I’ve talked a bit in the past about organizing your cables and the best ways to keep them tangle free. In the past, I used to use plain old ziplock bags but then started using a dedicated cable pouch for all my stuff. It helps keep things organized but cables still get tangled up every now and then. Recently I was introduced to a product by a company called Recoil that makes these little devices called Automatic Cord Winders. These are little devices that are supposed to help organize things like charging/sync cables and even headphone cables by winding these cables up into its body, keeping them secure and tangle free.
Design
The Recoil Automatic Cord Winders are made of colorful plastic. They don’t look like much at first but they actually feature an ingenious spool like mechanism that automatically winds your cords into itself. All you do is fold a cable you have in half and take the folded portion and place it on the little hook on the spool. Pull it down and it will begin to automatically wind the cable into itself. It will stop on its own once you reach the end of your cable. To pull the cable out, just grab the end and slowly unwind it out of the Recoil. Once you get to the end, let the cable slip off the little hook and off the trigger button. This will lock the winder and allow you to remove the cable. You can check out the video below to preview exactly just how easy it is to use.
As you can see, the Recoil Automatic Cord Winder also works for earphones, aux cables, and any other type of cables of this size and up to 5 feet long. You can either purchase these as single units if you only have a couple cables that need organizing, or as a bundle of three that also includes a stand. There are three different sizes that can be purchases, small, medium, and large, while the 3-pack comes with one of each. They can also be purchased in a variety of different colors.
Experience
Not going to lie, these things are pretty neat. I never really thought I needed something like the Recoil Automatic Cord Winders until I started using them. For starters, it really does organize your cables a bit better than just throwing everything into a plastic bag. Not only that, it keeps everything tangle free and neat. This works well if you’re carrying around 1 or 2 cables.
If you need to carry around more than that, the system itself can become quite bulky. Carrying three of these can take up a significant amount of space compared to just rolling up your cables and carrying more than that is even bulkier. However, that doesn’t lessen the fact that these are a pretty neat way of carrying around your cables. If you have more than one of these, you’ll probably get the one that comes with the dock. What you can do is just leave the dock at home and pocket the cables that you need daily. I’m assuming you don’t really need to carry them all at once.
The one thing I will say that the Recoil is great for is keeping your in-ear headphones tidy. I never really know how to keep these things tangle free but now with the Recoil, I can.
Final Thoughts
The Recoil Automatic Cord Winder is quite an interesting product. It solves many of the problems we have when it comes to cable management and keeping things tidy and organized. It’s a much more sophisticated solution than just throwing everything into a small pouch or using twisty ties. Though these might not be as affordable as plain old ziplock bag, they do a much better job of keeping things separate, making searching for specific cables easier.
