Why does nobody talk about the strain relief boot being the real hero of a cable?

Ryan Robinson · 2026-10-25T04:10:03.760314+00:00

So my buddy Dave, who does AV installs in Pittsburgh, kept telling me to stop yanking my cables out by the cord and grab the plug head instead. I nodded and ignored him for about a year because who has time for that, right? Then my PS5 controller charger died mid raid at like 1am, and I'm sitting there wiggling the cord trying to get it to catch a charge. Dave's advice came back to me so I flipped the cable over and saw the wire had pulled clean out of the little plastic boot at the connector end, copper strands all frayed. He said he sees this on maybe 8 out of 10 cables he replaces at work and it's almost always people pulling from the cord side. Now I actually grab the plug every time and my current HDMI cable has outlived my old one by 6 months already. Curious if anyone here has actually fixed one of these by wrapping the joint in heat shrink, or do you just toss it and move on?

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Why does nobody talk about the strain relief boot being the real hero of a cable? | Broken Cable Guys - HW Forums