Mighty stopped charging, three months past warranty
I'd like to start off by saying I absolutely love my Mighty, it has gotten quite a bit of use over the past two years and I've always considered it a great purchase and investment. I spent 6 months abroad where I couldn't use my Mighty, so in total I used it for about 1.5 years on a regular basis.
About a week ago my Mighty started having some trouble charging. The charger would only work when inserting it at a specific angle, but apart from being a little bothersome when using it plugged in the charging worked fine. I decided to buy a new power adapter to have one on hand when the old one inevitably died. Strangely, the new power adapter didn't work at all. Not even when inserting it at the angle the other one did work at. Frustratingly, today my old power adapter also stopped giving a charge, no matter how I plug it in. My Mighty is now unusable.
The Mighty itself worked absolutely fine until it depleted its battery, so I kept believing the adapter was at fault. However, I also find it hard to believe that I just so happen to have two broken power adapters (one of them being brand new). I sent an RMA request to S&B (I'm in the EU if that helps) and because my S&B is 3 months over warranty they won't take it in for repairs and only offer to replace it for a 'discounted' 250 euros.
I'm a student so I just can't afford that amount of money, and its extremely frustrating that a 350 euros device that I painstakingly saved money for only has a lifespan of 1.5 years... I'm also worried to buy a replacement because if its just going to die again right after my warranty expires it's going to be an expensive joke.
Does anyone have any suggestions for things I can try? Are there any simple self-repairs I could try, or has anyone experienced a similar problem? The power adapters are both seemingly the old type which I read was known for having some issues, but I never had problems with it before leading me to believe the problem is with the Mighty itself. The battery life is also still fine and held a decent charge when it still charged, so I think the charging port on the Mighty itself might be the problem. I tried cleaning it (although it looked clean anyway) but that sadly didn't work. Thanks in advance!
Posted Feb 1, 2018, 8:10 AM UTC
It does sound like a simple connection error.
The mighty charger is 12v at 3 amps. This is quite unusual, so another charger might look identical (for a hard drive etc) but won't be poweful enough.
If your new charger is rated as such, it does sound like all you need is to resolder the connections on the 12 v input (internally). This is a challenging bit of soldering but certainly not impossible.
My mighty charger has broken twice - I resoldered the pins onto the 12 v plug (the bit you push into the mighty) and it worked fine again. Then several months later it broke again, I just bought a new connector on ebay for £1 and resoldered the wires. So now it's good as new. If you have a multi meter you can quite easily find out if the charger or the mighty is at fault...
Thanks for the suggestions, I sadly don't have a multi meter at hand but I might know someone who does. I'll have to test that out. The chargers both came from S&B, so they're original Mighty chargers. I'm returning the new power adapter to have it replaced, so I hope that'll do the trick. My gut tells me it's probably the Mighty that's at fault though.
In that case it will be the mighty... unfortunately.
I've never opened the mighty and dont' know how easy it would be to do a self repair. You don't have much to lose though, I would certainly try. Find a friend who is good at soldering! You can also get conductive epoxy (rather than solder) but it's pretty expensive
(but be sure by eliminating the chargers before doing anything)