Searching for the best silicone USB cable | Hacker News Reader

Searching for the best silicone USB cable

frankchiarulli.com

87 pointsevakhoury60 comments

Just beware that an awful lot of "silicone" cabling coming from China is actually overplasticized PVC, particular cabling used in instrument probes. It feels like silicone until it starts getting stiff while at the same time outgassing plasticizer like crazy, or you touch it with a soldering iron or similar. I would expect most or even all of the cat-ran-across-the-keyboard Amazon brands to be overplasticized PVC, not silicone (hint: Use the Knockoff plugin for Chromefox, https://github.com/Shpigford/knockoff, which will warn you for stuff that's sold on Temu West, aka.Amazon, it's warning on almost all of the pseudo-brands listed in the article).

I've also run into way too much cabling that's CCA or even CCS. Garbage on the outside, garbage on the inside.

"…actually overplasticized PVC,"

Despite the point in my comment about power cable extensions coverings becoming hard through the lack of plasticizers, I confirm your point about overplasticized PVC in instrument cables.

I have a lot of instrument leads that I thought were silicone only to find that after a year or so they've gone hard. So much so that new unpacked ones can no longer be easily straightened (the kinks remain unless one heats the cable up and then straightens them).

Despite availability issues,the problem is trying to determine what's real silicone and what's not.

I used to buy vulcanized rubber (like SO cable) test leads from Oldaker Manufacturing in Dunkirk, Ohio. They had supplied them to Tripplett when the latter was still manufacturing meters in Bluffton, Ohio.

The ones I've had for decades are still working well; they're reliable and flexible.

I learned about the utility of rubber after becoming frustrated with PVC leads being stiff in cold weather. I stepped into Oldaker's shop on the way home one day and asked the nice older lady there about buying some silicone leads.

"Are you sure you want silicone," she asked. "Most people want rubber."

I was sure that she was nuts and that I knew exactly what I wanted, but I played along. She disappeared and came back a moment later with two sets of test leads: One with silicone insulation, and the other with rubber insulation.

I examined them both. I picked the rubber ones; they somehow seemed both tougher and more flexible. No regrets. I've bought more examples over the years for different things. (Perhaps it'd have been smart to have also bought some silicone leads from them as well, for long-term comparison. Alas.)

---

Anyway, Oldaker Manufacturing burned to the ground about 10 years ago. Whatever tooling and supplies remained after Tripplett packed up and left is simply gone.

Which is a bummer for a couple of reasons: First, they seemed like very nice people who were just trying to get by after their heyday was over. It was very much a mom-and-pop facility by the time I came 'round.

Second, I subsequently cannot find any reliable source of rubber-insulated test leads. It's only been a decade so far, and I do look occasionally. They do not appear to exist.

(There's probably be an opportunity here for someone to make test leads using vulcanized rubber and sell them, but it's limited. If it works and becomes popular, then someone overseas will clone it. And when they clone it, then others will follow with their own take. After that, it's just a hop skip and a jump before we reach the end game: Dilution.

Wherein: Overplasticized PVC test leads that are described as being rubber will be easy to find, and actually-rubber leads will be impossible to locate in the sea of noise.)

"I picked the rubber ones; they somehow seemed both tougher and more flexible. No regrets. I've bought more examples over the years…"

Right, depends on the quality of the rubber I suppose. I've been suspicious of rubber because when it's old it often turns into a gooey mess or goes hard and cracks (as with VR [vulcanized rubber] used in house wiring in the days before PVC — and often a cause of fires.

At the moment that's a bit close to home. I'm in Australia where power is 240V and only two days ago I needed to test an old Advantest spectrum analyzer and I wasn't sure if it had been strapped for 240 or 110V but didn't have a 240/110V transformer to hand so I dug out an ancient variac/auto-transformer to do the job and its power lead was vulcanized rubber which had turned into a sticky mush (replacing the lead didn't help as the windings had a short to the laminations).

Similarly, the rubber insulation on my super flexible AVO multimeter leads with many, many strands of superfine Cu wire has disintegrated. It's similarly perished (but they're well over 30 years old).

My first experience of silicone comes from its use as the outer jacket/insulation in microphone cables used in an industrial environment (TV studio). It was wonderful, cables were super easy to roll up and keep orderly, and despite its so-called reputation for not being rugged enough heavy camera dollies would regularly run over it without damage. These cables would last for years (the only occasional issue with them was when an XLR connector would get ripped off when caught on something and someone pulled super hard to free it).

