Overview
Compare common RF coax cable types for antennas, WiFi, LoRa, ESP32 and embedded RF products.
Key points
- RG58 is common and flexible but lossy at high frequencies.
- RG316 is thin and useful inside devices, but has higher loss.
- LMR400 is low loss but thick and less flexible.
- Cable loss increases with frequency and length.
Practical advice
RF cable choice can strongly affect real range. At 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, even short poor-quality cables can lose significant power.
Common mistakes
Common mistakes include using long thin coax, adding too many adapters, confusing SMA and RP-SMA, and ignoring cable loss in the link budget.