Adam Savage’s Tested
6 HN recommenders · recommended in 6 months, 2023–2026
21:52 · 4.4M views · Oct 25, 2023
Adam Savage and engineer Zach Radding examine Lumafield CT scans of Apple's $130 Thunderbolt 4 cable alongside cheaper USB-C cables. They explain the internal components that distinguish Thunderbolt from ordinary USB-C.
Linked whenever people ask why a Thunderbolt cable costs so much; the CT scans show the construction difference clearly.
8 comments from Hacker News
this video Maybe you could consider Apple cables to be overengineered , but I can readily understand why a cable built this way - irrespective of manufacturer - is not overpriced . And it's not just about a chip. The cable is simply factually better on every metric than the hand-soldered 4 wire el cheapo one at 15~16 min. There is no cult in that. Now if one only needs to carry USB 2.0 speeds or a limited amount of power it'd be ridiculous to buy a 100+ or even 50+ cable. That doesn't make the cable overpriced either, merely overspecced for that use case.
Lumifield quite recently showed on Adam Savage's Tested again, with some literal insights on a reasonably-diverse array of different 18650 cells: this video It's a good watch, and I learned some new stuff about some things that I only knew a little bit about before.
Bit of a stretch to call that a "charging cable." Their 240W rated 2 meter USB-C charging cable is $30 [LINK] But if you're interested in why the Thunderbolt cable costs more than charging cables, some folks put one through a CT scanner recently: this video
For those interested, this video shows scans of what is inside Apple’s cable vs cheap cables off Amazon. this video For those who prefer to read and want to look at the scans in more detail, that can be found here: [LINK]
You might want to see Adam Savage’s video about why, say, Apple’s $130 3’ Thunderbolt cable (the pinnacle of cables) actually is not overpriced. It also gives a sense as to what a quality cable is like. this video