27 ms·
USB-C head-to-head comparison
- 3pm 3y agoFor those interested, there is a book with cross-section pictures of various circuits: https://opencircuitsbook.com/#oc-gallery https://opencircuitsbook.com/#oc-gallery
- upon_drumhead 3y agoI wish they imaged other premium third party cables like cablematters or anker.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- CivBase 3y agoAnker, Cable Matters, Spigen, Satechi, Belkin, CalDigit, StarTech.com, OWC, Wavlink, UGreen, or literally any brand anyone has ever heard of would be nice.
- MBCook 3y agoNot a fan of GALKZ or FRELP? Gotta love those random 5 letter “brands” amazon is covered in these days.
- joshstrange 3y agoPersonally it's become my hobby to read out amazon product titles to annoy my partner and/or coworkers. Even brands I trust more so do this awful keyword stuffing, example: the first result on my amazon for "USB-C": > Anker USB C Charger Cable (6ft 100W, 2Pack), USB 2.0 Type C Fast Charging Cable for iPhone 15 / 15Pro / 15Plus / 15ProMax MacBook Pro 2020, iPad Pro 2020, iPad Air 4, Samsung Galaxy S23+/S23 Ultra It's not quite as egregious as some of the titles that use broken english but it's something...
- MBCook 3y agoLetting Google basically control which product names are successful on your platform is a recipe for a disaster. An SEO optimization disaster.
- Smoosh 3y agoI used to have a Soniq brand TV. To emphasise the stupidity of the name I insisted on pronouncing it not as "sonic" but with the final q as the weird sound which begins "quack".
- Krasnol 3y agoTheir choice is remarkably ridiculous. It looks like they start at a 10 and then continue with 4, 3, 2. I wonder who paid for this...how is this even getting so many upvotes? It's pretty much useless.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoI try to find the humor that our global manufacturing is so absolutely broken and encouraged by our politicians that Chinese crapware makers don't need to do anything but slam the keyboard for their "company name"... And the world lines up to buy it.
- crooked-v 3y agoFrom what I understand, the gibberish name trend started with Amazon requiring a unique trademark for at least some product sales. You can see the perverse incentive results.
- ErneX 3y agoIt’s not useless and they said on X they will buy more cables and scan those too.
- Krasnol 3y agoWhy didn't they make the post after they made this immense additional investment for more cables? Yeah...it's not useless for their and Apple's marketing department. For everybody else, it is.
- asdajksah2123 3y agoBecause this is what they have tested so far? Are you worried about the internet paper that will be wasted and the digital trees that will be cut down if they post a follow up in a second blog post?
- ErneX 3y agoYou seem way too upset for such a non issue.
- wronglebowski 3y agoMy guess is they don't want to bite the hand that feeds them. Seems like the products they sell would be very useful to said companies. Wouldn't want to air any of their dirty laundry, it's PR not a reporting/review perspective.
- s3p 3y agoThe author of the article said on Twitter that their team plans on testing more cables in the future-- this was just a first run of it.
- gregmac 3y ago> This manufacturer claims the cable transmits data at up to 10 Gbps – a speed that corresponds to USB 3.1 Gen 2 – but it only has enough pins and wires to support USB 2.0 at up to 480 Mbps. In any case, this cable accumulated 29 one-star reviews on Amazon and was discontinued the day after we bought it. Pretty much sums up the experience of buying cables in the past couple years.
- londons_explore 3y agoI really want my computer to have a built in cable tester. Just plug both ends of the same cable into two different ports of a computer, and it has a little popup saying "This cable can support charging at this rate and data at that rate, and is fully functional". Or "This cable has 1 bad pin, and that may affect video/audio/charging/whatever functionality" Ideally, the computer would test every pin in the cable, and also test the resistance/voltage drop of the cable to detect thinner-than-spec conductors. I'm pretty sure USB-C hardware in a typical laptop can already do most of this, if only the firmware added support for such testing.
