How annoying is it to plug in your phone and discover that, once again, the lightning cable doesn't work.
Constantly replacing these things can get expensive, not to mention inconvenient.
Then, when you do shop for a new one you have a choice between an Apple cable ($29) and a non-Apple cable ($15). Are Apple cables that much better?
Yes and no.
Good lightning cables are MFI certified. Bad lightning cables, without certification, may never work. In a ZDNet test, of cables priced under $10, they found that 15 percent of the 27 cheap cables tested never worked right out of the box. The cables were easily damaged from being bent and twisted and the connectors fell off easily. Five of those cables had USB connectors that didn't fit.
Of the cables on the market, good alternatives to the more expensive Apple cable come from Amazon, Anker, Monoprice and Nomad, according to zdnet.com.
You can keep your cords working properly by following this advice from 9to5mac.com.
1 Disconnect the cable by grasping the hard plastic plug jacket. Don't yank on the cord.
2 Make sure the cable isn't bent, kinked or strained. The tiny wires inside the cable itself can break that way.
3 Keep the plug pins away from liquids. Liquids can cause corrosion on the exposed lightning pins.