Evaluation of 35 charging cables: Is it a waste of money to spend 145 yuan on the cable?

On the sixth day of the Lunar New Year, a touching topic became a hot search - #The moment of unplugging the charging cable before leaving home#. The reluctance to leave home is fully reflected in this action.

Mobile phones that are always running out of power, shared power banks that are becoming more and more expensive... While our lives today are inseparable from mobile phones, we are also increasingly dependent on charging cables.

Following the review of 12 chargers released last year, this year we are also reviewing 35 charging cables!

1~20 Apple charging cables; 20~35 Android charging cables

For this review, the electrical engineer bought a new device without telling his father Wei, which cost 6,500 yuan (shhh, keep it a secret!)

For those who use Apple phones, please pay attention to numbers 1 to 20, and for Android phones, please read numbers 21 to 35. The full text is long and contains many professional terms. For those who can't wait, please check the evaluation results directly here↓↓↓

If you are mentally prepared, follow our review and see how "different" the charging cables you use every day are!

As can be seen from the family photo of samples, the prices of charging cables vary greatly, with the cheapest being a few yuan and the most expensive being hundreds of yuan.

They are all charging cables, and they can all charge your phone. So what is the difference between the cheap and expensive ones? We first conducted the most important charging speed test on 35 charging cables.

Apple's charging cable uses the iPhone 12+ original 20W charger; Android uses the Huawei mate30pro mobile phone, which uses the Huawei original 65W charger and Apple 20W charger respectively.

When the battery level of the mobile phone was 15%, the voltage, current and power of each charging cable were tested. The results are as follows:

Whether through this review or in life, it is not difficult to find that there are more and more charging cables, and different mobile phones, computers, tablets and various electronic devices require different cables.

Otherwise, they either cannot be shared, cannot be charged, or cannot be fast charged... As a consumer, I am really tired. When can they be unified!!!

The latest unsolved mystery↓↓↓

Why does my charging cable break so easily?

Friends who keep pets must feel the same way. We have also launched a vote in the company group:

According to the voting results, the two most common causes of death for charging cables are: appearance damage and failure to charge. The former is easier to understand and is also very common, which is basically related to the material of the cable and the thickness of the surface.

But the latter... must rely on actual testing. Next, we conducted an experiment that was very expensive:

35 charging cables were placed on a cable bending machine, and a 500g weight was hung at a distance of 50cm to simulate the force of pulling the cable; the machine was set to swing on both sides and swing 90° on one side to simulate the bending conditions during daily use.

New equipment costing 6500 yuan

Record how many times each charging cable was bent before it became damaged and how many times it failed to charge, and select the "strongest ones" -

·

After 60,000 bends, the ones that can still be charged are: No. 2, No. 5, No. 6, No. 9, No. 28 and No. 33. For those whose charging cables often break, you can use a charger!

In the last round of voting and bending tests, the phenomenon occurred: the surface was intact, but it could not be charged.

In order to prevent everyone’s charging cables from dying in obscurity, we conducted another experiment to destroy charging cables—the electrical engineers disassembled all the charging cables!

From the appearance, the charging cable consists of two parts: the wire and the connector.

After disassembling the 35 samples one by one, it can be found that samples 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, and 13 of the Apple charging cables and samples 21, 22, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, and 33 of the Android charging cables have better overall structures.

For samples with good structure and sufficient materials, the wires all adopt the structure of "tinned copper core + ground wire + aluminum foil + metal braided mesh + outer skin".

Not only does it have a metal tensile layer, but also an aluminum foil shielding net. The internal wires also have Kevlar wire and metal tensile wire added, so it performs well in the bending test.

For samples like No. 17, 18, 19, and 34, after removing the outer shell, there are only 4 wires, some of which are very thin, so fast charging is not possible, and they break quickly in the bending test.

Generally speaking, the connector part of the charging cable consists of a plastic shell, an internal steel sleeve, a PCB board and a connector.

After disassembling the plastic shell of the charging cable connector that performed well in the bending test, we found that a metal steel sleeve was used inside for encapsulation and protection. The steel sleeve was welded to the male connector, the side was encapsulated with a snap, and the inside was filled with injection molding.

When you take apart the connector of a charging cable that costs only a few dollars, you can see that the wire is directly welded to the PCB board, and there is no sealing glue or steel sheath on the outside.

After a period of bending, the weld is prone to breakage. After all... many people unplug the charging cable like this -

In order to extend the service life of the charging cable, we recommend that you pinch this "small handle" to pull it out.

Do you know why branded charging cables are expensive? Remove the steel sleeve on the connector and you can see this small chip on the PCB.

Generally speaking, the chip is used to control the charging voltage and current. However, its more important function is to sync with the charging board chip of the mobile phone. Only after the docking is successful can fast charging be performed (provided that you have a charger that supports fast charging).

Apple charging cables use MFi chips, while Android ones use E-Marker chips. Let's also test whether these charging cable chips are genuine or fake.

According to the test results, there is basically no problem with the chips in original and branded charging cables. It really is true that you get what you pay for!

As an "electronic device", the best solution for charging cables is definitely original accessories. But usually we will encounter "various obstacles" when purchasing, such as: price, material, length, etc.

Therefore, in addition to branded charging cables, if you want more choices, you can refer to the following recommendations:

Finally, we sincerely hope that brands can put consumers’ needs first when pursuing “social responsibilities” such as environmental protection.

Say it loudly: I really want a durable charging cable! ! What else do you want to complain about charging cables? Leave a message in the comment section

Editor | Yuanyuan

Design | Suansuan, Damao

References:

[1] GB/T 32638-2016 Technical requirements and tests for power adapters and charging data interfaces for mobile communication terminals

[2] USB Power Delivery Compliance Test Specification by USB-IF

Source: Dad Review