>>1932705it's metal hardware, it's not magic. you could look for things like special coatings on the inner cables but those have a reputation of wearing off and degrading the long term performance, most people just want no-nonsense stainless steel cables, but they actually do the "slick" grinding just like jagwire does. the top brands already have optimized designs and it's good enough to copy it or even get it from the same factory and sell it a lower price. take nike shoes for example, they're good, but the average person isn't an athlete who needs to shell out hundreds of dollars to squeeze out every marginal drop of performance. some cheap chinese shoes suck, some are practically indistinguishable copies of nike, some are their own designs which are still good. pic related could be jagwire elite link or they could be knockoffs, they're literally equivalent, they're about as lightweight as you can make cable housing but one set sells for $72 and the other sells for $15-17.5 ish. just because a hoodie says "SUPREME" on it doesn't make it better, you can find cheaper alternatives that basically do the same thing.