The IT Nerd

Every once in a while, you or someone you’re with will need to recharge a phone. But assuming that you have a cable on you, is it the right cable for the phone in question. Meaning is it Lightning to USB, or USB-C to USB-C or whatever you need. Even though batteries on phones last longer than ever, that’s a real need that people have. Which is why the RollingSquare InCharge X exists. This is a cable that fits on your keychain that covers any use case that you might have when it comes to charging a phone or any other device.

The cable comes in a box that is clearly made of recycled material. And the only thing inside the box is the cable. The cable as you see it is 7 CM long or 2.7 inches. But fully stretched out it’s twice that length. The cable has metal ends and the flexible part of the cable has a TPU outer shell with nylon and aramid fibre for strength. There’s a cap at the end that feels really snug.

Here’s where things get interesting. If you pull one end of the cable apart, you can see that you have the choice of USB or USB-C which means that you can plug this end into any computer.

At the other end of the cable there’s USB-C and Lightning. But if you look closely, there’s another connector:

Inside the Lightning connector is a micro USB connector. Clever. I tested all the connections and they all fit snugly. Though I will note that it is not inherently clear which end is up when it comes to micro-USB unless you look closely at the connector. But that’s a first world problem.

A close look at one of the cable ends shows that it has a N52 magnet that is used to hold the cable together when it is folded up.

Since I spoke of putting this on your keychain, here’s a picture of it on my keychain. In the week or so that I have had it, it has not come off my keychain. And the cap that covers the connectors is solid enough that it hasn’t become detached.

So let’s talk about charging. RollingSquare claims that you can fast charge your device using this cable with support for up to 100W of power. To test this, I took my wife’s iPhone 13 and charged it using this cable from 48% to 92% in an hour using this cable. Then I had her drain it back down to 48% and did the same thing with an Apple USB-C to Lightning cable and got it up to 91% in a hour. In both cases, the phone was plugged into this charger. Thus I can safely say that this will fast charge your phone. The cable also supports data transfer as I was able to use my iPhone 12 Pro to sync to iTunes and to do backups of the phone to my MacBook Pro.

Gripes? I have only one. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve had this cable for a week. But I’ve already have scratches on it as evidenced by this picture:

Now this is the “Lava Black” version of the cable. They have two other versions called “Marble Blue” and “Sapphire Beige”. I don’t know if they would scratch in the same way as this “Lava Black” cable does. But in my opinion, given that this lives in your pocket surrounded by keys, the finish should be more durable than this.

RollingSquare InCharge X is $29 USD and is available from the RollingSquare website. It works as advertised and it will ensure that you always have a cable on hand should you need it. As long as you don’t mind the fact that it will gain some “battle scars” from being in your pocket.

This entry was posted on June 15, 2022 at 9:00 am and is filed under Products with tags RollingSquare. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.