i did look at the pictures. i even went to the baseus website. notice how every picture is super-overly-hdr? and everything is a glamour shot? this is telltale #1: the product is not going to look anything like the picture.
telltale #2 is that they are priced significantly higher than competition and struggle to justify it. justification includes this wtf pic¹ from this webpage captioned thusly:
Single Handed
Power Disconnecting
You can unplug the phone with one hand when
get a call to avoid incidents due to charging.
followed by:
Magnetic Suction
Dustproof
It is a magnetic suction head, also is a dust-
proof plug, so as to avoid dust accumulation
at charging interface. Reduce the frequency of
plug and unplug to prolong the service life.
which is pretty misleading, as the ”dustproof” they're bragging about is the fact that you leave the magnetic head in to port and the port doesn't get dust inside it.
and
Anti-lost Design,
Adjustable for Storage
and pull out the magnetic suction head,
and put it down for easy storage, don t worry
about t losing the magnetic suction head.
please note, i'm not making fun of the english, i'm calling out the ”we are trying way too hard to justify why our product is premium priced” by not pointing out a single premium thing on it... in fact, the more i look at it, the less premium it seems.
i can't find the rectangle style connectors on their website https://www.baseusonlinestore.com... they only appear on alibaba, which is telltale #3 for the alibaba version. it's entirely possible that they're fakes of clones.
https://www.baseusonline.com is their arabic/uae store. there's not any magnetic usb cables on it.
https://www.baseus.com, their chinese website does not sell usb cables, nor mention them, although there's a link to both the amazon baseus store (which only sells the round bullseye magnetic usb cables), and the ”official” alibaba store, which sells both the round bullseye style and the ”new 100w” rectangular style that looks like this.
hmm... looking a bit further on their ”official” alibaba store, i see a 20w version of the cable. it looks like the 100w version carries the requisite chips to notify the usb-pd devices that a 100w cable is there, but the chips are in the cable, not the head. this means it is likely that you could put a 20w head on a 100w cable. i'm not sure whether or not both type-c heads are rated 100w, but this make it possible to have a cable rated for 100w set up 100w with the charger and possibly make 100w available to a micro-usb or lightning (or possibly but less likely usb-c) not rated for it. this would be bad, especially if there's a short or the device has a problem or doesn't control it's own draw and assumes that the charger is responsible. i can't say for sure this is a dange: i'd have to get a few in my lab and test them... but this company also makes multiheaded usb charging cables, and those are not a good idea, nor are they remotely spec.
so telltale #4 is that the only place associated with the baseus brand that even acknowledges magnetic usb cables is their usa website and amazon store, and they're the round ones.., and the only mention of the rectangular version is their ”official” store page on aliexpress/alibaba. i'm... very skeptical.
looking at the physical design of the magnetic cables on https://www.baseusonlinestore.com, they are all bullseye circular design. it is not a good design, as there's a large area for swarf and other crap to short it out. this is very similar in design to op's problematic cables. in fact, they look a hell of a lot like op's ravid brand cables via amazon. i wouldn't be surprised in the least if they were both made by the same factory with the same equipment and dies.
looking at the single sort-of-mayby reputable link for the baesus rectangular ”new 100w” version (same pic as above), you will notice what appears to be a micro dupont 7x2 with edge connectors. the 7x2 doesn't appear to mate with anything at all, just the edge connectors. there's no mechanism to prevent swarf/crap from shorting pins.
you'll note the netdot gen10 has a double ring around the contacts, as well as being very thin by the contacts so that anything getting inside would have to be miniscule, and the way power seems to he arranged on the pins makes shorting it while connected damn near impossible. i tried, and couldn't even get a reliable short circuit failure with steel or copper filings... plus the connector would pretty obviously not fit right when i tried that.
it doesn't look like the rectangular baseus version has this safety feature, nor anything like it. you'll note that the female side and the make side are pretty wide open where the contacts are.
in conclusion, i'd not trust a damn thing from baseus, especially not their magnetic usb cables. this applies doubly so when netdot gen10 cables are less expensive, more readily available, ship quicker.
looking at other generations of netdot, gen12 is a possibly/nearly identical to the bullseye baseus magnetic connectors, and i would not use gen12.
gen 2-7 tips are are still available for purchase, which says good things about the company. while gens 2-7 are safer than a bullseye design, they're less safe than gen10. gen7 looks like it was made to be premium, but the design is less safe than gen10. gen9 is a charging-only bullseye (3-pin) and has the same issues as other bullseyes, and gen11 doesn't exist anywhere i can find it.
don't get me wrong, there's room for improvement with netdot gen10 cables... they could be built more premium and it's possible to make them more durable (uhmw, flatter-to-device profile, ferrings for specific popular devices and a few generic ones), but i don't think the additional expense would be worth it.
so there you have it! i'll add the disclaimer that i haven't actually tested baseus products personally, so i'm going by reviews, pictures, and my modestly extensive experience with tech over the last 40 years. if someone wants my personal professional option based on a physical review, i'd be willing to do so if a few copies of the product were provided.
whew! is that enough? :)
1: look at the phone and his hands. upon further examination, it looks like they photoshopped an hdr glamour shot of their cable and a phone on to a stock photo. might be fun to do reverse image searches on their product photo backgrounds...
