Power
Voltage and chargers
One power supply on this site states 15V and another states 5V. They come from the same seller, they are sold for appliances from the same maker, and they are not alternatives to one another. Everything below exists because a barrel connector that slides in tells you nothing whatever about the number behind it.
Two different numbers
A supply has an output voltage printed on its body. An appliance has an input voltage printed on the appliance itself, or on the supply that arrived in the box with it. When the two agree, the appliance charges. When they disagree, what happens next ranges from nothing at all to an appliance that never wakes up again, and no listing predicts which.
The two supplies here differ by that number and by almost nothing else visible. Same seller, same style of listing, similar plug. If you were choosing between them by appearance you would have no way to choose, which is exactly why the number is written on both of them and quoted on both cards.
A cable is a third kind of object. One item here is described as a charging cable, and its listing prints no voltage of its own, because a cable delivers whatever the supply on the far end produces. That moves the question back to the supply and leaves the cable out of it.
The model list
Each of these listings carries a list of model numbers, and that list is the entire compatibility claim. It has been copied onto this site letter for letter, in the seller’s own spelling, including the entries that name a whole series rather than one appliance.
It has not been extended by a single entry and it will not be. A model number one digit away from yours belongs to a different appliance, and the prefix those two numbers share is a filing habit inside the maker’s catalog rather than a promise about what fits what.
This matters more here than almost anywhere else on the site, because these lists are long. Length reads as coverage, and coverage invites you to assume the pattern keeps going past the final entry. It stops there. The list ends where it ends.
Plug shape last
Barrel connectors come in a handful of common sizes and are shared across appliances that have nothing else to do with each other. A plug that seats firmly is evidence that a plug seats firmly, and evidence of nothing else.
Check in this order. The voltage printed on your appliance. Then your exact model, found inside the seller’s list. Then the connector. Reversing that order is how the wrong supply gets bought, because the connector is the only one of the three you can test by hand in the moment.
Cleaning cartridges
One item in this group is not power at all. It is a refill cartridge for a cleaning station, made by a company other than the one that made the station, and its compatibility is a sentence in its own listing rather than a statement from the appliance’s maker.
The rule is the same and the consequence is gentler. A cartridge that does not match wastes a cartridge. A supply that does not match can waste the appliance.
Stated and not stated
Stated by the listing
- A number of volts, printed as a number, on the supplies that carry one.
- Model numbers spelled as the seller spells them, in a list that has an end.
- The physical form of the thing: a supply with a plug, a bare cable, a sealed cartridge.
Not stated anywhere
- Any claim at all about an appliance whose model number is absent from that list.
- The figure your own appliance expects, which lives on the appliance and nowhere else.
- Approval from the company that built the appliance.
- How warm the supply runs, or how many years it keeps working.
Where this goes wrong
Choosing by connector
The barrel seats, the appliance is handed a voltage it was not built around, and the result shows up as a refusal to charge or as silence.
Read the voltage on the appliance first and leave the connector as the final check.
Reading a series as a range
An entry naming a series gets stretched to cover appliances the seller never wrote down.
Treat the list as a closed set and look for your exact model inside it.
Borrowing a supply
A supply from an unrelated device delivers its own output into whatever accepts the plug.
Keep each supply with the appliance it came with, and label both if two look alike.
Charging in the bathroom
Mains power meets a wet surface, which is a situation no water rating on the appliance describes.
Charge in a dry room, with dry hands, on an appliance that is already dry.
Cautions
- StopBefore any third-party power supply, read the voltage and the plug printed on the appliance itself or on the supply that came with it, and match both. A barrel that fits is not a match, and 15V into an appliance expecting 5V is a dead appliance.
- StopCompatibility is the list of model numbers a listing prints, copied and never extended. Two model numbers that share a prefix are a naming convention, not a statement that one part serves both.
- StopCharging happens away from the sink and the shower, with dry hands, and never while the appliance is still wet. A water rating describes an appliance in use, not an appliance connected to mains power.
- NoteReplacement foils, cutters and heads come from the list printed in the appliance’s own documentation. A part that seats is not the same as a part the maker names.
Where to look next
- Power and Refills
The four items this page is about, each with its model list printed as the seller wrote it.
- IPX and water
The other half of the electricity question, and the reason a water rating says nothing about charging.
- Runtime and charging
What a stated runtime figure covers, once the appliance is charging from the right supply.