Nice to see a trusted cable company providing cables for this hobby, and great to see them partnering with a trusted keyboard influencer. Great stuff bro! I'm a straight cable guy now, but I'll check these out. ✌
For me $40 is my limit. I love the look of the custom gmk themed cables but I cannot swallow the cost so I stick with budget premade ones. Maybe once I graduate and start earning for myself I’ll consider buying just one for my fabled endgame board
i literally got a custom handmade gmk themed cable for around 1500inr, which translates to usd 18. Depending on your location, you might get good rates too
2:52 I went the non pro route because I just wanted a quality cable, ones I've tried from Amazon have had issues causing my board to disconnect. I've used cablemod for my pc cables and trust them for making a good quality keyboard cable and they dont disappoint, my keeb stops disconnecting randomly now
As a coiled cable owner, I prefer the versatility of a straight cable way more. Using a coiled cable means your keyboard pretty much has to stay in one place or youll ruin the coil u paid 40+ for lol.
I like non coiled cables more as well. I first I got a coiled cable but for my experience, it has to be placed perfectly otherwise it kinda becomes an eye sore. But for non coiled cables, it just looks good/natural any way you put it
1:15 , And ironically if you were to detach it at that aviator / lemo connector instead of unplugging from the usb, you could probably put more wear on the usb port as now there's a heavy piece of metal dangling on a cable, being supported only by the usb port.
I watched like 9 videos before yours which gave me no real information or was just fluff. But you answered my questions within minutes. 100% appreciate you.
If i remember correctly I think ppl wanted coiled cables like the ones for the Model M because it was a cleaner way of having a longer cables. And the quick connect like aviators were used because the older Kustom keyboards dint have usb ports, the cables had to be soldered on to the pcb or used JST.
Are you really not gonna mention that you can make them yourself for 10 bucks ? It's only my opinion and I'm not hating you Andy or anyone else but for me custom keyboards have always been about sharing tips, techniques, and obscure methods to make your keyboard look/sound/feel better, as if it was "open source" for the making (idk how to say that in another way), but that whole cable thing for the past couple of years goes again every one of these principles imo. Sure there are tons of guides, and the process is well documented, but there are also a lot of youtubers (mostly big names that are/were not part of the keyboard game, like tech youtubers) that just don't even mention the fact that you can make them yourself only to promote a site/service. They'll only say "well there are cheap cables, fancy mass produced cables that aren't good (that's true for the most part, I've tested a bunch) and custom mades that you can buy from this or this vendor", as if it was a secret that you could make it yourself, just to keep that "money making" thing do-able. I'm not saying you shouldn't try to make money in a hobby, but imo you should know why you pay. When you buy lubed switches, you pay for the labor, but everyone knows why you would buy lubed switches, and even if someone doesn't know how to lube properly, they certainly know that it's POSSIBLE to do it yourself without any tool. When you don't know how fancy cables are made, it seems like an industrial/difficult process that requires a lot of tools, because the final result might not look like any prebuilt cable. Sure people can sell their cables to save time to the ones that'll buy it, or even add parts that are to make/find or requires more tools than a standard coil (Cerakoting, powder coating, retail LEMO etc) but promoting sites that are trying to gatekeeping the making of products for profit is what will ruin the hobby on the long term. Sorry for my english, I'm not native
Man can't wait to get into this hobby, I wanna replace my corsair strafe that's 5+ years old so bad but it's still going strong so waiting for an excuse to replace it or get some more cash to buy a kit. Great content as usual!
I used my dodgy A key as an excuse to solder on a new mech switch. My keeb is the v1.0 Corsair Vengeance K70 and is older than your Strafe from about 2012 (11 years). But for me, I want to at least try to repair it. And repair it I did, yesterday. This is my first successful desoldering of both the red LED and the switch. Was a personal Chef's Kiss moment for me as I have never been able to desolder correctly before and it's very frustrating when you mess it up. Was a little grubby in there for sure, but I cleaned all the caps and the internal cavity areas. Looks new (apart from the ABS shine on some key caps).
Im in too minds with this video, love the breakdown on cables, whats good v whats bad, enjoy the review on the company but not a fan off punching down to the small businesses who are starting out in the industry and those who find struggles.
How is it punching down when I just talked about my experience? Making cables isn't a scalable business for the majority of people. It wasn't scalable 2 years ago when I made this video and it isn't scalable now
Imagine using rubber Anker cables tho /s But for real, lots of nice braided cables out there from Anker and others like Baseus which aesthetically are pleasing and are easy to use
Would it not be better and a quicker disconnect/connect to use a mid cable USB C male+female (or even USB A m+f)? Not to mention this is already very much a standard. If you connect your aviator/slimline/lemo half to someone elses half cable, won't that likely end in damaged equipment due to no standard pinout? And really, this is achievable without soldering. Just buy a short USB C male-male cable and a long USB C female - USB A male. Or whatever your needs are. I haven't checked if those cable connector combos are available at all.
I have to say. Despite me originally having a disagreement with you I have come to really enjoy your content. I got myself a custom cable from a company called cablelab and I have to say they were very nice and helpful. Even going so far as to give pictures of what the colours would look like together and matching it your keycap set. Keep up the great content.
