Belkin RockStar Lightning Audio Cable and Charger for iPhone 14, 13, 12, 11, 10 - White

Apple took away the headphone port, but sold me a lightning to 3.5 adapter so I could use my wired buds with my iPhone 13 Pro. Imagine my disappointment when my battery ran low while I was listening to a favorite playlist and I needed to unplug my buds to re-juice the phone!I checked Amazon for a solution and found several adapters that split from lightning to a 3.5 and a lightning charge port, most of them quite similar, pledging that they were MFI certified and compatible with my phone. All around 10 bucks each; I selected three different vendors and bought one from each. Despite slight differences in their pictures on Amazon, all of them were the same when they arrived. Two of them failed to work with my earbuds right from the start. The third worked fine with my earbuds until I plugged in the charger at the same time and the audio became very static-y. Thankfully, the next time I tried them the static was gone, but sadly so was the audio. I started to think this golden unicorn adapter I needed was a donkey with a taped on paper horn.Weeks later I’m on a 4 hour drive along country roads and digging the music that I’m playing from my phone, with Apple’s adapter into a double male 3.5mm cable into my truck’s “audio in” port. Good times! Until the phone battery runs low and I’m about to lose my map app.I get home after having to listen to myself sing for 45 minutes. Fortunately no passengers, so I only had to endure myself. Still enough reason to re-approach Amazon to see if they have any of these adapters that will actually work. I spotted this unit from Belkin for just around $35 and thought “so this is what the phrase good money after bad means”. And yet, I couldn’t stop myself.This Belkin adapter arrived in an Amazon bubble mailer promptly (two days) after ordering. Inside the mailer was a sealed plastic bag with the adapter, but no commercial packaging. The adapter itself had a black greasy smudge (repackaged defective return?), but looked otherwise new and I’m happy to report it performed exactly as I’d hoped when I tested it. Good clear sound through the truck’s sound system while charging at what seems to be a normal rate. This is the one that works!Update-It’s now April 2024 and this adapter is still working great after daily use.

After trying several other brands, I am so glad I found this good quality adapter from Belkin. It works great!

Plugged in a microphone along with a charger and it allowed me to charge and record! Works just as advertised. Feels sturdy as well.

I initially got two cheaper adapters as I didn't expect there would be too many ways that could go wrong for what seemed to be a basic adapter but after those two proved to be unreliable, I decided to play it safe and go with the belkin instead. These work every time as they should, plug them in and every time the audio and power is there. No static noise when charging and listening at the same time, no fiddling with the audio jack to slide one in and no to a couple other issues that a reliable adapter can address.My issue with it though is the bulkiness. It is good quality but the wire is about 3x stiffer than the OEM one from apple. Combine this with the additional bulkiness of it to the OEM adapter that came with the iPhone, I can't confidently state that I see myself carrying this around on my phone all the time/often as I would with the OEM one from Apple. The picture is a comparison of the one from Apple to the one from Belkin. This one is 3x+ the size. Bigger is expected to have both power and audio but they could have severely cut the wire length and/or make the wire softer so that you can tuck it into your pocket because when you have this connected to your phone, the phone length plus the adapter length does stick out by an unsightly amount out of your pocket while you're walking with it and the bulkiness on the end really draws yours eyes to it. It's something worth nothing if you're on the verge of buying just another OEM basic adapter from Apple or upgrading to one that comes included with a charging port since such an upgrade does come with it's own downside. Overall though, the technical reliability of this adapter beats such an issue.