A useful source:
https://worldofsockets.com/
this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2025
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As someone who lived in the UK, the British one is far too chunky, especially in an age where most devices don’t use the mandatory earth pin (which is mechanically necessary to open the shutters in the socket). The one place it has an advantage over Europlug is in aeroplane seat sockets and such, where it stays in more firmly.
Having said that, the Swiss and Brazilian ones manage to get earthed connections into a slender footprint (the Swiss is compatible with unearthed Europlug, not sure about the Brazilian though it may be smaller). Apparently the Brazilian socket was proposed as an international standard by the IEC, though only Brazil adopted it.
Earth pin is a safety feature and a good one at that.
So is the shutter system. Blocking contacts unless a third is pushed in is great safety, particularly with kids.
And having your chargers look like clown shoes compared to the slender 2-pin chargers used in Europe, Australia and elsewhere is a small price to pay.
Do more kids really die of electrocution in, say, France or Germany than the UK?
I have no data, but seeing how modern differential fuses work, I doubt it.
Just jab a pen tip in the earth shutter, so you can push a European plug in, with little force. The diameters of the prongs are close.
That is true, though it is still taking up far more space than it could if the system accommodated unearthed plugs.
That's what I was referring to
For your toaster or iron, yes. For your USB power supply, mobile charger, LED table lamp, game console, etc., which doesn’t even have an earth connection, not so much. But your power board takes up twice the space of a European one with a row of slender unearthed sockets for such devices.
The British standard is still stuck in 1947, where the expected use cases were kettles, washing machines, pre-transistor radios using high-voltage thermionic valves, and the domestic labour-saving devices of the midcentury that needed to be earthed. That and the shortage of copper that led to British houses being wired with a ring main, and each plug having its own fuse, rather than separately fused circuits as elsewhere.
People still use kettles and washing machines.
You can get a USB power strip.
And for kettles and washing machines we still have earth connections. Doesn't make sense to make it mandatory so a 5W charger has to be bigger than the phone.
Just use a usb charger
That was my complaint...
You can still have sockets that accept grounded appliances like washing machines without ALWAYS requiring a bulky third prong that's not gonna get used anyways. And about the shutters you can have them open when both prongs are inserted at the same time
I have literally never felt that British plugs were bulky
Fair point, thing is there just exists a better way of doing small ungrounded plugs like phone chargers, I honestly haven't used a British phone charger but from what I saw they seem pretty bulky compared to what I have
Most public places including buses have USB ports. And my mains phone charger folds the earth pin in anyway, so it's not too bulky.
South Africa is also slowly adopting Type-N.
Europe was supposed to, but abandoned the idea
Interesting. How far along is South Africa’s adoption of it? Are they appearing in newly built houses or on appliances? And how are they handling the transition?
If 2-pin Europlugs won’t fit into a Type N, Europe may be better off in adopting the Swiss variant (which they do fit).
South Africa used to use a Mixture of M and C, and still mostly do.
But since 2018 building regulations require new houses to have at least one Type N plug installed. Adoption is slow, but N being compatible with C will hopefully speed things along.
Brazil just set a date limit after which no electrical equipment was allowed to be sold with non standard plugs. Eventually it all worked itself out.
Type N socket accepts type C plugs. And is clearly the superior choice. The IEC doesn't fuck around.