The Wirecutter:
After measuring the charging speed of 44 cables, then sending the top 11 to our electrical engineer for teardown analysis, the $14 Monoprice 3ft MFi Certified Lightning to USB Charge/Sync Cable is the one we’d buy. It may be a third-party cable, but the Monoprice stood out among competitors by being the only third-party cable that had as good, if not better, internal build-quality compared to Apple’s own cable. Plus, it’s cheaper than Apple’s by $5.
Always good to have an extra cable or two lying around and the price is right for this one.
Wirecutter is my Consumer Reports for tech. And I don’t feel that way just because their reviews for Best Standing Mat matched our personal comparison results, either.
Just make sure whatever you buy it’s Apple certified. I took my chances with a lightning cable that wasn’t certified once and it worked for a while, despite the warnings on my iPhone saying it might not, until one day while charging through my MacBook Pro the Pro just shut down – completely. It was dead. The Genius who opened it up said I was this close to frying my logic board to the tune of a $500+ replacement. Luckily it just tripped a switch and he was able to switch it back on. Lesson learned, though. Never again.
You get what you pay for.
What I want is longevity in a cable. I have burned in the past by reputable company’s cables before. Maybe they could concentrate on testing these cables for that!
my MFI certified Monoprice lightning cable is my first one to fall apart. i can’t speak to how my SO treated it, but of our several different ones (Mono, Amazon, Apple), it’s the first to go.
“After measuring the charging speed of 44 cables”
Are they claiming different cables (not AC adapters) will achieve different charging speeds? Makes me lose confidence in their opinion.