TL;DR A different receptacle will not change voltage, frequency or anything about the electricity. It just changes the physical configuration.
But there are devices to change voltage and/or frequency. It gets complicated...
It is easy to change voltage. In fact, your utility sends electricity at thousands of volts and it is converted to 120/240 in the US, varying but similar voltage elsewhere in the world. For a long time there have been small travel transformers to convert, for example, 240V to 120V so that a traveling American could use their small appliances around the world or Europeans to use their small appliances in the US. And since most US homes have either 240V or 208V power available, it is not that hard to wire up an appropriate receptacle for European appliances.
However, frequency is a different story altogether. It is hard to change frequency. In fact one of the easiest ways might be a double conversion UPS - AC 60Hz to DC to AC 50 Hz, but I don't know if anyone makes such a device for routine use at a reasonable price.
For a lot of things, frequency hardly matters. The most common issue that I am aware of is not timing - typical appliances now use digital timers that don't care about line frequency at all. It is large motors, which will run at the wrong speed and might have major problems. I suspect the frequency detection you found isn't about getting timing right but about making sure you don't have motor problems.
Unless there is a great need (one of a kind medical device?) I highly recommend getting an appliance that is either designed for 60 Hz or flexible 50/60 Hz.
To address the issue of voltage, hot, neutral, etc. which has been discussed extensively in comments:
Most typical AC-powered consumer devices - lights, heaters, computers, coffee makers, vacuum cleaners, toasters, TVs, etc. - around the world today are designed for, broadly speaking, one of two power ranges:
- 100V - 125V - This covers US/Canada, Japan and a number of other places. There is variance by country and also historical. For example, typical equipment (appliances, receptacles, switches, etc.) for the US/Canada are rated for 125V (or more) but the typical voltage is 120V and many devices still reference 110V.
- 200V - 250V - This covers Europe, most of Asia, most of Africa, etc. It also covers US/Canada. The US/Canada standard split phase system delivers 120V between hot and neutral and either 208V or 240V (with some variance allowed there as well) between two hots. In places where 230V is the base consumer voltage then it is between hot and neutral with some higher voltage (e.g., 400V) between pairs of hots.
Some equipment, such as laptop power adapters, can actually use the entire 100V - 250V range.
Without a ground or neutral specific reference, there is no practical way for a device to "know" whether it is on a 240V system (like Europe) or on a 120V/240V system (like US/Canada). And it doesn't actually matter.
Where it can matter is safety. In the US/Canada (but not necessarily everywhere else) neutral and ground are bonded. Which means that if neutral and ground touch each other and you have a metal case that is bonded to ground, nothing will happen. That can be good for safety (a properly wired US/Canada light fixture with bulb sockets is installed so that the more accessible part of the socket is neutral rather than hot, which makes changing light bulbs relatively safe even if the hot wire is live), but in some cases (3-wire dryer connections with a broken neutral and a wet floor) be very dangerous.
But since many non-US/Canada systems don't have grounded receptacles everywhere (they still aren't everywhere in the US/Canada but most houses have plenty of them even if they still have some two-wire receptacles) and many systems are not polarized to force the hot/neutral configuration, best practice is to design consumer equipment for international use in one of a few ways:
- Both current carrying conductors fully insulated from any user access (i.e., little fingers).
- Plastic case or, if metal is used then no intentional contact between any current-carrying conductors or other "live" components and the case.
If built properly (and that is the job of UL, ETL, etc. to make sure equipment is designed and built properly) then the end result is that ~200V - ~250V equipment can be used in different countries around the world with the only change needed being the power cord/plug. Computers and many other consumer electronics take advantage of this by using a removable cord and including a different cord depending on the destination. Notably, some low-end laser printers include a permanently attached cord and that actually makes sense because while the control electronics are identical for 100V - 250V, the fuser (a heater that melts the toner onto the paper) is generally different for ~120V vs. ~240V.
The one exception to "anything 200V - 250V is pretty much the same everywhere" is frequency. Which is where this all started.
