Is your laptop charger on a recall list? How to check in two minutes

When a laptop part gets recalled, it tends to be the charger or the battery: the two parts that carry mains power or store a lot of energy. Australia keeps one official list, and checking it takes two minutes.

Where to look

The ACCC’s Product Safety Australia site lists every consumer recall in the country. Search it for your brand and the word “adapter”, “charger” or “battery”: productsafety.gov.au/recalls. Apple and Dynabook (Toshiba) also run their own serial-number checkers for older adapter programs.

What a recalled charger looks like

Two Australian examples show the pattern. A Targus 45W USB-C laptop charger was recalled because the faceplate could separate from the plug body and expose live parts, a risk of electric shock. Dynabook recalled a range of Toshiba laptop AC adapters in 2024. In both cases the fix was a free replacement; you don’t pay for a recall.

Signs your charger needs replacing, recall or not

• The brick gets too hot to hold comfortably.
• The cable is frayed near the plug, or the plug only works at an angle.
• The laptop charges intermittently, or the battery percentage jumps around.
• A smell of hot plastic.

A cheap unbranded replacement is the false economy here. A charger that delivers the wrong voltage or has no proper safety certification can damage the charging circuit, which is a board repair, not a cheap part. Bring the machine and the charger in together and we’ll tell you which one is the problem.

We update this page when a recall affects the machines we see. Last checked: 10 September 2026.