- joombaga 3y agoMy old motherboard had 2 NICs, and was able to test Ethernet cables this way.
- izacus 3y agoIt's really strange that even getting a separate testing device is really hard. There are some that test pins and some that can read the emarker, but none affordable that can do both.
- Isthatablackgsd 3y agoI'm assuming it would involves more ICs which it can bump the cost of the testing kit exponentially to test all of the pins.
- Dylan16807 3y ago
- bloopernova 3y agoI wish these were more widely available: https://caberqu.com/home/20-42-c2c-caberqu-746052578813.html#/26-case-without_case https://caberqu.com/home/20-42-c2c-caberqu-746052578813.html... I have one from the kickstarter, and every new USB-C cable gets tested and labeled. Most are USB 2.0. A few will have the power delivery pins. It's such a crapshoot on any shopping site. It should be mandatory that these cables are correctly spec'd and labeled.
- izacus 3y agoUnfortunately it doesn't check for the last piece of the puzzle - the USB-C cable e-marker which has to be present to signal advanced capabilities for charging and thunderbolt. So it's not sufficient to test for high performance cables :/
- masto 3y agoFor that, I use an FNB58 (which I got from AliExpress - https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804478930060.html https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804478930060.html).
- izacus 3y agoOh this looks interesting, thanks.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kalleboo 3y agoYeah for that you need one of the POWER-Z (or I'm sure there are other brands now) USB-C cable testers on AliExpress. Will even tell you the brand of the chipset in the cable https://kalleboo.com/microblog/posts/109391700632886806.html https://kalleboo.com/microblog/posts/109391700632886806.html
- izacus 3y ago
- XIVMagnus 3y agoInsane difference between thunderbolt vs competitors. Clearly we are paying for quality here, the question is LTV how quickly does the thunderbolt break
- CharlesW 3y agoAnecdotally, I haven't yet had a Thunderbolt cable break. The caveat is that I haven't used TB cables in high-abuse scenarios (field work, etc.).
- izacus 3y agoBased on my experience - much more quickly than the "normal" USB-C cables. Those cables are also short and rather thick in most cases (and cost like 50$+). But that's also because TB has significantly lesser margins for errors than USB 3.1/3.2.
- troupo 3y ago> Insane difference between thunderbolt vs competitors. > Clearly we are paying for quality here It's not just quality. It's because Intel did the sensible thing and made a bunch of things that are optional in USB-C mandatory in Thunderbolt certification. So you always know what you're getting.
- keep_reading 3y agoThat's why I prefer to pay the premium for Thunderbolt cables. You know exactly what you're getting.
- Dylan16807 3y agoThe problem is that cables are not clearly marked by speed. Being able to get a $5 slow cable is a good thing.
- usrusr 3y agoUnfortunately with USB-C, it seems to be impossible to get those really lightweight thin charge only cables. I really miss those for traveling. My lightest A/micro-B examples even do some slow data, which has occasionally been useful as a contingency.
- culopatin 3y agoI wish they had compared to off brand thunderbolt cables to see if Apple’s is worth the premium
- aalimov_ 3y agoYou could get a 1m Belkin Thunderbolt 4 cable for about $40. Afaik Intel controls/certifies Thunderbolt cables and Apple just has free use of name or something.
- bigstrat2003 3y agoSo should any Thunderbolt branded cable have similar performance and build quality to the Apple cable, then? Cause I wanted to know the same thing - I came away honestly impressed and thinking maybe I should buy an Apple cable even though I don't own an iPhone. But the real question is whether other vendors have the same quality at a lower price point, because I don't feel the desire to pay the Apple price if they aren't better than the competition.
