Designcord 5 Metre Autorewind Cable Reel Extension Lead Review

Andy Ruffell / 13 years ago

Final ThoughtsThis was certainly something different to the norm for me. I’m used to testing the latest and greatest motherboards, graphics cards and processors which are items that need vigorous testing and benchmarking to show its performance. This item however doesn’t require any of that and simply was put in our hands to show its potential for a slightly unique device with some fantastic features.

The fixed sockets is a fantastic idea that I never really thought of until now of being a pain and an annoyance but when i think about it, a standard extension reel that doesn’t have fixed sockets seems a bit dated. Though most of us will disconnect any devices first before reeling it in, the Designcord gives you the flexibility of keeping everything connected. The child protection is also something I’m very keen to see implemented as an expectant father I have a very concerning attitude now and rightly so, so I’d like to give my kudos to Designcord for including this.

The overheating protection is something we didn’t experience in our testing of the unit, which is fantastic news, and we’re confident that if the unit ever does overheat, the technology behind it will suffice but based off our long testing of the reel we didn’t feel the reel get even remotely warm to be honest.

That finally leads us onto the main aspect of the product, which is the autorewind feature. On paper it sounds and looks good but does it live up the hype? Yes and no. It’s good but we have a couple of suggestions which mainly involve protection and keeping things “together”. As the reel rewinds at such a fast pace it reminds me very much of a tape measure which can quite easily inflict pain if you accidently get near its path of travel though the rewind button does allow you to rewind the cord in short bursts if you so wish so we don’t see it being a major problem. Keeping things together is the main problem that we see with the Designcord and when we say that, we mean the cable getting knotted when rewinding. We found that on several occasions the cord itself got stuck on its way back in and we would like to see a roller mechanism on the units entrance that would assist in feeding the lead back into the base.

Our gripes are very very small and overall we think the Designcord is a great, innovative product that could been seen popping up more and more in the near future, and we’d be quite happy to endorse it ourselves. We honestly believe that the manufacturer has something special here and have tapped into a resource and market place that needed something with these unique features and definitely think that consumers will like the fixed socket aspect when autorewinding.

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