Comment by mardifoufs
2 years ago
It does meter the power being used though. It logs power usage and can measure resistance. You are 100% right that actual cable testers are much more capable but wouldn't that be enough to know if the cable can handle the wattage that it advertises? Wouldn't a bad cable have high resistance, or missing emarker tags (they can lie about this though) ?
For data transfer that wouldn't be a good metric though, so again you are right!
Well, it's definitely very useful device and it also seems to have cable resistance which is rare in this. I had some other FNRSI devices and they generally feel pretty solid, if UI/UX crippled a bit.
And maybe it won't just stop working like the one I bought did...
Which makes me sad because it was somewhat of an unique product because outside of the "chinese USB tester functions" (paging thru what negotiation succeeded and monitored voltage) it also had little buck-boost converter so I could use it as power supply (for example connect to bog standard 5V USB and boost it to 12V or current limit it).
I completely agree. For example I made the mistake of buying their multimeter and its completely trash, their usb tester is fine but only if you know it's quirks and update the firmware. When I got it originally it had a weird bootloop issue. They have interesting products but they definitely aren't as reliable as some of the bullet proof and oddly reliable Chinese manufacturers on AE. To be fair, their support was top notch
(Sidenote, this pattern is so common with AliExpress: very very good hardware but janky software. But God do I like the hardware since it seems like even the most niche, non mainstream stuff still see steady innovation and improvement. None of that 10 year old hardware that used to be common for almost all hobby tier niches haha.)