- s3p 3y agoHaving used many TB3/4 cables recently I can say that if it's Thunderbolt certified and from one of the larger industry players you would probably be fine
- aalimov_ 3y agoI cant speak to the build quality of Thunderbolt cables made by manufacturers other than belkin or the one Apple sells - both of which have been great. The belkin cable feels a slightly more rigid. As far as Thunderbolt branded cables you can expect to get the speeds and power delivery that’s advertised, just pick the cable that’s right for you. The one I mentioned earlier is certified for up to 40Gbps and 100W power delivery.
- mrweasel 3y agoI haven't tested the theory yet, but I do need a longer USB-C cable, the recommandation I heard was that even if you just need a USB-C cable, go buy a Thunderbolt cable, because they you'll be sure that it will also work for all USB-C use cases.
- laurensr 3y agoI can't help but dislike chips in cables
- agloe_dreams 3y agoThunderbolt is an Active spec, chips are required.
- sheepshear 3y agoYou would probably dislike troubleshooting your connections more. In-cable redrivers are the electrical analogue of an API. They decouple the two devices and the cable from each other's bullshit.
- brightball 3y agoThis stuff is what worries me about the whole EU standards body issue. I'd rather Apple be able to innovate and create a better connector than locking them into this mismatched and inconsistent reality.
- kalleboo 3y agoApple created a better connector it's called USB-C, they adopted it among all their other devices aside from the iPhone (Mac and iPad) in fact they were the pioneers in adopting it on computers. The worst USB-C to C cable is still no worse than the best Lightning cable
- aalimov_ 3y agoPersonally I wish that usbc cables were more like lightning cables in terms of form factor (both sides being lightning would have been neat). They fit snugly and it is easier to clean the ports that receive them imo... Anyway thats all in some other timeline >:V
- avianlyric 3y agoBetter is relative. The EU goals is standardisation to reduce e-waste. Unless Apple are going to innovate a way make every phone manufacturer adopt their fancy new connector, it’s never going to “better” than USB-C. If you’re evaluating connectors from the perspective of reducing e-waste.
- scarface_74 3y ago“We are going to put all of our effort on standardizing cables so when Android users have to throw away their phones every year because they don’t get updates at least they won’t have to throw away the cable”
- avianlyric 3y agoSo your argument is we shouldn’t bother trying to standardise anything, or reduce any e-waste until Android phones start receiving long term updates? That’s an odd hill to want to die on.
- arecurrence 3y agoVery cool site. Their 3d models are fascinating to look at. I've often wondered what all goes into the construction of these and while I've seen one off scans in the past... being able to click and scroll around through the slices and whatnot is really cool. Would be awesome if these were donated somewhere like Wikipedia some day.
- mastax 3y ago> Why does this cable have all 24 pins when only half of them are connected? The extra pins could help the plug sit more securely in its socket. Another guess: the same factory makes Thunderbolt cables, and it’s cheaper to maintain just one design, even though that means wasted material and effort. The highest volume manufacturers may be fully integrated. Usually how it works, especially for these relatively low volume no-name brands, is they buy connectors from one vendor, PCBs from another, cables from another, plastic moldings from another, and then assemble them together (which may also be subcontracted). The assembly process doesn't have to be sophisticated: a small warehouse with a few workers with soldering irons and some jigs. Even some medium-volume assemblies like the USB-C front panel cables for major computer case brands are soldered by hand by a handful of workers in a small building. Almost all of the USB-C connectors which are available off the shelf have all of their pins populated. Pins are very cheap. You need to be moving a whole lot of volume before it makes sense to go to your connector manufacturer and ask for a custom one with missing pins.
- LeanderK 3y agoare they really hand-soldered? They look so small! Isn't there a machine that is cheaper for high volume soldering of those small connections?
- fxtentacle 3y agoTypically you have a stencil that you squeeze the solder paste through and then you put the IC on top with a tweezer and bake the whole thing with something like a hair drier. It's not that difficult to get good results without using an expensive pick&place robot.
- freedomben 3y ago> are they really hand-soldered? Probably not, at least not in the way most people think of hand-soldered. There are hybrids where a human drives the soldering iron electronically rather than holding it in their hands, although even this the rate of defects would be so high it would make it impractical at even a small scale.
