We have a family of techie nerds.  Techie nerds like a lot of techie toys. Most of the time, while we watch television, some of the family is multi tasking and researching something for work/school on their laptops,  playing games or texting/chatting with friends on their phones. Our house is older and we do not have outlets in convenient places (like the floor) to be able to easily plug in to charge while sitting on our couch.  So, we bought one of these for our coffee table, ran the cord under the couch and covered the cord with a cord protector.  We used to have a electrical strip sitting on the floor and it was a nightmare with people tripping over it, and the dogs laying on it.