I don’t recall a cable going (bad unless it was bad to begin with) but I’ve forgotten cables when out of town and needed replacements, and occasionally bought more just to have cables in more than one location in the house. I’ve never bought anything terribly expensive. The ones at Five Below are perfectly fine in my experience.
They’re cheap and the more the merrier (plus many vendors sell them in packs of 3-5). I probably have over 20 charging cables in total that I use or have used. Part of the reason is for different devices (mini USB, micro USB, USB C, ipod touch).
Plus I need them at different places. The desk near my chair in the living room. The car, the desk near the bed, work, my laptop case, my parents house, the external battery pack charger, etc. And I need different lengths. The car one is a retractable one. the one near the bed and desk are 10 foot cables.
It adds up after a while. I’ve got at least 20, and I don’t think I’ve ever had one fail.
This suggests to me two things:
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Your cables don’t move around much – they get plugged into one place and stay there. This probably keeps wear-and-tear to a bare minimum.
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No one cable is doing all the charging all the time. Should also increase the shelf life of a cable.
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TBG, I’ve been disappointed by the one cable I bought from Five Below. It didn’t just stop working cold turkey, though. It just started charging very slowly, and gradually got slower as time went on. It got to the point where being plugged in overnight only gained the battery maybe 10-15 percent. The Apple cord that came with the phone (which DOES seem bulletproof**), meanwhile, charges from ~20% to 100% in about 2 hours or better depending on the outlet.
** I have a three-year old Apple charging cord that was twisted too often and has about 2" of insulation frayed off near the phone jack, with exposed green-circuitry-looking material. Even so, the cord charges just fine. With my new Apple cord, I’ve learned that their cords (all cords?) kind of have a “grain” along which you can safely coil up the cord. Coiling it up willy-nilly leads to twists and chipping/fraying insulation (and maybe ruination with cheaper cords?).
It’s got genuine truth to it; you just have to be careful what lesson you take from it.
RIGHT: To save money in the long run, buy better quality, even if that better quality is more expensive.
WRONG: To save money in the long run, buy what’s more expensive.
More expensive items might be better quality, but there are a bunch of other possible reasons for the higher price.
Anker was going to be my suggestion; though I have had them go bad after a while (just like my original cables went bad after awhile.) I probably have about eight to ten Anker cables lying about for recharging. (We have four devices, one cable in each of our two cars, and then a couple spare cables upstairs.) I trust all their products.
Exactly. Vimes was saying that by buying better boots, which cost more, that person gets multiple seasons of use out of them, while the cheaper boots cost less in the short term, but you have to replace them more often, so over the lifetime of the higher quality boots, you actually spend LESS money.
It’s the same kind of idea in a sense, about buying in bulk. Even though it costs you more up front to buy a Costco/Sam’s drum of detergent, when you’ve washed the same number of loads, you’ll actually have spent more money overall buying your detergent in smaller bottles at the grocery store.
The devil’s in the detail though; you have to actually have enough spare cash to take advantage of these things. So even though you may know that $200 hiking boots are better than four pair of $50 Wal-mart crappers, you may not have $200 to take advantage of it.
I think that was the main point, really. He wasn’t saying people who buy cheap boots are making wrong decisions. It’s more a statement about the general unfairness of the world, that people who can’t afford good boots are burdened with the cost of replacing cheap boots every season, and still end up with wet feet.
I had a Five Below cable go bad. That’s the only one.
I bought Amazon Basics cables, and use them in my bedroom, car and living room and so far none have gone bad in 3+ years.
Maybe you need to buy some better cables, and in higher quantity, so that they’re not getting moved around so much? Mine never get moved, I bring the phone to them.
I read it a little more ambiguously, in that it wasn’t clear that people were necessarily aware that it was actually cheaper, just that they couldn’t or wouldn’t spend the money for the more expensive ones.
I mean, I know people IRL and have heard many on here claim that Vimes’ claim is essentially incorrect- that the cheap products are always nearly as good, and that you’re paying for the fancy nameplate or paint job.
Sometimes that’s true- back in the early 1980s, I took a tour of the Imperial Sugar mill with my elementary school class, and what did I discover in the packaging part of the plant? Every common local grocery store house brand of sugar was packaged in the same room and with the same basic product as the premium Imperial Sugar.
But on other things, it’s not. Your average $30 pair of Wal-Mart sneakers isn’t going to fit as well, perform as well or last as long as a good pair of Nikes or New Balance athletic shoes.
IMHO … charging cables should be engineered so that they can be moved frequently without being ruined. Isn’t that kind of a basic function of a charging cord – to allow charging wherever one may be? I think very few consumers would know intuitively that a charging cable should be plugged in somewhere once and never moved again.
Even though I haven’t had the problem, I’m not surprised, given the low price and high volume the chain must go through, it’d be weird if there wasn’t occasionally a bad one that got through. But IMO, even then, it’s worth the risk, given how even if you can’t return it (and you may be able to) you’re not gonna go broke for wasting 5 bucks on a USB cable.
Consider also that the connector(s) may be dirty.
I have an Iphone 5S which had been progressively getting harder to maintain a stable connection to the lighnting port. I gently stuck a toothpick into the lightning port and picked out a glob of lint! Now the connection is much more stable…
Just a thought…
Allyn
Ok. Then nevermind, just sit tight and wait for the manufacturers to change.
I was going to post the same. Anker ones are great.
While your point is taken … I still see it that collectively, consumers are getting shafted. De facto non-portable charging cables, to me, are like light bulbs being purposefully manufactured to fail after a few days. Or car tires that, by design, have to replaced every 500 miles. Repeated plugging-in/unplugging should be seen as central – not peripheral – to any charging cord’s function.
Besides – some manufacturers DO make properly robust cables. Still … I guess the marketplace, in aggregate, is letting the corner-cutters get away with selling what amount to non-portable charging cables. More’s the pity.
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I mean, I don’t think they’re de facto non-portable. They’re just really cheaply made, and their cheapness leads to failure when, for example, pulling it out by the cable instead of the plug (on either end).
If you want cheap plugs, you can buy cheap plugs. You will just find yourself replacing them more if you unplug them carelessly. The cheapest ones (I mean, they sell plugs AT DOLLAR TREE) you will probably find yourself replacing a lot even if you are plugging carefully.
So, as a consumer, you can buy a more rugged and more expensive cord that gives you what you feel is the right value of cost/use for the way you use it. Or you can get something less rugged and less expensive that is quite likely to fail with the way you use it.
If usage isn’t going to change, it might be time to invest in something that better suits your usage.
Anyway, we agree 