- 3y ago
- 1970-01-01 3y ago406 Not Acceptable Something is broken.
- Tempest1981 3y agoI'm curious about the 9-layer PCBA -- is it an amplifier or signal conditioner, to achieve 40 Gb/s? Or does it implement some protocol? Or for power delivery? I see what might be resistors or capacitors. Not sure what else.
- avianlyric 3y agoIt’s most likely 9-layers because that what you need to correctly route the traces from one set of 12 pins, to the other set of 12 pins (to make up the 24 total in USB-C), which is needed to make the connector fully reversible. There will also be a e-mark chip in there that tells any connected device what the cable is capable of doing, so you don’t accidentally send 240w down a cable only capable of carrying 100w. 9 layers might sounds like a lot. But reversible connectors are a bit of a logistical nightmare from a PCB routing perspective. Made even more complicated by the very tight signalling requirements needed to hit Thunderbolt 4 transfer speeds. The end result is what looks like a significant over-engineering, but is really just an expression of how difficult it is to transport high data rate signals around PCBs and cables.
- Dylan16807 3y agoOnly 2 data pins per side are reversible that way, and it's the low speed ones. The high speed pins (4 per side) should be going directly into a multiplexer or driver, the CC pins (1 per side) detect orientation, the sideband pins (1 per side) are only used dual-sided, and the power and ground pins (4 per side) aren't fussy at all.
- crote 3y agoThat's not how USB-C works. Unlike Apple's late Lightning connector, USB-C isn't two sets of mirrored pins. The power pins are simply shorted together on both sides, four pins each for VBUS and GND. USB2 and CC (connection detection) are connected only on one side. The remaining pins are four high-speed lanes, two per side. With rare exceptions, a USB-C cable does not do anything about reversibility. It simply connects the pins straight-trough to its partner on the other plug. The lane swapping needed for the high-speed lanes is done by the devices, not the cable. The Apple cable is so complicated because it is a 40Gbps cable over 100cm long. This means it requires a redriver to guarantee signal integrity. That's what the big chip is for. Doing that in the small space available in a plug means your routing gets complicated.
- jacquesm 3y agoCables with chipsets in them... the possibilities for data exfiltration are endless.
- avianlyric 3y agoYeah, and that 40G/s transfer rate. Makes exfiltration super fast as well.
- kingnothing 3y agoAnd commercially available for cheap. https://shop.hak5.org/products/omg-cable https://shop.hak5.org/products/omg-cable This cable has a built in keylogger and Wifi among other things.
- jacquesm 3y agoInteresting how that page references a post that I did a few days ago that didn't get much traction.
- ilyt 3y agoI've seen usb-c cables with OLED displays... displaying current power...
- WestCoastJustin 3y agoHold on a sec.. I need to update the firmware on my USB-C cable. Crazy how miniature and advanced things are becoming.
- manxman 3y agoUpdate the malware too perhaps?
- magnat 3y agoDon't forget you have to do it for chips at both ends.
- jonhohle 3y agoLet me introduce you to the Lightning Digital AV Adapter - https://panic.com/blog/the-lightning-digital-av-adapter-surprise https://panic.com/blog/the-lightning-digital-av-adapter-surp... If an anonymous comment[0] is to be believed, the adapter runs XNU (the macOS kernel) on an ARM SOC with 2GB of RAM. The OS for the adapter is pushed down when the device connects. 0 - https://panic.com/blog/the-lightning-digital-av-adapter-surprise/#comment-16841 https://panic.com/blog/the-lightning-digital-av-adapter-surp...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- radicality 3y agoRight, don’t forget to update your USB-C to MagSafe 3 cable firmware! https://www.macworld.com/article/1514105/macbook-air-pro-magsafe-cable-firmware-update.html https://www.macworld.com/article/1514105/macbook-air-pro-mag...
