Should anyone buy Apple’s Thunderbolt 5 cables when Satechi’s cheaper alternative exists?

Satechi Thunderbolt 5 Pro cable

ZDNET's key takeaways

• Satechi's fully certified Thunderbolt 5 cable is available now for $40.
• It can handle 240W of power, 8K/60fps video, and 120Gb/s unidirectional bandwidth.
• This level of performance could be overkill for some.

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The other day I needed a Thunderbolt 5 cable. I fired up Amazon and, wow, there are a lot to choose from. And prices vary a lot, from “too good to be true” to “you gotta be kidding me.” Apple's 3-meter Thunderbolt 4 Pro cable is an eye-watering $159, which makes the smaller Thunderbolt 5 Pro cable seem cheap at just $69.

But that's still a lot of money for a cable. 

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You can do better. Satetchi's Thunderbolt 5 Pro cable is the perfect combination of quality, performance, durability, and price — just $40.

Thunderbolt 5 cables are expected to do a lot. They need to be able to handle 240W (48V at 5A) of power (the maximum supported by the USB Power Delivery 3.1 EPR standard), 8K video transmission at 60Hz, or three displays running 4K at 144Hz (macOS is limited to 6K). 

Additionally, they need to be able to handle 120Gb/s of data bandwidth unidirectional and 80Gb/s bi-directional. 

If you're connecting a simple external drive or a 4K display, a cable like this is overkill, but if you want to get the very best performance and stability from things like Thunderbolt 5 docks or storage enclosures, a bad cable can put a massive speed bump in your workflow.

Satechi has been making high-quality accessories for the Mac — and increasingly, Windows — ecosystem for some time now, and it's a name I trust. I've not tested a Satechi product that's disappointed, so when I found that the company made Thunderbolt 5 cables for a reasonable price, I bought five. 

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Also, keep in mind that Thunderbolt 5 certification means the cable is also good for Thunderbolt 4, Thunderbolt 3, USB4, and USB3.2/ 3.1.

The cables are one meter/3.3 feet in length — the standard length, because any longer and there's a real risk of signal degradation. They are thickly braided in tough, abrasion and tangle-resistant nylon sheath that won't get into a bird's nest of a mess behind your desk.

The connectors are also very well made, with the Thunderbolt marking laser-etched into the aluminum, and the strain relief is chunky and going to prevent stress damage to the cable. 

I not only check the specs of this cable with a USB cable tester, but I also put it through its paces by pushing gigabytes of data across it to a storage system I'm reviewing. It handled that with no issues whatsoever. This cable checks out.

ZDNET's buying advice

As Thunderbolt 5 cables go, the Satetchi Thunderbolt 5 Pro cable is competitively priced at $40. Yes, that's not exactly cheap, but it's better than Apple's asking price of $160. 

If you don't need this level of performance, you can probably get away with a cheaper Thunderbolt 4 cable, but in situations where you're pushing a lot of power, data, or pixels down a cable, and you can't afford for things to go wrong, this is the cable for you.