Ayyy! Thank you for shouting out Anker 0:22! Been using their products for almost 7 years now and have loved every single thing I've got! Also, thank you for letting people know that Reddit should not dictate how your keyboard looks. I'm rocking my 2 pack of Anker cables for $10 and they match my keyboard perfectly and look great!
Coiled is a nice idea, but straight cable is cleaner and does the same thing. In fact a 10 bucks cable does the same thing anyway. But these custom cables are missing an additional wire inside as to per correct usb spec. Aviator connector only have 4 pins( V+, ground, D+, D-), the correct spec is actually 5, the one missing is drain wire. This causes some issue with some keyboards. So while it's more expensive it doesn't have everything. That being said, I quite like rncable custom cables it's slightly cheaper than the other more famous one and you can have a device side usb connector that has a led on it.
I really like my Corsair K70 (first edition) full size 104. As bonus features, it has USB passthru, which is a godsend for quick connecting my wired USB gamepad. And it has a volume roller and a mute button which I use daily. I want my next mech KB to at least have mute + volume wheel/roller. I can see nowadays that TKL options are available, some have a USB hub too. Thing is with USB hubs is they fail, that's why USB passthru is better. Very very close to having full size mechs with these features on the market it seems. Maybe a few more years wait. My keeb is soldered, so yesterday I had to do a full teardown and desolder a LED + switch to replace it. But it was really great to be able to pull that off for the first time personally! These socketed keebs look very tempting. Looks so damn easy to swap out your entire switch set and put in different ones.
This rly sums up my experience with small artisan cable makers. ive bought 2 cables from 2 different creators who have been in the business for 1-2 years and both of them randomly dipped the past few months with no updates on the status of the orders. I want to support these small businesses, but they have proven to have a bad track record maybe due to a lack of accountability b/c of the long wait times. Not to mention, if the soldering job isn't done right and your cable malfunctions, welp there are no refunds lol.
For me, I think of the saying that goes "Fools and Money...". I am intrigued as to why these exist and why people want them. It appears that there may be an overlap between people who enjoy fine wines and keyboard enthusiasts?
Hello Andy, I am a bit curious about the blue cable with the "brass-colored" slimline connector. Which color and finish did you choose to achieve that color? Thank you, and I enjoyed the video as always!
@@AndyVNguyen Thank you so much! I'm planning on ordering a black cable with Gold slimline. I was just worried that the gold would look too yellow. Thanks!
@@AndyVNguyen Thanks. I'm using a Royal Kludge G68 keyboard and I always remove the cable once it's full. Thanks cuz I havent seen any of this on YT video of its safe to plug the coiled cable on keyboard all the time
Been using mag safe cables with magnetic tips to save my usb C ports, they also make it easier to swap keyboards. The volta ones ive used are pretty nice and snappy :D Edit: I personally dont see the appeal of coiled cables but i do understand the need to preserve your usbc ports tho haha i find that reliable high quality mag safe cables do a better job of this, to each their own i guess, you should always spend your money the way you want to bahah
@@patayder566 sorry mate, i cant seem to send links in the comments section. I can tell you that the company is volta. I use the volta 2.0 cables and tips
I ordered my pc cables from Cable Mod last year around January. It took until April or May to get my cables. Eventually had a faulty gpu cable which took a few more weeks to get shipped to me. They ship from china. To be fair they close down for a few weeks for Chinese New Year and that caused the 4 month delay. The cables I got from them are very nice and they had a ton of options.
Hi Andy, thanks for the video. I plan on purchasing a cable for myself. I was just wondering if you have the configuration for the black cable in the video. Thanks again.
After handleling a lot of those cables. Are there any with a usable coil? To provide you more cable to move the board around the desk easily? Like an old phone or headphones? Or is the coil purely for the flex?
I usually lift it up.. a stretched out coil doesn’t look good. But lindy cables are the like the old school phone cables. I have not seen anything like headphone cables though.
@@deepsp_ce once I get a better soldering iron (one that I can set the temp of) I’m gonna make my own. I’m aiming to go nuetral colors, so I’ve come up with around 12 cominations which will cost like $50 w/ no connectors, and about $150-200 with
Nice review. One thing which is missing or I missed: these cables are full USB 3 standard? My keyboard has a USB 3 Type-A port and I use it a lot to connect my USB 3.1 sticks and the speeds are important to me. It will be a pity to spend 70-100$ on a cable with just a USB 2.0 limit - to just 30-35MBps.
@@AndyVNguyen normally the international shipping costed me $21 USD for the first 0.5kg and $13 USD every additional 0.5kg, and arrive to me in 1-2 weeks most of time.
I don’t recommend magnetic cables for keyboards that have recessed USB ports. It’s really hard to get the magnetic piece out. I bought a keyboard once where someone used those on a $500 keyboard and used tweezers to try to remove it.. and scratched up the keyboard case.
I source the aviator, sleeve, cable, port from difference vendor myself. The soldering work might be harder at first but I thought it is a really fun experience, just like building keyboard. That said, source the right color of heatshrink can be difficult sometimes.
Aviator is doable. The slimmer ones get really tricky. The cable itself is always time consuming.. all my friends that have DIYed have said that they’d rather pay someone else to do it lol