- mensetmanusman 3y ago“ Another curiosity hidden in the circuit board is this wiggle on one of the traces. It contains a tiny detour to make sure it’s the same length as its paired trace, which is especially important when dealing with extra-high-speed data transmission.” A wiggle that small is adding picosecond delays. I’m surprised that’s necessary. Cool!
- addaon 3y agoThis comes up all the time in the context of DRAM routing. See e.g. the first image at https://resources.altium.com/p/pcb-routing-guidelines-ddr4-memory-devices https://resources.altium.com/p/pcb-routing-guidelines-ddr4-m....
- mensetmanusman 3y agoOkay in this case impedance matching is more important than the time delay. Thanks for the link :)
- ivanjermakov 3y agoToday I learned! I'm curious to see approaches to solving optimal pathing of traces to keep them equal length.
- _moof 3y agoThere's not much to it. You route them without worrying about equal length, and then your EDA tool adds serpentine tracks to the shorter one to match its length to the longer one.
- simondotau 3y agoMy (deeply uninformed) guess is that it probably wasn't absolutely necessary, but would be one among a hundred tiny details which improves resilience. There was space for it. And it has a $0.00 unit cost. It'd be more surprising if they didn't do it. For Apple, perhaps the most economically exposed to customer problems of any major tech company, and has enough scar tissue from past failures, it's not surprising that their products tend to feature first class electrical engineering. Their DC chargers are widely regarded as among the best in the industry.
- PumpkinSpice 3y agoThis is how you do advertising on HN... The page is a very explicit plug (pun intended?) for their industrial CT products, and it was clearly done for marketing purposes, not because it reveals anything interesting. It is an apples-to-oranges comparison of several cables, basically showing that they're doing what they're supposed to and are constructed as expected. It was even submitted by an account that is clearly tied to the company. I'm not upset with them - I think it's a better ad than most - but it's a pretty solid case study of how clever "covert" marketing is being done.
- hhh 3y agoThis has been becoming more common, and honestly i’m all for it.
- colonwqbang 3y agoI found it interesting. Why not market your product by demoing what it can do? I'm not going to buy a CT scanner but if someone else does I don't mind it.
- digging 3y agoI'm quite okay with that. A detailed capabilities demo is all I actually want from advertisements. I only wish it were more honest about its purpose, because the article is not useful to consumers of USB-C cables.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- xp84 3y agoYes, I was deeply disappointed that they didn’t test any reputable cable advertised as equivalent to the Apple one. So it didn’t answer the interesting question of whether there’s any point in buying Apple vs say, Anker.
- krooj 3y agoTheir 3D reconstruction viewer has some neat examples - there's a carbon fiber bicycle saddle where you can absolutely see voids in the layup process and step through the sagittal slices to see the propagation characteristics.
- londons_explore 3y agoOn the apple cable... That circuit looks like a lot more than an e-marker. Why do we have a massive 105 pin BGA chip in there? Does this cable run iOS or something?
- floxy 3y agoYes, this is the question I was going to ask. Is that an Apple ASIC? Or something off-the-shelf? Crazy if it was an FPGA inside a cable, but maybe not with the price tag. We need to have someone dissect one of these to see if there are any markings on that. I supposed something this tiny is a wafer level chip-scale package. I can't seem to find any 105 pin BGAs at Octopart or Digikey, but it isn't easy to shop by pin count alone.
- floxy 3y agoHere's the teardown: https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/04/23/teardown-of-apples-new-long-thunderbolt-4-pro-cable-highlights-why-its-so-expensive https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/04/23/teardown-of-apple...
- artimaeis 3y agoIt's an Intel Thunderbolt ReTimer chip. https://youtu.be/LBWnb0ZIlEA?si=hgLg_TOa9zr42wpU&t=304 https://youtu.be/LBWnb0ZIlEA?si=hgLg_TOa9zr42wpU&t=304 I can't find the 7040 specifically, but here's a similar 9040R chip: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/211299/intel-jhl9040r-thunderbolt-4-retimer/specifications.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/211299/...
