Soba helps you manage your cables in a sophisticated way.
When you live in a tech gadget world like I do, you can easily become entangled by cables. It seems like every device has a charging cable and a data input cable. One cable easily becomes two, which easily becomes four and suddenly your mostly neat, clean world is a jumbled mass of cabling.
The first computer I bought was the original iMac. If you remember, the advertising campaign featured a voice over by Jeff Goldblum and promised that you would only need three cables – the power cable, the USB to connect the keyboard/mouse and the ethernet cable for internet/network connectivity. Unfortunately for me, the three cables spawned an entire mess of them when I had to include a floppy drive for school and a zip disk drive for mass data backup. That is just one example of how the best intentions of cable management can turn sour. Since that time – nearly two decades ago – there are some fantastic new cable management solutions – one of which is Soba by Bluelounge.
Soba finally gives people a way to work with crazy, out of control wires and cables to create a nice, neat working environment. It’s designed to make an easy-to-use cable management option that starts with the Vortex tubing and zipper. The Vortex zipper is designed to allow you to twist the tubing with a sliding motion to route cables. Once the zipper passes, the tubing closes, enclosing the cables inside. The user can then use adhesive mounting caps (included with the system) to tuck the Soba and your cables away.
“Cable management can feel like quite an undertaking, but it doesn’t have to be such a task,” said Dominic Symons, Creative Director and Founder of Bluelounge. “Soba is designed to be an easy way to zip cables up and get them out of the way for tidier spaces.”
When testing out Soba, I found what I thought would be a fairly easy test subject – the cabling bundle from an Apple Cinema Display. Even though Soba is only meant to hold one larger cable or three smaller ones, I deiceded to really stretch its limits. I included the aforementioned bundle along with an auxiliary cable and an ethernet cable. While it was a bit of tight squeeze, I did manage to get all three cables into the Vortex tubing.
One of the things I really appreciate about Soba is how easy it is to take cables out of it. When you first design a space and route your cables, you think it will probably stay that way for some time. Well, I can tell you from experience, that sometimes, you have to get a single cable out of a bundle quickly and efficiently. Soba allows you to do this. Since the tubing opens up so easily with the aid of the zipper, you can pull out any number of cables you need with out much hassle.
If you are like me and have messes of cables to tame, I would suggest taking a look at Soba. For a retail price of $24.95 and the availability of either white or black colors, it’s a wonderful, sophisticated option for any cable management job. Each Soba system is comprised of 10 feet of Vortex tubing (which can be cut to length), the Vortex zipper, 2 end caps, 3 mounting caps, 1 y-split, and 5 rubber bands.
For more information, visit bluelounge.com/us/cable-management/soba.
