Okay, so before everyone gets too excited at the prospect of reading a review about a network cable, I'll bring you all back down to Earth and try to convince you why this one is so great...
If you've bought computer peripherals before, you will probably be familiar with Belkin, who are particularly well-known for their USB products. Belkin make all sorts of cables, including a variety of ethernetnetwork cables.
This is a Cat 5 standard network cable (coloured red, but you can get it in many other colours, including black, grey, yellow, green, blue etc).
One of the major problems with network cables is their tendency to snag when bent through a small radius, and because of the way the individual wires are twisted around eachother inside the cable, this can lead to network errors. The Belkin cable claims to be snagless, and whilst I didn't kink my cable on purpose to test this claim, I managed to bend it through a tight circle without any performance problems.
Looking at the performance aspects, I used the cable on a 100 Mb/s home network, where I replaced an older generic cable. There was no noticeable speed difference.
The cable is well constructed, with the plugs firmly attached to the cable. Small tabs sticking up next to the release tab prevent the cable from being dislodged from its socket by accident. The contacts are gold-plated, which whilst not providing any real performance gains, will probably increase the lifespan of the cable by resisting oxidation.
The only snag with this cable is its hefty price, compared to standard cables. Whether the small extra features are actually worth the extra money is debatable.
It may be just a cable but they are important really, good review but to complete it you need to include the price and where you got it from, best wishes Gill.
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