- londons_explore 3y agoI understand having retimer (ie. active signal booster) chips midway along a long cable... But at the end of a cable a mere 2 inches from the place the signal is going to end up seems superfluous... Is it because the thunderbolt spec inherits timing parameters from PciE and it was hard to meet those with a long cable?
- lxgr 3y agoSpeaking of USB-C 10 Gbit/s cables, I've noticed something odd about the iPhone 15 Pro: I have a USB-C cable that has been yielding 10 Gbit/s speeds (i.e. USB 3 Gen 2x1 or possibly but very unlikely 1x2) when used at my Mac with various devices (mostly SSDs). However, that same cable only gets USB 2 speeds when connecting the iPhone to my Mac. The iPhone itself also seems to only get USB 2 speeds using the SSD and that cable. Yet with another, newer USB-C 10 Gbit/s cable, I get 10 Gbit/s throughout all scenarios. What's going on here? Is the iPhone overly strict about supporting USB 3 speeds over USB-C cables, i.e. is my old cable possibly not electronically marked properly, and the Mac is just more tolerant of that? And something else I've noticed: The iPhone also does not get 10 Gbit/s using a somewhat monstrous adapter construction (USB-C to USB-A adapter, USB-A to USB-C cable) that should however be fully standards-compliant without any active e-markers (i.e. a resistor-marked A-to-C cable and a resistor-marked C-to-A adapter). I really wish there was an easy way to dump the cable's SOP' communication on macOS and look into whether a given cable is actually e-marked, and if so, with what capabilities. Alternatively, just showing this in "System Information" would really help, i.e. indicating whether a connection is only using USB 2 speeds due to the cable or the device not supporting more.
- ksec 3y agoiPhone 15 USB 10Gbps support seems to be picky about USB-PD version. Although I dont have time to test out this theory.
- c-linkage 3y agoI figure the reason the Apple USB-C cable has a complex PCB embedded in the head-end of the cable is to detect Apple-certified devices and ensure top speed only when paired with an Apple-certified cable. Both the device and the cable have to recognize each other as properly licensed devices, otherwise you get sub-standard performance.
- AceJohnny2 3y agoApple has denied this. From their support page https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213839 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213839 > The USB-C cable that comes with your iPhone supports charging and USB 2 speeds. If you want to use a USB 3 device, use a compliant USB 3 cable that supports 10Gbit/s. Note that this is only the 15 Pro. The "vanilla" 15 uses last year's A16 SoC and doesn't have a USB 3.x-capable PHY.
- gkfasdfasdf 3y agoThis really highlights one of the disadvantages of everything going to the same physical port - it's not easy to tell what the capabilities of the port and cable are.
- oaiey 3y agoIt is a weakness of the USB consortia paper process to not enforce labeling on their hardware, cables and ports. Same physical port does not really matter. Also operating systems could help with clarifying the ports without special tools. Would be so easy.
- crote 3y agoThe USB-IF already has labeling guidelines[0], pretty much all manufacturers just chose to completely ignore them. [0]: https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/usb-if_usb_type-c_cable_logo_usage_guidelines_final_20230818.pdf https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/usb-if_usb_type-c_ca...
- ilyt 3y agoThe problem is that there are options to not carry all thru the cable. Feature matrix of port is less of a problem (althought can still be confusing) but fact that one feature can work with one cable but not other is massive mess. And power direction too, it's utter mess
- jandrese 3y agoI'm a bit annoyed that the only comparisons in the article are Apple's gold plated cable and then three random Amazon fly by night cables. I wish they had tested a more reputable cable that was maybe only 1/4 of the price of the Apple cable.
- digging 3y agoThis is why I scan comments before reading the article... I'm more interested in comparison of high quality brands than junk, since I'm already not going to buy junk.
