Apple will get a great deal of flack from followers, haters, and all people in-concerning for its price ranges on its cables. But in some scenarios, you really don’t have a choice but to get Apple’s offering, like with its most up-to-date cable, a 3-meter (10-foot) Thunderbolt 4 Professional Cable. It sells for $159 (£159)–yes, I heard you exclaim, “It sells for WHAT?!” all the way around in my San Francisco office–but it’s the only cable of its form.
The Pro Cable supports Thunderbolt 3 and 4 and USB 4 details transfers at a fee up to 40Gbps, and USB 2.1 Gen 2 premiums of 10Gbps. It also does DisplayPort video clip output (HBR3) and rates up to 100W. It is a braided cable, which really should assistance its durability and prevent it from catching itself into a tangled mess.
If you are sitting down there examining all this wondering, “WTF? Why do I have to have the dang thing?” then you probably really don’t need the dang thing. You can use this cable to hook up a Studio Display (which includes a 1-meter (3-foot) Thunderbolt 3 cable) or a Pro Screen XDR (which involves a two-meter Thunderbolt 3 cable), but the sort of person who will have to have this cable is in all probability in a generation placing and needs to connect to an exterior gadget that is not near by, these kinds of as shared storage.
Apple’s three-meter cable joins the company’s 1.8-meter (6-foot) cable ($129), and two-meter cables that you can discover at other merchants, these kinds of as OWC ($57), CalDigit ($75), and C2G ($129). As you can see, the selling prices broadly vary, as do the quality and functions. Cable Matters has a 10-meter Thunderbolt 3 cable for $320 on Amazon if you genuinely need the size and are willing to give up some of the Thunderbolt 4 positive aspects. But if you want speed and duration, Apple has the market cornered.