I've no issue with using VR for leads except I've not been able to get it (for example, I can no longer get a replacement for my AVO leads).

You used to be able to buy silicone extension cords. Now it's all the new low temp plasticized PVC.

Is there a way to test a cable to see if it's PVC and not silicone?

Heat. PVC melts, silicone burns.

> hint: Use the Knockoff plugin for Chromefox, https://github.com/Shpigford/knockoff

le me: see README, spot slop tells, scroll to the files, see CLAUDE.md

Yeah I'd love to see a stopslop extension for Github, warning me if the usual suspects of slop bullshit are present.

WHAT

Okay. Is it inaccurate? Buggy? Defective or deficient in any material way?

I consider any form of AI generated stuff a waste of my time. I do not wish to interact with LLM generated content more than absolutely necessary and I loathe being surprised with uncanny valley "tells".

It does the job. I couldn't care if it was written by chickens pecking on a keyboard, as long as it works.

And the plasticizers (DEHP primarily) are really nasty, easily slough off onto your skin where they are absorbed. Don't ever put plastic cable in your mouth, or that of a child

100%, this is unfortunately what I've found, the vast majority of cables I've purchased so far are not genuine silicone

I cannot understand why silicone rubber is not more commonly available for cable insulation. It is so much better than much of the badly plasticized PVC and other plastics that are now used.

What's made this situation worse is that it seems that worry over plasticizers and health etc. has lead to a reduction in the amount being used in cables. I have some power extenstion cables whose jackets have gone so hard that I can no longer coil them effectively — even though I take care the coiled cable still ends up a tangled mess.

Even if silicone jacketing is more expensive it's so good I'd pay extra. Trouble is it's not normally available on products found at the local hardware shop.

Unless you're running cables inside an oven just buy SOOW aka EPDM cables. They are the recognized standard for flexible, rugged cable assemblies resistant to just about everything. Silicone rubber is only used in very special cases because it's not as UV resistant or mechanically resilient.

Sorry, not available where I am, nor do I see USB, coaxial cables etc. of that type.

> SOOW aka EPDM cables

AFAIK there's nothing about the SOOW spec that requires EPDM.

> I cannot understand why silicone rubber is not more commonly available for cable insulation

Silicone is more flexible and high-temperature resistant, but it does have a major downside of being very easy to cut and strip. That's not great either, especially for power applications where short circuits are a concern.

Silicone also kinda sucks for crimping. Most crimps have one set of tabs which grab the conductor (which is fine) and then another set which grab the insulation, but in the case of silicone the insulation set tend to just slice the insulation and don't mechanically grab it.

I bought silicon 2-line cable to replace plastic insulated cable that came with my trafo-soldering-iron originally about 30 years ago. And how easy it is to cut, is what surprised me. It's still a good tradeof for this use case because dents in the plastic from accidentally touching the original cable with hot soldering loop were getting a little scary.

> I cannot understand why silicone rubber is not more commonly available for cable insulation. It is so much better than much of the badly plasticized PVC and other plastics that are now used.

PVC, XLPE, and rubber insulation is more durable than silicone. THHN uses PVC, XHHW uses XLPE, SOOW cord uses EPDM rubber.

This article recommending scrabble letter brands seems sketchy.

Anker offers lovely soft silicone sheathed USB-C cables, in black or white and many lengths. They perform for data and do not get stiff or discolor. Our office specifies these unless TB4+ is required.

How do you purchase them? Supply chain mixing is rough with a lot of retailers.

You purchase the ones labeled Anker?... They say Anker on the box and the cable... I don't think the supply chain is an issue as long as you get the intended product

If it were that simple, these pages wouldn’t exist:

https://www.anker.com/eu-en/verify

https://cairovolt.com/en/blog/how-to-identify-original-anker

> https://www.anker.com/eu-en/verify

I love how the path includes eu-en but then the list of countries where this is actually used:

> Europe: Turkey, Albania, Bulgaria, Belarus, Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Serbia, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Azerbaijan

Looks like list almost half not in the EU and half in, but missing quite a lot of EU countries.

Anker themselves say they "promise that all the products purchased through our Authorized Retailers or Distributors and Online Channels are genuine" but the link to who those are is gone apparently.

