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A Look Inside Apple's $130 USB-C Cable

Adam Savage’s Tested6 HN recommenders · recommended in 5 months, 2023–2026
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explainer · general · evergreen · 2023–2026 on HN

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

@ssl-32026-01 · in “We X-Rayed a Suspicious FTDI USB Cable”

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.

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@tiffanyh2025-01 · in “Thunderbolt 5 vs. Thunderbolt 4: Everything you need to know”

Adam Savage (Myth Buster) did a video on why Apple Thunderbolt-4 is so expensive ($130), by looking at the detail in construction vs cheap alternatives. ▶ this video

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@lloeki2024-12 · in “EU law mandating universal chargers for devices comes into force”

▶ 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.

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@al_borland2024-02 · in “Vision Pro Teardown – Why those fake eyes look so weird”

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

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@wlesieutre2023-11 · in “In Defense of RAM”

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

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