Why You Should Buy From SV? Amazon Vs SV Microwave
Here at SV Microwave, we have long prided ourselves on the quality of our products, and the level of attention to detail we give to each piece part that goes into the construction of our connectors and cable assemblies. However, that care and quality translate to a very different price tag than some similar products already in the market. Digging through Amazon, one day, we noticed a vendor selling SMA Male to Male RF Cable Assemblies at a very cheap $10 for two assemblies. At the same price break, SV’s own SMA Male to Male Cable Assembly, MSSMA-085-MSSMA-060, costs $84 for the same thing. And it got me thinking, how different could these two assemblies be? Let’s take a look.
Order Process
Right off the bat, Amazon’s ordering process was simple and easy to use. With a few keystrokes I found the cable assembly I needed and with one click received it 2 days later.
This won out against SV’s cable builder. Our Rapid Response cable builder is considered to be best-in-class, but our lead time is 10 business days. The ordering process is also a little more cumbersome; you still have to input a credit card or contact your Account Representative.
However, SV can handle larger quantity orders. Up to 25 cables at a time can be ordered through the website. Further, our cable configurator allows the customer to custom-design a cable assembly to fit their needs. The customer can determine cable type, connector type, and cable length. If a customer needs cable assemblies in bulk, we can take the order directly as well.
Figure 1 - Order details of Amazon-purchased SMA Cable Assembly.
Initial Inspection
Right off the bat, one of the first things we noticed was that our Amazon-purchased Assembly did not include their Product Specification Datasheet or Country of Origin Certificate. We had very little information about what material this product was made of, and how we could expect it to perform.
Any RF cable assembly purchased from SV Microwave comes with a datasheet that is automatically generated and includes both Material and Performance Data with data points like impedance, frequency range, expected VSWR, and Insertion Loss.
Figure 2 - Packaging of SV Microwave and Amazon-purchased SMA RF Cable Assemblies
Figure 3- Automatically generated datasheet for SV Microwave RF Cable Assembly
Quality Inspection
Upon receiving the SMA RF Cable Assemblies, both were delivered to our Quality Department. SV’s quality engineers noted that the Amazon cables would not pass inspection because of a lack of information. The Amazon cables were delivered without:
1. Bill of Materials: This means that we do not know what materials are used in the assembly.
2. Country of Origin:
3. Environmental Compliance Certifications
For many of SV’s customers, particularly those in military defense and commercial markets, parts must be sourced from trusted vendors, with the appropriate certifications, and metrics like shelf-life and performance specs must be known from the outset. Not providing any of these data points is cause for automatic exclusion.
Otherwise, our Quality team noted that the Amazon-purchased cables were delivered with FOD on the insulator. FOD stands for Foreign Object Debris which impacts the reliability and electrical performance of the connector.
Figure 4 - Side-by-Side Comparison. Amazon Purchased connector on the Left has visible FOD
Electrical Performance
The most notable differences between the Amazon SMA RF Cable Assembly and the SV SMA RF Cable Assembly came at a time of electrical testing. Below we tested both cable assemblies for VSWR and Insertion Loss. The blue line is the SV cable assembly, the red is the Amazon-purchased cable assembly. Though the cable assemblies perform well at low frequencies, as we start moving through to higher frequencies, the Amazon-purchased cable begins to fail dramatically. In the words of our electrical engineer, “Somehow horrible is an understatement.” Below are two charts comparing VSWR and Insertion Loss for each.
To use the Amazon-purchased RF Cable Assemblies reliably, it could only be used for applications under 6 GHz, like Wi-Fi. For anything requiring a high-frequency application, the Amazon-purchased RF Cable Assembly would fail almost immediately.
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Why You Should Buy From SV? Amazon Vs SV Microwave
Here at SV Microwave, we have long prided ourselves on the quality of our products, and the level of attention to detail we give to each piece part that goes into the construction of our connectors and cable assemblies. However, that care and quality translate to a very different price tag than some similar products already in the market. Digging through Amazon, one day, we noticed a vendor selling SMA Male to Male RF Cable Assemblies at a very cheap $10 for two assemblies. At the same price break, SV’s own SMA Male to Male Cable Assembly, MSSMA-085-MSSMA-060, costs $84 for the same thing. And it got me thinking, how different could these two assemblies be? Let’s take a look.
Order Process
Right off the bat, Amazon’s ordering process was simple and easy to use. With a few keystrokes I found the cable assembly I needed and with one click received it 2 days later.
This won out against SV’s cable builder. Our Rapid Response cable builder is considered to be best-in-class, but our lead time is 10 business days. The ordering process is also a little more cumbersome; you still have to input a credit card or contact your Account Representative.
However, SV can handle larger quantity orders. Up to 25 cables at a time can be ordered through the website. Further, our cable configurator allows the customer to custom-design a cable assembly to fit their needs. The customer can determine cable type, connector type, and cable length. If a customer needs cable assemblies in bulk, we can take the order directly as well.
Figure 1 - Order details of Amazon-purchased SMA Cable Assembly.
Initial Inspection
Right off the bat, one of the first things we noticed was that our Amazon-purchased Assembly did not include their Product Specification Datasheet or Country of Origin Certificate. We had very little information about what material this product was made of, and how we could expect it to perform.
Any RF cable assembly purchased from SV Microwave comes with a datasheet that is automatically generated and includes both Material and Performance Data with data points like impedance, frequency range, expected VSWR, and Insertion Loss.
Figure 2 - Packaging of SV Microwave and Amazon-purchased SMA RF Cable Assemblies
Figure 3- Automatically generated datasheet for SV Microwave RF Cable Assembly
Quality Inspection
Upon receiving the SMA RF Cable Assemblies, both were delivered to our Quality Department. SV’s quality engineers noted that the Amazon cables would not pass inspection because of a lack of information. The Amazon cables were delivered without:
1. Bill of Materials: This means that we do not know what materials are used in the assembly.
2. Country of Origin:
3. Environmental Compliance Certifications
For many of SV’s customers, particularly those in military defense and commercial markets, parts must be sourced from trusted vendors, with the appropriate certifications, and metrics like shelf-life and performance specs must be known from the outset. Not providing any of these data points is cause for automatic exclusion.
Otherwise, our Quality team noted that the Amazon-purchased cables were delivered with FOD on the insulator. FOD stands for Foreign Object Debris which impacts the reliability and electrical performance of the connector.
Figure 4 - Side-by-Side Comparison. Amazon Purchased connector on the Left has visible FOD
Electrical Performance
The most notable differences between the Amazon SMA RF Cable Assembly and the SV SMA RF Cable Assembly came at a time of electrical testing. Below we tested both cable assemblies for VSWR and Insertion Loss. The blue line is the SV cable assembly, the red is the Amazon-purchased cable assembly. Though the cable assemblies perform well at low frequencies, as we start moving through to higher frequencies, the Amazon-purchased cable begins to fail dramatically. In the words of our electrical engineer, “Somehow horrible is an understatement.” Below are two charts comparing VSWR and Insertion Loss for each.
To use the Amazon-purchased RF Cable Assemblies reliably, it could only be used for applications under 6 GHz, like Wi-Fi. For anything requiring a high-frequency application, the Amazon-purchased RF Cable Assembly would fail almost immediately.