It’s obviously the one in the country I live in. All the others that I have had zero experience with are from Satan.

I would argue that neither of the plugs shown in the picture nor those mentioned by others are the best.

Ignoring current adoption, I think that IEC 60906-1 is the best plug. It is very similar to the Swiss plug and was intended to, at least in the EU, replace other plugs. It has quite a few advantages over the other plugs. It is rated at 16 A, has a compact form factor, is polarised, and has almost all the common protections except fuses (which are pretty much useless anyway). Currently it only is used in South Africa without major changes to the plug.

Compared to the Schuko (Type F):

• Much smaller. You can fit three plugs in the same space as a single Schuko plug (similar to Swiss triple outlets).
• It takes less force to plug in. Above 2.5A, Schuko plugs require a lot of force to plug in and pull out. To some extent, this is actually good for safety, but I would argue that, in the case of Schuko plugs at least, it’s too much
• It is also easier to plug in without seeing the plug since it isn’t round. Everyone who has tried to plug in a Schuko plug without seeing the holes knows how difficult it is
• It’s polarised/directional. In some very specific cases, there is a security advantage to using a polarised plug, but I think it’s also a hassle to only be able to plug in a plug one direction. It also fits Europlugs (the thin, small plugs with only two pins that are very common in Europe, e.g. on phone chargers)

Compared to (Typ G)):

• Wayyy smaller
• Not a stepping hazard
• Rated for 16A (instead of 13 A)

• No Fuse (Again, pretty unecessary)

Regarding three-phase power, I would argue that Swiss type 15 (10A) and type 25 (16A) plugs are the best. These are really cool because while beeing the same size as Schuko (Typ F) plugs, they can transfer three-phase power (so 11 kW; 230 V / 16A on all three phases). They also fit standard Swiss single-phase and Euro plugs. This makes plugging in large appliances like electric stoves much easier than in other countries.

I would find it quite cool if most countries switched to one common plug, and I think IEC 60906-1 would be best for that. It would also be possible to build hybrid sockets for many common plugs during the transition phase.

This is the most definitive argument that type J is superior to all others:

Image showing an arrangement of 3 swiss plugs in the same footprint as one french one

There was two different ways you could have ordered this alphabetically, and you failed to do either.

Type I.

ElectroBoom (Youtube) made some points about Australia’s Type I. Seems it was very hard for him to electrocute himself. Lots of breakers on the outlets. I mean he did electrocute himself, but he was always going to.

Swiss Type J, because you can have three of them, taking up no more space than one German or French plug.

The UK plug is nice. Very robust, it connects to ground before it reaches the power line and has a switch but it’s clunky.

The British plug has a lot of features that are supposed to make it very, very safe. It’d be interesting to see if there’s a study out there that tries to make apples-to-apples comparisons of electrical accidents in different countries. Do those features actually work out in practice?

The US plug is bad, but does that actually translate into more accidents? Hard to say. If you can do the study above, then you can start making the argument for switching to something else.

Well the answer is obviously the UK plug some of those others are just plain bad. The question is are they all made largely obsolete by USB C ? and is that the closest we are likely to get to a universal plug and socket?

All outlets should just be replaced with IEC C13. Robust and compact.

Brazilian Type N looks like it’s not a big deal, but the shape and depth are actually extremely good - you get a fantastic connection that never wobbles but also comes out when you need it without having weird pins or moving locks that always end up failing in some other designs. It’s also compact and stacks nicely.

I have a strong preference for the German and Swiss types, but I think we can all agree that Japan massively fucked up. They took the already shitty American plug and just forgot about the ground.

Still trying to figure out why Germany is listed separately from the EU.

I really like the power outlets in the EU. You don’t have to fart around with different sized prongs and the voltage is higher which makes things like tea kettles far more efficient.