StarTech.com 6ft (1.8m) 1-Port USB to Serial RS232 Adapter, FTDI DB9 Serial DCE Adapter Cable, Null Modem, USB 2.0 - TAA

Product Overview

AI-generated summary

At ~£27.82 ex-VAT, this StarTech 1-port USB-to-RS232 adapter is a fairly sensible buy if you occasionally need to talk to older kit—think routers/switches, some serial console gear, industrial panels, or any “the vendor only speaks RS-232” situation. The FTDI angle matters in the real world: most problems people have with cheap USB-serial adapters (driver weirdness, unstable comms, handshake/latency issues) tend to go away when the adapter is based on FTDI chipsets. It’s also the right kind of “DB9 DCE + null modem” package when you’re connecting to gear that expects console-style wiring, so you don’t end up bodging with extra dongles.

That said, I wouldn’t buy it for anything mission-critical or high-throughput. If you’re doing continuous, noisy industrial logging or lots of long-term sessions, you’ll want to be confident in your environment (good cables, proper grounding, correct pinout expectations). Also, this is only one port—if you’re trying to modernise serial sprawl, it’s not the cost-effective way to scale. For occasional admin/ops use in a UK business, though, it’s good value and the “it just works” factor is exactly what you want from an adapter like this.