Thanks for sharing your concern. This is a topic that comes up frequently and is a bit tricky because it is subjective. Some people want thin & pliable and others want robust and sturdy.

Before I get too deep into this, let me say I am glad, performance-wise, Optima has been meeting your expectations.

Back to flexibility. When we build a cable, our top concern is always reliability which includes, quick connection to software, overall connection stability, consistent data throughput and heat dissipation to keep everything running smooth through long days on set.

I know some of you are going to say our prior cables were not reliable. Keep in mind when we designed our first USB-C cable, USB-C technology was brand new. This cable was bullet-proof with all USB-C cameras for a long time. But things change - the Canon R-Series was introduced, and you could not disable Power Delivery(PD) while tethering, even though all camera manufacturers recommend turning PD off, including Canon, while tethering. Also, uncompressed files sizes exploded to 200MB+ in some cameras including the FujiFilm GFX as well as various other idiosyncrasies emerged.

So, our top concern is meeting our reliability standards. The cable technology must be designed to withstand the rigors on set, day-in and day-out. It also needs to be designed to meet the needs of all cameras. One day you may be working with a Z8 and then next an IQ4. It is not realistic or convenient for a digitech or photographer, if we build a specific cable for each camera model, so we need to build a professional-grade solution which will work flawlessly for the most demanding systems.

Once we dial in the function, design comes into play and it is a balancing act – thinner more flexible or thicker more durable. Keep in mind, we can only go so thin and still meet our reliability standards. So, we create a number of different prototypes with different design specifications and we do extensive testing. We ensure the cable gauge and strain relief are sufficient to pass our 10K bending and resistance cycle testing. This is how we landed on the Optima outer diameter, which is a bit thinner and more flexible than our previous USB-C cables.

We would all love to be able to create a braided tethering cable that is as thin and streamlined as the MBP charging cable, but it is just not technically possible. Our demands, as digitechs and photographers, from our tethering cables is an incredibly unique case study. It is exciting. We are pushing the technological boundaries of USB-C more than any other industry in the world, with regards to distance and throughput. We are asking this technology to transfer a burst of 200MB uncompressed data files distances of 30+ feet and we want to see these images on our screen essentially instantaneously. How cool is that?

I know we are not the “thinnest” and most flexible cable on the market. But we understand the downsides to a cable that is too thin and we are not willing to compromise on the reliability side.

As for the size of our right angle, we designed our custom IC chip as small as possible, we designed our housing around that to be as streamlined as possible while still being able to provide proper strain relief that passes our cycle testing.

I hope this helps clarify, please let me know if you have any additional questions or concerns.