Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
Introduction
I’ve had an iPhone and iPad for years and like peoples smart devices – the batteries get worse with age which means that you have to charge them more often.
Being in the car a lot I have always charged my iPhone in particular, in the car using the USB port. Also like most people, the official Apple USB charging lead that came with the phone has long since been broken.
So I had a cheap non-branded USB charging lead from Amazon that cost a few pounds. I had been using it for a few weeks without any problems and one evening I had to go and pick up my brother-in-law from the train station in the city centre. I jumped in the car, fired up my Amazon Music app on my iPhone and noticed the battery was low, as it normally was in the evenings, so I plugged in the USB lead to charge it.
I got to the train station without any problems but as I pulled into the car park, the music went off. I stopped the car and checked my iPhone and it was completely dead. Nothing on the screen, couldn’t turn it on and as I went to unplug the USB cable, it was absolutely boiling hot to the point where I couldn’t touch the end plugged into the iPhone.
I had to yank out the cable but the damage was done, the iPhone was completely fried. We tried charging it with an official Apple USB lead and that didn’t work, we even fitted a new battery in case it was just the battery that had been damaged, but still nothing.
Having then spent time Googling about iPhones dying due to poor qualilty USB charging leads, it soon became clear that the problem was the cheap lead I’d bought from Amazon.
A £500 iPhone destroyed by a £6.99 cheap USB charging lead…
New iPhone – New Cables
To say I was annoyed is a bit of an understatement. But, the iPhone was two years old so I was probably due a new one any way, it would have just been nice to have had to choice when to buy the new one!
I ordered my new iPhone which came with the standard official Apple USB lead as they do and I went about using the device day-to-day. It soon became clear that I needed a new charging lead for my car though. This time I thought, I’m not going to buy one of those cheap USB leads as I can’t risk it happening again and I was going to get another one direct from Apple. However, I refuse to be ripped off as well, £30 for a USB lead is just ridiculous even by Apple standards.
Volutz Cables
I asked around a few friends and colleagues of mine and one recommended getting a lead from Volutz. He had used them before and said that he had never had any problems at all with any devices and that their cables were good quality and durable.
So I looked them up and just looking at the quality of their website, you could see that the cables were a quality item. I read all the information on the site about how they can take 50,000 bends and that the cables were pretty much unbreakable.
The surprising thing is that they actually sell these cables in packs of five at all different lengths. I thought well that’s perfect, I can cover my iPhone, iPad and the kid’s devices all in one go and still cheaper than just one USB cable from Apple.
The cables arrived and straight away you could see the quality difference. Very tough, very rugged cable which is quad woven textile fabric braid, with excellent protected ports on each end, all nicely boxed up.
I had been using these cables for a few months and with my son now wanting to play his Nintendo Switch in the car, we now needed a USB-C cable. So I went back to Volutz and get a pack of USB-C cables which after a few months had passed the test of time with a youngster taking absolutely no care whatsoever in pulling the cables about!
Volutz do a full range of cables, including the USB-C, Lightning and Micro USB cables – all of which I have tested and can report that they are all brilliant and well worth the money over taking a risk with cheap cables from Amazon.
Overview
There’s not much more I can say about these cables, the bottom line is that they work, they are durable (even with kids), they are a high quality product and they won’t break the bank purchasing them.
For more information on Volutz cables, including all the technology behind them, go and visit their website at volutz.com
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