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It's been a joy to not need to bring 3 chargers along when I travel. I think the only thing we're missing to make the USB-C experience perfect is cable labelli
by Telaneo 3mo ago
It's been a joy to not need to bring 3 chargers along when I travel.
I think the only thing we're missing to make the USB-C experience perfect is cable labelling. It's unreasonable to make every cable perform to the max spec, but if we could standardise on some labelling or colours for cables that are charging-only, 480 mbit (usb 2 speed), 5 Gbit (usb 3 speed), 10 GB (usb 3.1 speed), 20 GB (usb 3.2 speed), plus whatever higher speeds (and I guess Thunderbolt too), then we'd be golden.
I like the cables I have, and by know I know what cables do what, but it ain't obvious without testing.
- hereme888 3mo agoWasn't there a push at some point to enforce some sort of spec labeling for USB-C cables? Or was that a fantasy in my head?
- helterskelter 3mo agoUSB3 has/had some color labeling standards, but I only remember seeing it with type A.
- wongarsu 3mo agoUSB A cables and ports have the inner plastic piece color coded. White for USB 1, black for USB 2, blue for USB 3 (5 Gbit/s), teal for 3.1 (10 Gbit/s). Red or yellow for always-on Blue is the only one that's actually endorsed by USB-IF. For the most part USB-IF would prefer if everyone just used their little icons. Luckily manufacturers have a bit more sense and all follow the same color scheme (apart from the occasional black sheep)
- pzmarzly 3mo agoThat's what Thunderbolt 4 and 5 cables essentially are - USB-C cables with guarantees on speeds and PD power.
- qrobit 3mo agoArguably PCIe lanes the thunderbolt exposes are a differentiating factor, not the maxed-out specs that "plain" usb-c cables can have. Although to be fair, I've never used the PCIe lanes on thunderbolt ports.
- rsoto2 3mo agoThe last part is a bigger issue for me. I can use my usb to charge most of my tech but when it comes to the exact cable that my interface needs to use I now have like 30 cables I have to try before I know which one was the correct one.
- DimmieMan 3mo agoHDMI and display port are in a similar boat. Putting the spec on the connector would be so much help. Even purchasing them is a nightmare these days because everything says ultra super duper fast supreme and then the fine print says it's actually just 3.0 (or doesn't say at all sometimes on online storefronts). Multiple time's I've found myself in the store flipping around the box like a rubics cube trying to find the little fine print that tells me if the cable is more expensive because it's gold plated snake oil or actually matches the higher spec I need.
- Telaneo 3mo agoEven then, I've had success with older HDMI and DP cables up to fairly high bandwidths. It's only on a longer cable and a 4K screen, as well as one 1440p screen that was just really picky for some reason, that I've had issues. Meanwhile, the instant I want to transfer a non-trivial amount of bytes, USB 2 speeds come and make my life worse than it needs to be (or at least it did before I sat down, found decent speedy cables, bought them, and then put them in their dedicated spot for me to find the next time I need to transfer files). Agreed on the purchase experience though. It was a pain to find decent cables, but at least it's possible to end up in a happy place.
- wtallis 3mo agoThe critical difference is that USB versions keep adding new wires and active components, while the display cables largely stick to tightening the analog signal integrity requirements. Whether an old HDMI cable works for a new display is largely a question of how high the data rate is for the new resolution and refresh rate, vs how much the manufacturer of the cable overshot their analog bandwidth target.
- Tharre 3mo agoNo? Passive fully-featured USB-C cables had the same amount of wires and active components, which really is just the e-marker chip, since day one. The same 5 Gbps cable can now do 20 Gbps if the cable was made well enough. Active cables are a different story of course, but that's the same for HDMI cables.
- swah 3mo agoWhy not buy only 100W power and data cables?
- crooked-v 3mo agoThat would be USB4 cables. They do have the problem of being awkwardly thick and stiff if you're using them for a lot of things.
- rescbr 3mo agoAnd then there are the crappy devices that aren't compliant with USB PD and only charge with a USB-C to USB-A cable.
- zamadatix 3mo agoMy thin ones are crap but convenient, thick ones are good but... thick. Gets me by without much effort.
- swah 3mo agoThat tells me my 100W cables must be around half that power then! I have no thick tables other than the USB (Thunderbolt?) one from the Dell dock.
- ludwigschubert 3mo agoThickness, and also cost.
