new/working plug and then piggy backed from there to a dual USB charging port that I installed in the ashtray pull out. I rarely have more than one accessory plugged in so it's a little overkill but I didn't want to get rid of the cigarette plug as my portable ham radio has a powered option that uses the plug so wanted to keep that as an option.
USB-Plugs are very unreliable, most of them are of very low quality. Smart phones draw up to 2 amps and then the gold plating (if there was a gold plating at all) is gone and the phone cannot charge at the full rate anymore, it charges at a lower rate which can take forever. Especially if you use a navigation app with brightness at max the phone needs the max charge current in order to maintain the battery level. I had trouble with cheap chargers/connectors, although the thing was charging, the battery was drained, because the current wasn't sufficient. In addition these plugs are mechanically unreliable, especially if the car gets shaken by off-roading. USB-Plugs are not universal, you can't plug in other devices like 120VAC inverter, compressor, water pump or other chargers which need 12V.
I switched completely to 4-pole-Neutik-Connectors. Contacts are rated at 40 amps. If you use the 4-poles then you can run two contacts in parallel that gives you 80 amps in theory. In addition, they have an integrated twist lock latching system, so they never come off by itself.
For phones and tablets I made my own USB chargers with Neutrik-plugs and quality micro USB connectors. I installed in total ten 12V outlets, some run on 2nd battery (for charging overnight or external power when camping), some run on ignition. Below are some pictures of some of my installations.
Outlet replaced with a Neutrik type. The dust and water tight rubber covers (IP65) are available optionally:
Installed outlet on a blind panel. Perfect place for a phone charger. Picture shows it with my custom USB charger plugged in:
Wow 80 or even 40 amps is far overkill for a phone charger. It seems silly to upgrade to such a connector but then wire them to the "inferior" usb connectors anyways. Although for something like an Air Compressor or Fridge that comes with a cigarette 12v plug this would be a fantastic upgrade.
I think a better arguement for not going with a dedicated USB outlet would be the multiple different charging methods, i.e. Rapid Charging, Fast Charging, Qualcom quick charge, usb-c, usb-c Power Delivery, whatever apple uses, etc. Granted if you know the limitations of your chosen outlet then USB outlets are great, you can hook up such a wide range of accessories to a standard USB-a port.
You can always use a Neutrik to USB type A outlet adapter, but this adds more points of failure (connector). The main reason I am using Neutriks is mechanical reliability (locking), the amp rating is just a nice side effect. And they are very affordable, they are even cheaper than the cigarette lighter type plugs and sockets.
Last edited by Discorama; Jun 20, 2019 at 04:01 PM.
The unit I use is from a Can-Am side by side. It’s weather proof & 2.0amp. It charges my iPhone 6P just fine. It’s been in my Kalahari for nearly 3 years now.
USB power jack added...
