As a tech journalist and lifelong nerd, I tend to travel with a lot of gadgets. All of these devices need charging, and ideally, I’d like to charge them all at once. Thankfully, pretty much everything I own can be charged over USB-C, but that still means carrying a bunch of cables.
Inevitably, these cables get tangled together, and I end up with a rat’s nest of intertwined cords to sort out. At least, that used to be the case, until I invested in these retractable 100W USB-C cables that I found on Amazon. It might sound dramatic, but I mean it when I say these £10.99 USB cables have changed my life for the better.
Despite being so cheap, that price will get you two cables, both of which are 100m in length. In other words, they’ll be long enough to comfortably charge pretty much anything you can think of.
I know what you’re thinking – “there’s no way these things will last”. I had that concern too, but I’ve been using them literally every single day for over a year now, and I haven’t had a single issue. They still retract just as reliably as they did on day one, and they charge my MacBook Pro at over 90W without fail.
Luke Baker
The cables are flat, and they come wound in a little plastic spool (about 4cm in diameter). To extend the cable, you just pull from each side evenly, and you can either extend it to the full 120cm length or you can stop earlier, then it’ll lock at one of several shorter preset lengths. When you’re done, a gentle tug on each end will cause the cable to spool itself up again for storage.
This means that you never have more cable than you need, which is much neater than a conventional cable, as it’ll never be dangling off the edge of your desk. Then, when it’s time to pack up, the neat little spool completely eliminates the problem of tangled cables.
Luke Baker
As mentioned, it’s well specced, too. It has a 100W E-Mark chip inside, and it supports PD 3.0, QuickCharge 3.0 and up to 20V /5A charging. It also supports data transfer, so you can use this cable to transfer files between your laptop and your phone, for example.
The best part is that they’re cheap as chips. They’re currently selling for around £11 on Amazon, and for that price, you get two 100W retractable 1.2m USB-C cables. I currently own four, and I might even pick up a few more. Whether I’m at home or on the road, these are the best cables I’ve ever tried.
