What should I use to power my Raspberry Pi?

Mason, the current rating relates to the maximum working load the Supply will give.

This is NOT the current it will give regardless of what the device wants. Basically if your device requires 500-700ma then great it will get it 1A then again no problem all the way to a maximum of 2A.

I use my Note3 Charger on my Pi quite often and have no problems. The supply is well built and also not been strained by the Pi so should be very reliable.

John

I agree with John on the adapter, It is the cable you need to ensure is a good one, if you start experiencing weird behavior from the PI then suspect the cable first, try a different cable first if you have one rather then suspect the wall wart.

this could become more apparent if you add keyboard, mouse and WIFI dongle right to the PI

I too have used exactly the same adapter, with the supplied white cable which is of a good quality I think. It works totally fine.

Hi

Been there. It sucks

A decent phone charger (such as the one you mention) will be ideal.

The important part is the cable itself - after having a Pi for a long time I finally found a cable that works correctly. Basically you need to find the thickest cable you can find to allow the current to flow.

Thin cables will work to power up the Pi but will be unable to cope when the Pi wants to draw too much current causing brownouts, SD card corruption and all manner of similar loveliness.

This is a blog entry I did on that exact subject, if you ever get into issues, it might help you understand what is going on

Raspberry PI:- USB power cables, crashing and other problems

Peter

The power by my house in the 'burbs is really dirty.  The utility fixed the problem (susceptibility to lightning strikes) for the richies in the town across the street, but I dunno. . .

So I have had a few instances of losing $40-50 dollar boards and associated hubs and keyboard and memory dongles.  I'm beginning to put more thought into putting some protection here.

Go for a UPS and be done with it ... Fault on the hooky mains no problem ..Just keep rocking with your UPS !!

I have 2 APC1500va smart UPS for just this reason and 10 years latter they are still going fine if on their 2nd set of batteries !

That's the easiest solution.  The only down side is that its bulkiness sorta obviates my form-factor advantages of the Pi.  Now, I may as well just go Zotac.

Current consumption of a Pi with and without a WiFi adaptor attached as it boots up. From the Raspberry Pi Cookbook.

In between the supply and the board I would place a 1A fast-blow fuse.  Two diodes in reverse shunt.  They cost 50 cents each in a single:

1n5539 5.6 V Zener

1n5817 Shottky

Then I would probably relax.  You can only have so much protection.