Unqualified Household Appliances: Main Causes and Analysis of Results

On 30th, May, 2023, the State Market Regulatory Administration of China announces the situation of national spot check on product quality in 2022, which publishes the 118 kinds of product quality and safety spot check conducted by the Market Regulatory Administration in 2022.

I. Overall Situation
In the whole year, 18397 enterprises producing and operating 19440 batches of products were tested and examined, and 1786 enterprises with 1827 batches of products were found to be unqualified. The spot check unqualified rate was 9.4%, which decreased by 2.8% compared with the previous year.

II. Spot Check Distribution in Region
The spot check covered 30 provinces (autonomous regions/municipalities). According to the proportion of spot check batches of the national spot check, the proportions of spot check batches with the highest proportion were Guangdong Province (21.6%), Zhejiang Province (16.9%), Jiangsu Province (10.2%), Hebei Province (8.1%), and Shandong Province (7.0%). From the regional spot check coverage, the spot check batches in the eastern, central and western regions accounted for 76.3%, 15.5% and 8.2% of the national total, respectively, which was generally consistent with the industrial agglomeration zones in China.

III. Quality Situation for Enterprises of Different Scales
From the enterprise scale, the number of large, medium and small enterprises covered in the spot check accounted for 2.3%, 5.9% and 91.8% of the total inspected enterprises, respectively, which was basically the same as the previous year. The spot check unqualified rate of large, medium and small enterprises was 1.6%, 2.9% and 10.1%, respectively, which was reduced by 0.5, 0.4 and 3.0% compared with the previous year respectively. The unqualified rate of spot check of products in large and medium-sized enterprises was maintained at a low level, and the unqualified rate of spot check of products in small-sized enterprises was much higher than that of the large and medium-sized enterprises. The result of the spot check indicated that there were more problems of product quality and safety in the products produced and operated by small enterprises.

IV. Spot Check Situation on Production and Circulation
From the sampling field, 12,734 batches of products in the production field were tested, accounting for 65.5% of the total number of national spot check, and the spot check unqualified rate was 6.6%; 6,706 batches of products in the circulation field were tested, accounting for 34.5% of the total number of national spot check, and the spot check unqualified rate was 14.7%, which was 8.1% higher than that of the production field.

V. Distribution of Product Spot Check Unqualified Rate
From the distribution of unqualified rate of each product in the national spot check in 2022, no unqualified rate was detected in 8 kinds of products such as motor vehicle child passenger restraint systems, sports helmets, car tires, nitrogen fertilizer, agricultural mulch film, plastic furniture, plastic bottle caps, and food contact paper containers; 59 types of products such as household gas stoves, old lenses and cement had unqualified rate less than 10.0%; 30 types of products such as color TVs, building waterproofing rolls, fireworks and firecrackers had unqualified rate between 10.0% and 20.0%; and 21 kinds of products such as electric bicycle batteries, suitcases, refrigerators and so on had unqualified rate above 20.0%, among which the five products with the highest unqualified rate were household double beds (83.1%), electric clothes drying racks (46.2%), phosphate fertilizers (46.0%), car gasoline detergents (44.0%) and industrial and commercial electric food processing equipment (43.8%).

Analysis of Results of Random Sampling of Household Appliances In the 2022 random sampling of household appliances, 15 products, including induction cooker, indoor heater, refrigerator, range hood, domestic electric washing machine, water storage electrical water heater, room air conditioner, electric clothes rack, air purifier, hair dryer, electric blanket, electric water kettle, dishwasher, electric hand warmer, and automatic electric rice cooker, from 1295 enterprises were sampled in 1416 batches. The unqualified rate was 17.7%. The unqualified rate of electric clothes rack, air purifier, hair dryer, induction cooker, indoor heater, and refrigerator were 46.2%, 37.9%, 26.3%, 23.8%, 20.5%, and 20.2%, respectively.

From the inspection items, the unqualified electrical safety indices and energy efficiency indices are the main unqualified indices of household appliances. The batches involving the unqualified projects (23 types of protection against contact with live parts, power connection and external flexible cords, leakage current and electrical strength at working temperature, grounding measures, mechanical strength, and components, etc.) accounted for 74.4% of the total unqualified batches of household appliance products; and the batches involving unqualified energy efficiency projects (energy efficiency level, etc.) accounted for 62.8% of the total unqualified batches. Among them, the unqualified batch numbers of energy efficiency level projects of refrigerator, air purifier, domestic electric washing machine, induction cooker, and range hood exceeded 60.0%, which are 75.0%, 66.7%, 64.7%, 63.3%, and 60.0%, respectively.

Partly because some household appliance production enterprises have an inadequate understanding of product standards or quality management capacity, leading to unreasonable product design, or instability in the quality control of the whole machine and some components during the production process, such as not having basic insulation in accordance with the standard requirements, or grounding terminals being not firmly clamped, partly because some enterprises use accessories that do not meet the standard requirements in order to reduce costs, such as setting the length of grounding wire shorter than the carrying line when pretreating power cords, and partly because some enterprises falsely label parameters for improper profits, resulting in misleading customers, the major reasons why household appliances are unqualified. An unqualified electrical safety index may cause electric shock or fire accidents, and an unqualified energy efficiency index may cause unnecessary energy consumption, increasing consumers’ energy burden and resulting in waste of resources.

LISUN LS9955/LS9956 Automatic Safety Test System (electrical safety analyzer) combined the following function in one set: Withstand Voltage Test (AC/DC), Insulation Resistance Test (IR), Leakage Current Test (LLC), Grounding Resistance Test (GR) and Power Test.

The LS9955/LS9956 Automatic Safety Test System is according to GB4706.1, IEC/EN60335-1, UL60335, GB7000, IEC60598, GB4943, IEC60950 and GB9706.1. It is used for luminaries, home application and motor tools safety test in production line or R&D Lab.

Automatic Safety Test System LS9955