REVIEWED: LOGiiX Piston Connect Steel Jolt
These tough-for-travel steel & aluminium-braided USB 2.0 cables for Apple Lightning and Micro USB are when on the road
Cables. They’re an absolute necessity on the road, and even if you’re a dedicated Apple fan, there’s a very good chance that another gadget in your carry-on needs a micro USB cable to recharge it. But, cables? They break. Cue the LOGiiX Piston Connect Steel Jolt range – of Apple Lightning, micro USB and aux-to-aux – which attempts to put an end to broken cables.
Tough for travel
The first thing you notice about these cables is is not that they’re constructed from aluminium and steel, but that the connectors at each end of the cables are brilliantly protected; there are sturdy coils around the last inch or so of each cable before the connectors, which is where most cables break. LOGiiX calls this FlexCoil, the idea being that however hard you strain it, the cable won’t break.
Either, or
Despite the extra toughness of the cables, they only weigh 45g each, but these cables are not just about durability. The USB connectors are by far the least frustrating USB cables we’ve ever used, since they can be plugged in both ways; instead of an open side and a block side, which we almost always try to connect the wrong way round, there’s a very thin section in the middle which means it can be plugged in either way.
Long stretch
Each of these cables is 1.5 m long – that’s about 5 feet – which may seem a little too long travel. However, if you ever had to leave your phone on the other side of a hotel room to recharge at night, you’ll understand why we prefer to take longer cables. The LOGiiX Piston Connect Steel Jolts all have small leather cable clips keeping everything neat and tidy in your backpack.
Fit and forget
When you’re travelling, you don’t really want to have to think about cables. It’s standard practice to chuck a couple of them in your backpack, but since we rely so much on them, it pays to have something tough enough to forget about. The LOGiiX Piston Connect Steel Jolt fulfil that brief, and they do it well, so we’ve got no problems calling these cables the ultimate cables for travel.