StarTech.com 1 ft USB to RS232 Serial DB9 Adapter Cable with COM Retention

Product Overview

AI-generated summary

For £23-ish ex-VAT, this StarTech USB-to-RS232 cable is a sensible buy if you’re occasionally dealing with legacy kit—think routers, UPS monitoring, older industrial gear, or any “it only talks serial” situation. StarTech’s big win here is reliability: it’s usually one of the better-behaved options when you’re plugging into Windows systems that aren’t particularly friendly to random USB-serial chipsets. The COM retention feature is also genuinely useful in real life—if you’ve got software or scripts that expect a specific COM port, you’ll spend less time re-jigging settings after rebooting or plugging into a different USB port.

That said, it’s a bit niche and not great value if you need serial often or at scale. The 1ft length is fine for desk work, but if you’re trying to run cables across a rack, you’ll hate it. Also, if you’re doing serious deployment or lots of devices, you’ll want to sanity-check driver support for your exact OS version—USB-serial is “simple” until it isn’t. I’d recommend this cable for SMEs and small IT teams who need one dependable serial adapter for the odd task; I wouldn’t bother if you’re constantly converting serial and need something more robust/length-flexible or part of a standardized rollout.