I travel often to Europe, and in the past have always had hard time finding a proper power converter to help me use my electronic devices over there. However, I’ve finally figured out two things: 1. All those cheap power converters that you come across really don’t work. A true power converter would be too bulky and too heavy to carry around, especially on a plane. 2. Most of the modern electronic devices don’t need power/voltage conversion. They work perfectly well with both the US and European voltages. So what you really need is a plug adapter.

This Satechi adapter seems to work reasonably well. It can adapt to the plugs and devices from the US, UK, Europe, and Australia. In that respect it’s pretty universal. It also has a USB charger plug, which is an additional bonus since we are increasingly reliant on all of our small USB-charging devices.

The adapter is very well designed and built. It seems sturdy enough to withstand repeated handling and vicissitudes of international travel. It is fairly compact, and its cubic shape makes it very easy to store.

The most distinguishing feature of this adapter is, of course, the fact that it houses a fully functioning WiFi router. The router enables you to connect to an Ethernet cable and convert the wired Internet connection to a wireless one. This is particularly convenient when you are traveling and don’t have an access to a readily available wireless networking. The router is easy to setup and use, even for people with limited networking skills. It is still a very powerful and highly customizable router, and it offers a wide variety of networking functionality. It can, for instance, be used to setup a private ad-hoc intranet, which may come in handy when privacy concerns are important for a small working group. I also wish that it enabled a networked storage access, something that could in principle be easy to setup with the available USB port. This feature would probably of use to power users, but could also be utilized as a family media server.

Overall, this is a very thoughtfully designed voltage converter/travel router that could really be of use to frequent international travelers.