I've never worked with appliances so please excuse my ignorance on the subject. I retract that part of the rant. You are correct and I've upvoted you accordingly.

My comment regarding the flimsy nature of it will be proven. A rotating mechanical joint which needs to be pulled HARD (UK plus need to be pulled very hard) will fail rapidly and expose live wires. Not only that, the profile of the unit is very narrow and a small knock on the side of the device will most likely weaken the rotating joint resulting in complete failure.

With respect to the testing, similar devices have appeared in the past and have not been approved. I don't have a reference at hand but there was one around 2003 which was removed from the market rapidly after they lied over testing.

I was an electronics engineer until 2002 (specialist VLSI/FPGA/Avionics equipment).

I've got a Mu plug. I'm quite impressed by it; while it probably is less robust than a regular plug, my gut feeling is you'd have to hit it side-on with a hammer to stand a chance of breaking it while it was in a socket. The fold-out shield around the pins is reinforced and angled to deflect side-impacts. A USB cable seated in it pulls out long before it can exert enough leverage or force to pull the Mu's pins out of a socket. The rotating pin arrangement feels solidly built.

While I think it's a bit gimmicky at this point (and: £25 for a USB charger?!?) it's better designed than a lot of the crappy kit you see out there, and shows promise for something better to come.

Thanks for the objective review.