to contrast the $40 USb cable I bought and just posted about I also found this rather cool and reasonably prices $13 usb-c cable which is completely metal encased include the wire.
anyone familiar with this sort of spiral metal jacked knows it is flexible but it prevents sharp turns. My hope is that despite only being 13$ this design will prove to be a long-lived cable that stands the test of time and never puts strain on the wiring.
The other thing I like about it is that the entire outside has thick metal so it basically has (at least in theory) really good thick shielding that should be grounded (I hope, the outside connector on USB are usually grounded). So this should have a nice little added bonus of being well protected against EMI.
@freemo
That looks like it belongs under the kitchen sink...
@lucifargundam if it stands the test of time I dont care how it looks. I'm tired of usb cables breaking on me!
@sapphire true, but im not sure i want to carry 3 or 4 around with me just in case they start failing or are DOA either.
@sapphire No it is quite common for USB cables to arrive out of the factory with intentionally or unintentionally incorrect connections. Some for example will only deliver power and not have the data lines in place. Hard to say how often this is intentional and bad manufacturing but it is a known problem with cheap cables that they may not work out of the box for certain uses (data and/or power)
@sapphire yes intraday failure is, at least partly, on me. But its also possible poor usb quality means they fail much quicker with much less stress than a higher quality cable. I've had cables die on me in a day, and others last me multiple years. How long they last seem strongly correlated to the company i buy it from (and consequently the price).