In the past few videos, ChargerLAB took apart several Thunderbolt 4 cables.
And today, we got another Thunderbolt 4 cable from Zikko, a Hongkong brand.
This cable was launched last year and is 0.8m.
Let’s take it apart and see the internal design.
The front of the packaging is printed with Zikko and Thunderbolt logos.
And it can support 100W charging and 8K video.
Flip to the back. We can see a comparison chart between
Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4 cables.
You can pause to take a look.
Open the box. It’s just in a plastic bag.
It adopts the traditional black.
Let’s take a closer look at the full-pin design.
Here are the Zikko and Thunderbolt logos, which can tell it apart from other cables.
The protective sleeve between the cable and the connector can make it more durable.
And it’s marked with 100W.
The outer layer adopts the most common TPE, pretty smooth.
The length is about 0.8m (2' 7.5'').
The diameter is 4.45mm (0.18 inches).
And weight is about 36.6g (1.29 oz).
The ChargerLAB POWER-Z KM002C shows it can support 20V5A 100W and 40Gbps.
The disk speed test shows the speed can reach the Thunderbolt 4 standard.
And charging power can also reach almost 100W.
This time, we added the voltage drop test, which is important in judging the cable quality.
In daily charging, the voltage and current are from one side to the other side of the cable.
So, we can know the voltage loss through the cable due to impedance.
Connect both connectors of the cable to the tester and the load.
And calculate the difference between the input and output voltages.
Here are the results of the voltage drop test.
We can see that the voltage drop value increases as the current increases
So, the highest voltage drop is 0.543V at 20V 5A.
The data shows that its quality is quite good.
After the brief introduction, let’s take it apart.
Firstly, let’s cut it off.
There are 16 wires inside.
Those eight thicker ones are coaxial cables.
After that, the wires are wrapped with another black insulating tape.
Finally, we can see those 16 wires in different colors,
which are used for data transmission and power supply, separately.
Let’s separate and introduce them one by one.
The thick red wires are used for positive power supply, and the USB2.0 wire is green.
There are eight thick coaxial cables inside, which are white, orange, red, black, gold,
green, blue, and brown, respectively.
They adopt the same design.
And the first layer is a plastic insulating layer,
and the silver-plated pure copper shielding layer is under it.
The most internal wires are also plated with silver
and wrapped with transparent shielding layer.
The silver-plated wires can reduce cable loss.
And then, the yellow one is Vconn wire.
The blue one is CC wire. And the black one is SBU wire.
Finally, a thin orange wire.
Then, let’s use the cutting machine to remove the plastic cover on the connector.
After removing the cover, the PCB is protected by brass sleeve.
And there’re 12 solder joints on each side, which can fix the connector and the junction.
And after removing the brass sleeve, we can see the junction is reinforced by glue.
As we mentioned, two red wires in the middle are used for positive power supply.
And there’s no E-marker chip.
The USB2.0 wire and coaxial cable are on the back.
Then, let’s take apart the other connector.
The E-marker chip is on the PCB and covered with glue.
The information on the chip was erased while cleaning the glue.
So, we don’t know its specific model.
And then, let’s take a closer look at the inside of the connector.
Since there’s only one pair of D+D-, it only has 24 pins, not 22.
You can pause to see what they correspond to.
You can also check what their functions are.
After completely taking it apart,
we found it doesn’t adopt full-pin design, but it won’t affect its performance.
Those eight coaxial cables with multiple insulation layers can
ensure the transmission stability of the cable.
There is only one E-Marker chip inside the cable.
OK, that’s all for today’s video.
You can also click the corners to view other teardown videos of Thunderbolt 4 cable.
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I’ll catch you guys in the next video.