 Die! Drop test. We're gonna do a can it toe. Oh God. Good luck everybody. Normally reviewing a cable is a hard pass for me. But when I get an email that says, hey, you wanna check out an indestructible tactical cable? Well, now you got my attention, don't you? I didn't think today was gonna include any of this stuff. And yet it did. Meet the Elite Core Athena Ethernet cable, a truly fascinating product. There's one thing I did know today though, that I would be telling our viewers about our sponsor, Raid Shadow Legends is a free to play dark fantasy collection RPG, featuring lots to do and champions to collect. Check it out at the link below and stay tuned for more info coming later in this video. This is your run of the mill cat five or cat six network cable. And this is Elite Core's super cat tactical cable. What in the world makes a cable tactical? Is it for jacking into the main frame during your covert ops or using it while taking enemy fire? I mean, is it even better than this? There's only one way for us to find out. My script just says vamp as you unbox. So let's go ahead and do this thing, shall we? Wow, the quality of this printing is terrible. Lifetime guarantee though, unconditional. You take great pride in your computer and for good reason. This is some A plus marketing wank right here. Every single inch of it oozes powerful perfection. Yet we're willing to bet that if you peeked around the back, it's still connected with a flimsy ethernet cable. Oh, for crying out loud, essentially a string and tin cans. That's what they, they said this is essentially a string and tin can. Enter the Athena Elite. Dripping with excellence, they say. Built to not only handle modern signal needs, but to last an eternity and look good along the way. Look at this locking connector. Like one of the first things to fail on any ethernet cable is obviously that little clip that keeps it into the socket. One wrong look at this thing and bang off it pops. You'll never see it again. Don't bother trying to superglue it back on by the way. That doesn't work. So Elite Core, this is an interesting strat. So first they've got this like cover around it. So it can't accidentally pop off. And then they've got a built-in button. So you can press it. Then they've got like a strain relief here and the sleeving on this thing is freaking ridiculous. Oh wow, look at that. It's like got memory like sleeving. Oh, well that's pretty cool when you're doing like like an ethernet wall or like a kind of trickier run. How's your kinkage resistance though? Okay, not bad. And it gets even more interesting. This is called the Convertashel connector and it accepts this kind of like baton looking thing. So you can see the whole ethernet connector is now like recessed in this thing. So in order to use this, you're actually gonna have to have special wall plates that Elite Core makes that it plugs into just like an XLR connector, like on a, on like professional audio. There you go. You have to push this thing to release it. So like theoretically that's real hard to get out by accident. Of course, so far we're just taking Elite Core's word for it that these things are tough. You know, you can run over it. You can hang weights from it, blah, blah, blah. I wanna see for myself. So for the next few minutes, we are going to be beating the absolute crap out of this cable and seeing if it still works. And we get to look good doing it, lttstore.com. Oh, I mean, we could do a quick, does it come out on its own by accident test? Okay, well that didn't come out on its own. We're transferring ladies and gentlemen. You know what? I'm gonna start with something a little less heavy. How about just like this? Is ill durres bane. Sorry, I just watched the Lord of the Rings 4K. We actually flattened it a little bit. Huh. Of course, what we don't know is if that would actually break a regular cable. Still transferring. Somehow I wouldn't really trust it though. 11, 12, 20. Oh, it's dead. That's what a dead ethernet cable looks like. So let's give it another 20. Okay, elite core. Okay. Can you tell how much flatter is on camera? Next test. Regular ethernet cable versus accidental scissors. See you later. Oh, it's dead. Now I'm hoping to actually be able to break it here. Gotta choke up. Make sure you get that full snipping power. Oh, did I get it? I did get it. I guess now we can find out what it's made of. First thing we've got is this is 23 AWG Cat 6. So yes, rated for 10 gig, but not over full distance. You need Cat 6A for that. Each of the individual twisted pairs is shielded. Well, that explains the kind of like the memory. Yeah, it has to be because there's nothing else in here. Colin and I were discussing whether we thought it was gonna be stranded or solid core. I can't tell yet. What's your final bet? Now I'm gonna strip it back. It's gotta be stranded. For a patch cable? Take industrial use. I mean, it's gonna be dragged and changed in and out of the truck a hundred times. I'm gonna say solid, just to be contrarian. I win. It's solid core. No way. It's solid core. Okay, well that would