If you purchase from the official seller on Amazon, you're highly unlikely to get a counterfeit unless someone committed return fraud. I think platforms that destroy returns aren't susceptible though.

What is the model or part number for an Anker silicone cable that is faster than USB 2.0?

For data transfer performance and reliability in a cable with a white smooth sheath, we go with Cable Matters:

https://www.cablematters.com/pc-1640-180-intel-certified-80g...

aka: https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Thunderbolt-Black-3-3ft...

But we prefer such be braided, so with CalDigit we use this:

https://www.caldigit.com/thunderbolt-5-pro-cable/

https://www.amazon.com/CalDigit-Thunderbolt-5-Pro-Cable/dp/B...

Or with Anker we use this:

https://www.amazon.com/Anker-Thunderbolt-Charging-Bandwidth-...

That said, we mostly use Apple TB5 for fixed work stations where cables don't get lost.

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/mdw94am/a/thunderbolt-5-u...

We avoid gaming brand TB cables and the scrabble letter brands.

sweet list/yay!

What do people mean by scrabble letter brands? and I assume TB on the bottom there is just short for Thunderbolt?

> This article recommending scrabble letter brands seems sketchy.

Amazon orders are banned from our lab supply list because you never actually get the same thing twice, and they vanish on first bad review.

Related, I've been buying the exact color, style, and brand of sock, from Amazon, for the past ~10 years. I have a sock drawer full of completely different socks.

If you don't know how to use a marketplace like Amazon, then by all means stay away.

I've had people in real life start to recommend some product, "oh you just buy it on Amazon" and that is a thought-terminating cliché, because that's like telling me to "go buy it in the shopping mall".

Anker has an official store on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/47CF0F10-7C80-4CCA-A398-A...

I personally love Belkin, also with an official store: https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/C59F9C55-1122-462C-863E-D...

My Ethernet cables are Tripp Lite, so try their USB: https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/D85D7CDC-7E0F-4C9A-8829-2...

So many reputable vendors have established presence in the marketplace on Amazon now. But you must carefully inspect every item in your cart, because you will find lots of brand-items advertised from fly-by-night sellers with poor reputations. But once you see your reputable vendor name, and/or "Sold through Amazon, fulfilled by Amazon" then I've never needed to worry about the end result.

No, this doesn't work either, by the way Amazon operates [1], and they're aware of the problem [2]. There's no "Anker" store. There's boxes in your local Amazon warehouse that "Anker" labelled stuff gets thrown into and sold as Anker products (although I think they've separated the boxes a bit in the last few years). I've had several counterfeits from official stores, and avoid Amazon for easily counterfeit goods. I had a counterfeit controller from the official Sony store that I took it apart, posted all the silly nonsense contained inside, and was banned from ever posting reviews on Amazon again.

Anker has steps to prove the product is genuine and only guarantee non-counterfeit from offline stores: https://www.anker.com/eu-en/verify

[1] https://www.kuow.org/podcast/newsroom/2019-12-02/sellers-fig...

> When Amazon lists a product, that listing consolidates reviews for many different suppliers of that product. Some of them might be official Felco dealers, others may be arbitrage buyers who've picked up pruners from overseas suppliers at a discount.

[2] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872426...

See sections "We Are Impacted by Fraudulent or Unlawful Activities of Sellers" and "We Face Risks Related to Adequately Protecting Our Intellectual Property Rights and Being Accused of Infringing Intellectual Property Rights of Third Parties"

You link to a 7-year-old podcast and an SEC filing dated March 31, 2026.

Have you read their update announcing changes as of March 31, 2026?

https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions/t...

These aren't "brands". You can't trust that the random character "brands" on Amazon like SNOALK, TOOALQ, lipr or whatever are even the same from shipment to shipment. Model names and numbers are meaningless here. It's all just a random lottery.

Even if someone builds a brand, it can get sold and (atleast this twas true last time I checked) the Amazon reviews get grandfathered in.

It's not silicon but the _best_ (charging only) cables I've used by far are the Anker Nano [0] cables. they are so flexible, feel amazing, and I wish I could replace all my cables with them (but can't due to cost). It's USB 2.0 speeds so I only use them for charging but that's one of the reasons they can be so flexible/enjoyable to use (they don't have to be as thick to support USB 3+/TB speeds). I own many other Anker braided cables and none of them are like this one.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CZ43567W

Not very sure of heat resistance, but I’ve been very happy with a bunch of LTTStore TrueSpec cables.

