The Apple Accessories Worth Buying, and the Ones to Skip

The checkout is the most expensive part of buying Apple, and it ambushes you after you’ve already made the big decision. You’re flushed from spending a thousand pounds on a laptop, your guard is down, and a friendly screen offers you a polishing cloth for the price of a decent dinner, a charging brick that frankly should have come in the box, and a case that costs as much as a pair of jeans. People who agonise for three weeks over which Mac to buy will toss a hundred quid of accessories into the bag in ninety seconds without blinking. That’s where the margin really lives.

The trick to accessories is a single distinction: does this thing touch data, power or safety, or is it just plastic and fabric. For the first kind, buy something properly made — Apple’s own or a trusted brand. For the second kind, Apple’s name is a tax you don’t need to pay. Get that one rule straight and you’ll spend less and own better stuff.

Apple-branded or third-party? Decide it like this

Before the specifics, here’s the whole judgement on one screen. Anything carrying current or data deserves a known, rated product. Anything that’s just a shape around your phone or a prop for your laptop can come from anyone good.

Chargers and cables: where third-party quietly wins

Apple stopped putting a power brick in the iPhone box years ago, which means you almost certainly need one — and the Apple Store would love to sell you a plain single-port brick at a tidy price. Don’t. A good GaN charger from a brand like Anker is smaller, runs cooler, and usually has two or three ports so it powers your phone, watch and laptop from one wall socket. It’s the rare accessory that’s both cheaper than Apple’s and genuinely better. This is the one charging purchase I’d tell everyone to make.

Cables are the same story with sharper teeth. Apple’s white cables are famous for fraying at the ends, and they’re not cheap to replace. A braided USB-C cable from a reputable maker lasts far longer for less money — buy two or three and stop worrying. The one nuance worth knowing: a cable that only charges is fine being cheap, but if you’re moving data off a drive or hitting top charging speeds, you need a cable actually rated for it. A bargain cable will happily charge slowly and then mystify you when a file transfer crawls. Match the cable to the job and you’ll never overpay or under-buy.

Cases and screen protection: buy one, just not the dear one

A case is worth buying — it protects the phone you just spent a fortune on, and it protects the resale value that funds your next one. What’s not worth it is paying Apple’s premium for the privilege. The third-party case market is enormous and excellent; you can get something better-protecting and better-looking than Apple’s fabric or silicone offerings for a fraction of the price. The only spec that genuinely matters is MagSafe compatibility if you use magnetic chargers and mounts — get one with the magnets aligned and you keep the whole ecosystem of snap-on accessories.

A screen protector is cheap insurance most people should take. A few pounds of tempered glass in front of a screen that costs hundreds to replace is an easy yes, especially for anyone with kids, gravel driveways, or butterfingers. You don’t need a fancy brand here either; you need one that fits and goes on without bubbles.

Stands and the StandBy life: small money, real payoff

Two stands are worth real consideration. A MagSafe nightstand charger turns your iPhone into a bedside clock and charges it overnight in one move — it’s a small luxury that becomes part of your day fast, and good third-party ones cost a fraction of the boutique options. And a laptop or monitor stand is one of the best-value things you can buy for a desk, not because it’s clever but because it lifts the screen to eye level and stops you craning your neck for eight hours. A thirty-pound stand that saves your spine is a better purchase than most of the gadgets that cost ten times more.

Where stands turn into traps is the designer end. There’s a whole tier of beautifully machined aluminium props charging luxury-goods prices for the job a simple stand does identically. And the legendary one — Apple’s monitor stand that costs around a thousand pounds on its own — exists, mercifully, in a professional corner of the catalogue most of us never visit. The lesson it teaches still applies downmarket: you are often paying for the finish, not the function.

The traps to walk straight past

Some things are just margin with a logo. The polishing cloth, around twenty pounds, is the meme for a reason — a microfibre cloth from anywhere does the identical job for the price of a coffee. Premium fabric cases at full price are lovely and overpriced; wait for them to drop or buy third-party. Apple’s dearer cables bought for basic charging are money lit on fire — you only need the expensive, high-rated cable when you’re moving data or pulling serious power, not to top up a phone overnight. And the various branded adapters and dongles carry a quiet tax; a known third-party equivalent usually does the same job for less.

The accessory that saves you the most money

Here’s the one nobody frames as an accessory, and it’s the biggest saver of all: an external SSD over USB-C or Thunderbolt instead of paying Apple’s internal-storage premium. Apple charges a steep rate to bump a Mac’s built-in storage, and a fast external drive gives you far more space per pound for your photo and video libraries. Buy enough internal storage to be comfortable, then let a cheap, fast external drive carry the bulk. That single decision can save you more than every other accessory on this page combined, and it’s the kind of saving the upgrade slider at checkout very much hopes you won’t think about.

The one-sentence version

If you remember one thing: pay for the things that carry power and data, and refuse to pay Apple’s name on the things that don’t. Buy a good GaN charger and braided cables, protect the phone with a sensible case and a few pounds of glass, lift your screen to eye level, and put your real storage on an external drive. Then walk briskly past the polishing cloth, the full-price fabric case and the dear cable you’d only ever use to charge. The big Apple purchase is usually the right one; it’s the small ones at the till, made with your guard down, that quietly decide whether the money was truly well spent.