explain some of the memory as well. And probably what makes it so that it doesn't break is, like I said, the fact that it has such thick shielding and then sheathing on it. Just because one of our cables is dead doesn't mean our test is over. We pre-tested this blue cable and we've devised a series of torture tests we're gonna put it through before going back in and testing it again. Starting with the classic, can you run over it with a pickup truck? My lovely assistant, Colin, well he'll assist. Okay, you know what? That's probably enough of that. As expected, that did nothing at all. Another classic, we're gonna do a can it toe. Oh God, oh God, oh God. I mean, it's doing it. I don't know how high my confidence level is right now. Okay, Colin break, Matthias break. Oh God. Colin waited a second there. Hold on, I gotta play my favorite song. One thing, two thing, three thing, four thing, five thing. Oh, this poor thing. I don't think it lived. The sleeving has suffered a little bit. Let's go test it now. Wait. No, it still works. You gotta be kidding me. All right, let's go back and kill it for real this time. Soft wheels, that's easy. But these are hard wheels. This forklift weighs about 3000 pounds. Good luck everybody. All right, thanks Matthias. Oh man, that didn't even do anything. It flattened in a little. Die. Drop test. Test time, you ready? Try again, try again. Did we kill it? Oh my God, we didn't. We didn't, it works. Thought we got it that time. Okay then, marketing about the shame of connecting your gaming rig with a flimsy cable you found in a drawer somewhere. Clearly these are made for a different purpose than your run of the mill router to PC connection where the result is like mission critical. Like if you're setting up an audio system for a touring musician or rapidly deploying emergency infrastructure. This is the kind of cable that you spend the extra on when you need to be able to trust that it will work even when it's abused. And that is what tactical means. According to what we've seen in the real world, this will stand the test of time, whether you're on a traveling show that moves production to production or whether you just, you know, run over your cables with your chair all the time or something like that. But what is the cost? I actually don't know. So this is the reveal. Oh really? 42 US dollars per cable. You know what? That's bad, but it's not that bad. Like after working with pro grade cameras and filming equipment and that kind of stuff for so long, it doesn't surprise me. I mean, whether it's an XLR cable or like a weird proprietary USB adapter for the A7 or this is a classic. This is the cable that goes between a red camera and the monitor that is proprietary to red. Excuse me? We break a lot of those because the screen release is not great. These are 150 dollars a pop. I know. Which is a lot of money. Huh, actually I'm kind of still processing that one. But it's kind of the cost of doing business at a certain point. And it will pay for itself every time you have a completed production that doesn't require a reshoot or where the editor doesn't find a pop or hiss in the audio. These wireless microphone packs, for example, are $4,000 a pair. I mean, you can get a wireless lav kit for a 10th of that, but it's not mission critical grade. So that's why there's this whole world out there of connectors and industrial cables that are designed to far outperform what you would find kicking around your house. One of the big manufacturers in the connector space is Neutrik. And they actually make many of the connectors that Elite Core uses in their products. They're kind of the de facto standard when it comes to rigging gear like this. This is actually a power bar that Elite Core makes that is $167 for just four outlets. But it's got this locking connector. And if you open it up, I mean the cable management, man. It's like you could throw this thing around back of a truck, drive it across country, and you would still expect it to freaking work. Now that's not to say that the performance of these cables is any better, whether it's the ethernet or power or whatever else. It's just basically tin cans and string at the end of the day. But when it comes to locking retention mechanisms, water tightness and durability, well, that's where this kind of stuff comes into play. Just like you should play Raid Shadow Legends, the sponsor of today's video. If you're looking for a free game to play anytime with the phone in your pocket or the other phone in your pocket, you can with Raid Shadow Legends. They've got 500 champions to collect, each with their own skill tree and millions of artifacts to find and equip. The game offers a large variety of combinations and strategies to figure out. And so far we've been digging the sharpshooter champion. Wanna find the best weekly rewards? Join a clan and fight the clan boss. And the fastest way to level up your champions is through farming the campaign. So you grind XP, you get loads of silver and a few artifacts at the same time. 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