Best budget USB

I bought a 1m LavriCable Ultimate Silver Dual USB cable because the data and power runs are separated physically as two separate cables and it uses 5N silver conductors — design features normally found in much pricier USB cables — but at US$124 it’s only just a hair over your max budget. I’ve got several LavriCables and they’re all well made and punch well above their price sonically IMHO. Best of luck.

https://www.lavricables.com/cables/ultimate-silver-dual-usb-a-b-interconnect-cable/

@lollipopguild Just fyi and so you know it’s not just me, a few others here have tried Lavri and all have been very happy with their performance and in all cases they bested the cables they replaced. I found them because I thought the Apple Camera Adapter was suboptimal for getting USB out of my iPad for my HeadFi rig and LavriCable was one of the only aftermarket products I could find so gave it a shot. It was a significant improvement and since then I’ve bought a pair of balanced interconnects and headphone cable in addition to the USB and all have been excellent. They’re out of Latvia and fly under the radar but maybe not for much longer. FWIW.

@barts Although at $174 the 1.5m Lavri Dual USB is $50 more than 1m if I was doing it over again I’d spring for it given the post @lalitk cites above, FWIW.  Also, this was my first USB cable so haven’t as yet compared it to any others so I’d be very interested if you get to compare it to something else to see what you find if you can share your thoughts?

@barts All my Lavris took about two weeks, and they were all bought in late 2021 so not sure if anything’s changed since then.  Looking back it was well worth the wait IME.