- throwaway219450 3mo agoCost, really? A 2m USB4 cable from Belkin is $20 (eg INZ004bt2MBK). You don't save much going to 4 ft, sadly. I find their cables to be pretty good (the TB5/USB4). They're certainly cheaper than Apple's. They have a soft rubber coating (not quite silicone) and a good bend radius. Compare to the super-stiff (but good) cables that Dell provide with their monitors.
- 3mo ago
- gumby 3mo agoI scan the emarker on every USB C that comes into the house and add a p-touch label. I chuck out power-only and ultra baseline (60 W/USB 2 cables) with no marker or resistors. Power-only cables could be handy when traveling as they are essentially a condom, but they can only charge slowly and I always have a better cable with me. I wouldn’t mind a PD aware charge-only device but inquire require some MITM circuitry and I’m too lazy to make one.
- firloop 3mo agoSome cheaper devices I have (e.g. rechargeable LED light strip) _only_ charge via power-only cables. Was maddening when I realized I had thrown out all but one of the cables that can charge it.
- skinfaxi 3mo agoSome manufacturers don't want to do the power negotiation aspect which is the cause of this, I believe.
- spaqin 3mo agoNot even power negotiation but a simple resistor would be too costly for them to implement.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- gumby 3mo agoThankfully I’ve never encountered one. But I’ll check before discarding if I ever get a device that comes with one, thanks!
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3mo agoMore often than not these are usually cheap Chinese devices that are expecting a USB-C to USB-A (power-only) cable, because they're actually USB-A devices, with USB-A circuitry, modified slightly to appear as if they're USB-C. Basically they skipped out on building power negotiation smarts that are required to support real USB-C charging, and instead just swapped out the physical connector.
- greggsy 3mo agoI went down the rabbit hole of cable testers, and concluded that that thicker and stiffer almost always meant ‘better’ support for higher speed and charge rates. Anything braided is almost always junk. I don’t have a requirement for anything over 90w though, so I can generally get away with using whatever I have lying around.
- angry_octet 3mo agoBraided works fine? I have plenty of Ugreen and others from Amazon, what matters is what's inside.
- somat 3mo agoTrue, braided has absolutely nothing to do with the specs of the cable, but braided "feels" higher quality, so I suspect quite a few manufacturers think they can skimp on the cable quality because of that.
- jambalaya8 3mo agoIt doesn't just feel like high quality... a lot of bending results in fewer cable replacements necessary, usually.
- greggsy 3mo agoI should qualify that the vast majority of braided stuff I have accumulated over the years is junk. thats over ten years products freebies, packs of 3 bought on the cheap, a few ‘fancier’ ones here and there, and at least a couple of emergency airport and gas station purchases.
- ploxiln 3mo agoThe high data rate cables all need to be stiffer. You can find good 100w or 240w charging cables with good flexibility, so that's a good reason to keep usb-2 data-speed but high-power charging cables. The measure of a good high-power cable is the resistance. You can gauge it with a usb test load, typical usb power meter, and a usb-pd trigger (all can be pretty cheap, often you can find the trigger functionality combined with one of the other two). Calculate voltage drop for a given current by measuring both sides of the cable, or at least compare different cables with similar load. But I found a "USB Cable Checker 2" by BitTradeOne which will directly measure and show the resistance in milli-ohms, very convenient! A very good cable measures 150 to 250 mOhm, the worse ones are 3 or 4 times that (at which point this device over-ranges around 1000 mOhm). You can really tell the difference with how some phones and laptops will slow their current draw after voltage droops.
- paytonjjones 3mo agoSomeone shared this with me the other day. Haven't used it much yet but it seems like it will easily beat my previous strategy of plugging things in randomly and getting aggravated: https://www.whatcable.uk https://www.whatcable.uk
- eviks 3mo agoThe labeling is already standard, but since it's an awful standard, we aren't golden
- mschild 3mo agoThe problem is certification. I've had lots is USB cables over the years from cheap to expensive. The only ones that reliably did what was on the tin where the USB-IF certified ones. At this point I have a switched pretty much everything to Club3d. They used to make GPUs but are now firmly connectors only. In the past 5 years no issues with any of the cables I bought from them.
- ghaff 3mo agoMy MacBook Air is plugged in via MagSafe at home but I'd consider traveling by air with just USB-C. Probably need to throw a hub in there at that point.