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

Adam Savage’s Tested · 4.4M views · 2023-10-25 · 21:52

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Overview

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.

On Hacker News

Linked whenever people ask why a Thunderbolt cable costs so much; the CT scans show the construction difference clearly.

Recommended by 6 HN people across 5 months · HN mentions 2023–2026

Topics

Repair, teardowns & right to repairConsumer devices & gadgetsElectronics & circuit design
Search by tags
thunderbolt 4usb-cct scancable engineeringlumafield

What people said

ssl-3 · 2026-01 · Recommendation

Lumifield quite recently showed on Adam Savage's Tested again, with some literal insights on a reasonably-diverse array of different 18650 cells: [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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tiffanyh · 2025-01 · Recommendation

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. [VIDEO]

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lloeki · 2024-12 · Recommendation

[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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Sources

Video by Adam Savage’s Tested, played through YouTube.

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