Pretty sure for anyone outside North America the shipping absolutely kills the value proposition nowadays. Last time I checked to replace my deskmat both it and the cables were about as much for shipping as for the items themselves. And taxes on top of that. That, for example, turns a 20 cad cable, already on the pricey side into a 40+ cad one. I do not know if there are any officials redistributors in other continents, but I don't think there are.

If you purchase multiple cables at once, the shipping cost per cable goes down, I'd think.

Not saying that's easy considering their stock issues. Maybe it's better now.

Yes, we all know the US economy is effectively severed from that of the rest of the world now.

LTT is Canadian though. It's simply the shipping costs globally are expensive.

Annyways; I like the LTT TrueSpec cables although I think the thickness of the connector is slightly too small.

It feels loose in multiple of my devices, e.g. S22 Ultra & S23 Ultra. No other connector feels this loose.

Doesn't suit OPs demands as power only, but moved most my USB-C power cables to Anker Nano recently. They sound like described, lovely. Super flexible, don't tangle, nice weight to them - very well built. Nicest cables I've ever owned and an upgrade from prior Anker ones.

Didn't see your comment before I posted pretty much the same thing. I wish I could replace all my cables with the Anker Nano ones but they aren't cheap and most places I don't need a "great feeling" cable so I've settled for just a few strategic places around the house for now to put them.

I've had Anker braided cables before but the Nano is in a whole other league. I have one by my bed and every time I touch it I smile a little, it sparks joy (no pun intended).

Almost seems like it’d be easier to spend a couple weeks in Shenzhen getting cables made to your specifications rather than testing everything on the market.

I thought this is exactly what Linus Tech Tips did.

I went on the exact same quest. The answer is Belkin BoostCharge Flex. They have one version that’s flexible silicone and one that’s wrapped in braid. Check pictures and verify.

The description on Amazon was this: Belkin BoostCharge Flex Silicone USB-C to USB-C Charging Cable (1M/3.3FT) for iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Pro, Galaxy S25, S24, Pixel 9 & 8, Nintendo Switch 2 & More with Cable Clip - Black

My CPU load goes through the roof after a minute on that page. Chrome 154.0.8037.0 on Linux. WTF does a cable review need to do that works my CPU so hard?

I bought some of the official Pinecil silicone cables but haven't tried burning them yet. Has anyone tried that? I think they're USB2 but rated (well, advertised) for 100W so they're great for the Pinecil.

It's the website's "grid-bg" effect. It's glitching out and also normally barely visible at all.

Aside: has anyone found a good "fancy color" TB4 cable? I'd like to (eventually) have a distinctive color for my needed ~3-4 TB4 cables, but they're mostly black/white/grey. I found KondorBlue in my travels but they're sold out/limited availability.

I'd like to know at a glance if I'm using the right "MacBook TB4 Monitor Cable" (or "guaranteed high-ish wattage") as opposed to "random usb-c which may/may-not work".

I like the Ikea SITTBRUNN cable series, they feel great, are inexpensive and actually come with a technical specification.

The only drawbacks I've found are: * It's 480 Mbps cables, so for charging and occasional transferrers. * They don't have a huge selection of lengths and colors.

The longer ones are braided, unfortunately.

Does anyone know the best USB thumb drives?

I need to buy 10 32GB, but every somewhat affordable bulk option is very suspicious and throttles or fails.

Sandisk is reputable but costs a premium.

microcenter?

I still feel sad that my heatgun didn't come with a silicon cable :(

Luckily my soldering iron did.

I want cables in many different colors so I can more easily see which is which.

this is awesome, I've also been looking for these kinds of cables more than the "braided" cables which are stiff and tend to eventually take some kind of shape and not straighten back

It’s chubbycables. You’re welcome.

I ran through their website and all the ones I selected were USB 2.0, and there isn't a filter for speed as far as I could see.

So no, it appears that "chubby cables" aren't the best.

You are right, they are only really useful for charging (though 240w - beasts) or keyboards. I’ve given up on trying to find silicone cables for data transfer and just buy thunderbolt which are typically rubber (Apple ones are braided these days, but it’s a very tight braid).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com