Authentic chargers will last longer and won’t harm your device. Source: NewsComAu

The premium Apple puts on its accessories can make for a very sad emoticon face.

But while it’s tempting to spend your hard-earned money on cheaper versions of these much-needed accessories on eBay there are very good reasons not to.

Ken Sherriff, one very enterprising blogger and engineer, recently tore apart an authentic Apple iPad charger as well as a counterfeit version and found that not only did the fake version not deliver the same power quality but it was actually unsafe.

Real charger is on the left, fake is on the right. Just from this picture you can see it’s dodgy. Source: Supplied

The counterfeit charger was advertised as 10W, but was just a 5W charger which means it will charge your iPad at a much slower speed than the authentic version. The counterfeit charger also had fewer parts, less insulation and was put together poorly.

Apple now requires all third party cables and accessories that use the iPad or iPhone’s lightning port to have a chip inside that verifies them as being Apple approved. Most cheap cables on eBay don’t have these chips and won’t work with your phone at all, effectively flushing your money down the toilet.

So while there are many mobile accessories such as hundreds of Hello Kitty cases that you can buy safely on eBay, the moral of this story is that chargers/cables aren’t one of them.