The LS-15 AC power cables made in 2011 are dangerous

Dec 12, 2014 09:20 GMT  ·  By

Fire hazards are not fun, especially when they go from hazard to reality. Something which pretty much always has to happen to at least a bunch of people before relevant people wizen up to the existence of the fire hazard itself.

Such has proven to be the case for Lenovo's LS-15 AC power cable, which was shipped with the IdeaPad B-, G-, S-, U-, V-, and Z-Series notebooks.

If you own a Lenovo-branded B/G/V-Series laptop, chances are your power cable is liable to overheat and catch fire as well.

The fire danger of AC power cables

Lenovo has recalled power cords in the United States of America and Canada, due to an issue that could cause burns or outright fire.

According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, fifteen incidents have been reported outside of the US only, but Lenovo has issued a recall in America but not outside of it yet.

Perhaps Lenovo is still building the list of power cables likely to be affected by the problem. In the US alone, there are around 500,000, while Canada accounts for 44,000 or so. Considering how huge Lenovo's customer base is outside America, especially in China, it can very well be a real hell to track down all the defective items.

For those who want more details, the cables were made between February and December 11 and have gone through such things as melting, overheating and sparking, even outright burning on some occasions. So far, no injuries have been reported, so there's that small mercy at least.

How likely you are to be affected

The cords may have been manufactured back in 2011, but the products they sold with shipped from retailers between February 2011 and June 2012.

If you use an LS-15 AC power cable, you might want to contact your closest Lenovo representative and arrange for a replacement, even if no evidence of fire hazard caught your eye. The Consumer Product Safety Commission takes these things quite seriously.

For more information, you can go to Lenovo's official website and click on Support at the bottom of the page, then select News and Alerts, then click on Recalls.

Identifying the type of cord is easy. All of them are black in color and have the "LS-15" molded mark on the AC adapter end. Finally, a label attached to the cord has the manufacture date code in the format REV: 00 YYMM.

Lenovo recalls power cords (4 Images)

Lenovo's hazardous power cable
Lenovo power plugThe label
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