Your Top Three All-Time Best and Worst Electronics Connector Designs

[Monkeh]

- BS1363 main plug. I like it, it's so over engineered. Looks like it  could easily carry 50A.

It really, really can't, though.

[grumpydoc]

Like:
BNC
XLR
N
F

Dislike:
Molex (with a vengeance).
USB3 (what were they smoking?)
Belling Lee(they always fall apart/cable pulls out etc)
DIN audio plugs, especially the two pin one (which no-one else has mentioned yet).
RJ45 with shrouds that prevent you pushing the tag down far enough to get the plug out.
That horrible thing they use for car radio aerials

Equivocal:
Most things really as almost everything has some good and some bad features - some are quite nice in use but can be fiddly to assemble eg RJ45 which needs a special crimp and can be fiddly to get the conductors to fit down the holes in the plug. Audio jacks can also be fiddly to wire up, particularly 2.5mm ones (or even worse 1.5mm) and even some 1/4" ones are poorly built and difficult to get any decent sized cable onto the tag connected to the tip.

[Bloch]

Are there no love for M12 connectors 

[ddavidebor]

I love smb connettor

Little, cute, nice click and even the crappiest one is good quality

[xrunner]

I love smb connettor

Little, cute, nice click and even the crappiest one is good quality

I've never run across any in the wild but I looked at some today from an Ebay Hong Kong dealer (I'm getting ready to stock up on RF adapters) they sound like a nifty connector. 

[free_electron]

BEST : APC-7

WORST : Anything used for vacuum tubes...

[sarm]

I hate the micro-USB , the type A B and mini i like.

[Psi]

knowing you're connecting one power source to another power source would be bad enough idiocy but to continue to plug red on black and black on red would qualify as total idiocy,

Agreed, but a good connector should be designed so its impossible to do anything stupid.

It's not always obvious which connector is the powersource and which is the load. You may have many connectors packed into a small area and all disappearing off through ducting or whatever.
Relying on the user to pay attention and not connected red to black when other connectors make it impossible is just bad design.

[vk6zgo]

I love smb connettor

Little, cute, nice click and even the crappiest one is good quality

I've never run across any in the wild but I looked at some today from an Ebay Hong Kong dealer (I'm getting ready to stock up on RF adapters) they sound like a nifty connector. 

They are the ones you see on a box of cables at a Hamfest,or rescue from a Dumpster--everybody thinks they are going to use them,but the bit of gear at home with vaguely similar connectors is always bloody SMA!

[richard.cs]

Good
1) BNC, but only the good quality ones like H&S - these are electrically very good too.
2) BS1363 mains plug. Cheap ones can be a bit marginal at the full 13A due to heat from the fuse but otherwise very well thought out and works well. If you know what you're doing you can also put a second neutral pin in and make a fuseless plug that's good for about 30A in a good quality socket.
3) D connectors, but not the high density series. Simple, cheap and reliable.
4) XLR
5) The most useful and versatile mains power connector, for single and three phase up to 100A - the M10 wingnut.

Bad
1) DC coax power connectors. Too many non-interchangable types and no standard for what each is used for.
2) The 7/16 RF connector, seems good in theory but at anywhere near the rated power the centers seem to overheat followed by arcing and complete destruction.
3) RJ45s where the clip always breaks off.


Ugly
1) F connectors. Who thought using the cable center conductor as the pin was a good idea?
2) The Belling-Lee connector for all the reasons previously mentioned.

[Monkeh]

2) BS1363 mains plug. Cheap ones can be a bit marginal at the full 13A due to heat from the fuse but otherwise very well thought out and works well. If you know what you're doing you can also put a second neutral pin in and make a fuseless plug that's good for about 30A in a good quality socket.

No. Just no. They have never been safe for 30A with any socket.

[richard.cs]

2) BS1363 mains plug. Cheap ones can be a bit marginal at the full 13A due to heat from the fuse but otherwise very well thought out and works well. If you know what you're doing you can also put a second neutral pin in and make a fuseless plug that's good for about 30A in a good quality socket.

No. Just no. They have never been safe for 30A with any socket.

I didn't say it was a good idea, but they do survive it without any noticable heating which is a) useful for getting you out of a mess and b) shows a significant safety margin for their normal application.

[olsenn]

I like any connector that is made of metal and snaps into place. XLR and BNC both come to mind. For more serious applications, I also like N connectors, but they are rather bulky for everyday use.

I dislike stereo headphone jacks, all plastic connectors, and essentially anything that can come lose. I also dislike  connectors that are either easy to break (like SMA) or wear down over time (like banana). Nothing lasts forever, but some are better than others.




