Difference between Isolated driver and Non-isolated driver (power supply)

The isolated power supply use a transformer to transform AC220V voltage down to a lower voltage, then rectified into DC output. Because the primary coil of the transformer will withstand AC220V voltage, the secondary coil is exposed only to low AC voltage output, and there’s no direct connection between primary and secondary coils, so it is called as “isolated power supply”. For non-isolated power supply, AC220V is connected directly to the electronic circuits, electronic components step-down the voltage to lower output, so input and output is connected directly through the electronic components, so we call it as “non-isolated power supply”.

The advantages of the isolated power supply is: do not pose a threat to the human body, wide voltage performance is very good. The isolated power supply can get constant current precision within ± 5% which is hard to achieve by non-isolated power supply. However, comparatively, the non-isolated power supply has higher efficiency and the cost is lower.

Generally, as far as safety use is concerned, we recommend to apply isolated power supply; but if the end user has no safety concern and the main concern is economical solutions, we recommend to use non-isolated power supply.