Hama Chameleon: Why? Or rather: Why not?
11.7.2018
Translation: machine translated
Pictures: Dominik Bärlocher, Livia Gamper
Video: Stephanie Tresch
Support: Fabio Endrich
You need cables? It's rare, I know. But nevertheless: I once found a cable that is really nice. It changes colour when you touch it. How cool is that?
The more often I travel, the more cables I lose. The more often I vacuum, the more cables I shred. Last year, I travelled to London, Paris, Barcelona, Berlin and Vienna and vacuumed at least twice. Probably more, but who remembers that?
Be that as it may, I need new cables.
Turns out I have demands on cables. Why? I'm not one of those guys who needs their HDMI cables with gold alloy or other nonsense, but I still scroll through the filters on our website. Even though I don't really care about all the features. Length about one metre, one fifty. Colour, whatever. So why am I still scrolling through the list? And anyway, where exactly did all the cables get lost? Wasn't there once a point where I said to myself "There, now you've got enough USB cables for the rest of your days"?
Source: Dominik Bärlocher
I don't regret the minutes of scrolling. Why?
Because
The best cable in the world
These are the Hama Chameleon. The cables have what is known in marketing parlance as a unique selling proposition - in hardcore marketing parlance USP, pronounced "You Ess Pi" - that they are encased in neoprene. But not just normal neoprene, no, neoprene that changes colour when you touch it
Source: Livia Gamper
Is there any benefit to this? No.
That's why the neoprene sheathing is sewn to the cable with green thread. This also looks good when you're not rubbing the cable, breathing on it or holding it in your hand.
The benefits of the cable
It's one thing for the cable to look good. Performance in everyday use is quite another. With a cable, it's essentially "How well can I plug it in?" If I have a good cable, then that's the deciding factor, not how pretty the cable is.
Source: Livia Gamper
At this point in particular, you can see that the manufacturer Hama has not simply settled for a bit of neoprene. A cable, especially a USB or Thunderbolt cable, has to connect to a variety of devices. A manufacturer therefore has to think about how the cable should fit into the devices. These are considerations in the millimetre range, if we want to be generous. If you make the connection a little wider, it will hold firmly. If you make it narrower, it will fit more loosely. The disadvantage: the connection separates more easily. The advantage: It also fits into slightly bent USB or Thunderbolt ports. This can be the case with laptops.
Well then, Hama has opted for a wide connector. It takes a bit of force to plug it in, but it holds securely afterwards. It's a little unusual at first and the connector seems to have a much stronger snap-in mechanism. But there are no wobbly connections here. Nice.
I bought the cables because they turn green, not because they are such great cables. And I'm sure they know the following song from Hama.
So done. If you're confused by the video above, say the song title and the manufacturer of the cable plus its name one after the other. Karma Chameleon. Hama Chameleon. Haha. <p
Journalist. Author. Hacker. A storyteller searching for boundaries, secrets and taboos – putting the world to paper. Not because I can but because I can’t not.
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