"There are some things money can't buy. For those things, there's Bitcoin!"

[Monkeh]

2) BS1363 mains plug. Cheap ones can be a bit marginal at the full 13A due to heat from the fuse but otherwise very well thought out and works well. If you know what you're doing you can also put a second neutral pin in and make a fuseless plug that's good for about 30A in a good quality socket.

No. Just no. They have never been safe for 30A with any socket.

I didn't say it was a good idea, but they do survive it without any noticable heating which is a) useful for getting you out of a mess and b) shows a significant safety margin for their normal application.

Noticable heating of the plug, maybe. The contacts, which are marginal as is, are another matter.. The old war horse needs retiring and replacing with something with more contact area, badly.

[richard.cs]

Noticable heating of the plug, maybe. The contacts, which are marginal as is, are another matter.. The old war horse needs retiring and replacing with something with more contact area, badly.

Starting to get a little off topic perhaps but I don't think contact temperature will be that far from pin temperature. I'll have a play tonight, crack the back of a socket open and attach a thermocouple. It will of course be heavily dependant on contact springiness and cleanliness. The ones I've had apart make contact on the two longer flat sides.

[ptricks]

hdmi is pain in the ass for me the damn cable looses the socket on the tv without support and from the self heating of the tv wont make contact and the signal dissappears and comes back all the time why they couldnt get a damn locking mechanism like the displayport small connector yet rugged

Blame this on marketing.  HDMI connector was designed when USB was becoming big with consumers and the idea was to introduce HDMI as being just like USB, just plug it in, anyone can do it ! Too bad if it breaks the connector from the weight of the cable., that is all after warranty stuff anyway.

[M. András]

hdmi is pain in the ass for me the damn cable looses the socket on the tv without support and from the self heating of the tv wont make contact and the signal dissappears and comes back all the time why they couldnt get a damn locking mechanism like the displayport small connector yet rugged

Blame this on marketing.  HDMI connector was designed when USB was becoming big with consumers and the idea was to introduce HDMI as being just like USB, just plug it in, anyone can do it ! Too bad if it breaks the connector from the weight of the cable., that is all after warranty stuff anyway.

wouldnt be a problem if the cable wouldnt be so stiffs the damn thing vant be bent in the right angle to support it after replugging the thing its good for a few months next time i will put some silicone over the connector but its pain cos the tv is on a console fixed to the wall 2.5m above ground ...
displayport is not much bigger if not the exact same size and it still have a lock built in with easy removal

[c4757p]

I am of the "if it stays connected for a week or longer it should bolt to the chassis like a D connector" group...

[M. András]

I am of the "if it stays connected for a week or longer it should bolt to the chassis like a D connector" group...

dvi comes to mind those have no problem ever

[John Coloccia]

I am of the "if it stays connected for a week or longer it should bolt to the chassis like a D connector" group...

dvi comes to mind those have no problem ever

Apples come to mind.  The only connector on an Apple that's worth a damn is the magnetic power adapter on their laptops, and I'm not even sure if THOSE are worth it.  Very convenient and nice when someone trips over the cord, but otherwise somewhat unreliable.  Every other connector is a piece of crap, especially the power connector on their Mac Mini.  What a piece of junk, and completely baffling to me how it ever made it to market.  That display port garbage that they use is absolute crap too.  Pretty much all of their connectors are crap.

[c4757p]

But they look nice...

[tom66]

MagSafe is great... until the connection looses slightly, and massively heats up... resulting in:
http://www.babilim.co.uk/blog/jpg/magsafe_fire_01.jpg

[Bored@Work]

Those who had to live through SCART^* consider HDMI an improvement. However, the fix for SCART and HDMI is the same:

Hot glue.

* May the French inventors and the French government who forced it onto the rest of the world rot in hell - twice ...

[aargee]

Those car radio antenna connectors were just called Motorola connectors.

I read somewhere (here?) that the design brief for HDMI was a mechanical life of 100 connects? I mean who was ever going to keep connecting stuff over and over to the TV? 

The problem with hot glue for fixes is what happens when it gets hot. I remember a car kit for a Motorola brick phone I had, after parking in the sun on a hot Aussie summer day, finding the holder in pieces all over the floor - manufactured with a thermal glue!

I used to go out of my way to find RCA and the like connectors with bakelite/fibreglass insulation that wouldn't melt while soldering.

[tom66]

HDMI was originally a "change rarely" thing, but with every camcorder, laptop, smartphone supporting HDMI now, it's a silly design as you will be frequently changing ports to connect these portable devices.... Plus most entry level TVs only have 2 ports, which means that you will be swapping if you've got a camera and two fixed devices (HD receiver, blu-ray...)