16. 360 Electrical Rotating Power Surge Protector

360 Electrical Rotating Power Surge Protector, $16

There are two reasons why standard surge protector power strips would not be ideal for a dorm room scenario. First, surge protector power strips must lie on the floor, but in a dorm room, an outlet near the desk is often placed in the middle of the wall. Second, strip-shaped surge protectors do not use space efficiently—electronics’ power bricks and plugs come in all different shapes and sizes and do not always play nice next to each other. The 360 Electrical surge protector solves both of these problems. It works perfectly with a mid-wall level outlet (no need to hang an extension cord with a power strip down to the floor) for items with shorter cords like mobile phones and media players, and features rotating outlets—twist and turn them into a nearly infinite variety of positions to make any four plugs fit. The plugs even stay powered while you rotate them. There are two LEDs on the device—a green one indicates that surge protection is on, while a red one indicates that the plugs and power quad are grounded.

There’s a screw protruding from the back of the surge protector. The idea is that it will fit into the hole that sits somewhere on the faceplate covering your wall outlet. It fit flush against all of our outlets, but we imagine that there are some outlet configurations out there that won’t accommodate this screw.