- kube-system 3y agoI think the idea here was to demonstrate contrast between products with the x-ray machine they sell, not to be a buyers guide of USB-C cables.
- ErneX 3y agoThis.
- andmarios 3y agoThe article still is quite interesting to understand the technology and work that can go into a USB cable and why there are huge price differences. Of course I would prefer too a comparison between reputable manufacturers. :)
- Analemma_ 3y agoThere really aren't any, at least for genuine Thunderbolt 4 cables. Anker's 2.3-foot TB4 cable is $40, or about $17.40/foot, while Apple's 1-meter TB4 cable is $70, or $21.30/foot. Not a huge difference. Apple certainly gouges people a lot of the time, but I don't think their Thunderbolt cables are an example of this; they're genuinely complicated pieces of engineering.
- Dylan16807 3y ago
- pipeline_peak 3y agoI love the fact they call the lightening cable an “11 year reign”. There’s a part of Apple that capitalized on hidden reservoirs of tech and talent. Then there’s a part of Apple capitalizes on its own reputation and history. Lightening cable feels newton era.
- namtab00 3y ago"lightening" as in pocket-lightening?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pipeline_peak 3y agoUmm what?
- ftigis 3y ago"Lightning" in "lightning cable" is spelt "lightning" and not "lightening". Lightening is "to make lighter", and "pocket-lightening" likely refers to him/her not liking to spend money on lightning cables or that he/she thinks that they cost more than they are worth.
- namtab00 3y agothanks for still having some will to engage neurons...
- pipeline_peak 3y agoPedantic much?
- CivBase 3y agoThe scans and analysis were cool, but comparing one quality cable from Apple to one budget offering from Amazon and two e-waste options from completely unknown brands isn't enough to answer the leading question "Does Apple’s Thunderbolt 4 cable really warrant its $129 price tag?" Especially considering none of those cables even advertised feature parity with Apple's cable.
- sowbug 3y agoAgreed -- the summary of this article could be "cables with different specs perform differently."
- weinzierl 3y agoPCB = Printed Circuit Board, what is a PCBA?
- kolencherry 3y agoPrinted Circuit Board Assembly. i.e. a PCB with all the components mounted.
- yborg 3y agoPrinted Circuit Board Assembly. Proper nomenclature for a populated printed circuit board.
- iameli 3y agoNow do 5000 more.
- Andrew018 3y ago[dead]
- AYBABTME 3y agoFor a second I thought this was an ad for a democratized CT scan machine, but alas it's a 75k$/y subscription machine? This makes a convincing case for having CT scanners available in one's hobby workshop, but the prices would have to come down quite a lot.
- selfhoster69 3y agoCan someone please explain why the site downloads 600MB+ assets every time the page is reloaded?
- miyuru 3y agoits the 3D models
- MrOxiMoron 3y agoThis demonstrates the biggest problem with usb-c: the connectors are the same, but the capabilities are very different and not visible to the naked eye.
- kibwen 3y ago> This is the only cable we scanned that contains no PCBA; the pins just connect directly to the wires. What is the PCB for if it's technically possible to omit it?
- ComputerGuru 3y agoStructural integrity. The pins might move around or push back without it, over time?
- crote 3y agoSignal integrity and ease of assembly. There's a lot of very high-speed connections really close together, which means they are going to interfere with each other. The "paddle card" allows you to maintain signal quality while you are spacing them out a bit for the wire connection. This isn't nearly as important with USB-2-only cables, which makes the direct soldering possible. It's going to require making a custom connector, so it's not really surprising a lot of manufacturers just reuse the high-speed ones and stick with a paddle card.
- chmod600 3y agoI wish there was some easy way on either the cable or the port to just disable data. 90% of the time I just want power.
- chmod775 3y agoFYI: The first "picture" for each cable is a 3D model you can rotate.
- yalogin 3y agoGreat! So usb-c is worse than the standard it replaces?