Usbc.wtf – an article and quiz to find the right USB-C cable | Hacker News Reader

Usbc.wtf – an article and quiz to find the right USB-C cable

usbc.wtf

214 pointsryanhn116 comments

Have to point a couple things out I found.

The USB versioning table needs some corrections:

- USB 3.1 Gen 2 is the same as USB 3.2 Gen 2 and is only found at 10Gbps.

- The 40Gbps entry is wrong, the real spec name is USB4 Gen 3x2. But it was never really advertised as such so I'd leave that out.

- 20Gbps is either USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 or USB4 Gen3x1, but I'd caution against adding this as the latter is quite rare to see (plus the above reason).

For the quiz, I would split up connecting storage devices and PCIE enclosures. Most storage only goes up to 10Gbps, and it will specifically say if it's built for Thunderbolt.

> 20Gbps is either USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 or USB4 Gen3x1, but I'd caution against adding this as the latter is quite rare to see (plus the above reason).

Did you confuse the latter with the former perhaps? I have never seen USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 in the wild. I have just bought a 20 Gbps USB4 cable, connected my laptop with my Android phone using it and it works lightning fast (as compared to USB 3.2 gen 1).

Poe's law. It's very difficult to tell if you guys are serious or just meme-ing about the absurdity of USB versioning.

Here's a Gen 2x2 SSD [1] but I can't seem to find a reliable listing for a cable, the general consensus is just to use what comes in the box. At this point I'd only buy cables that come with the right logo stamped directly on it like this one [2].

[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08GV4YYV7

[2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09YM3V7NX

Recommending a 3ft thunderbolt 4 cable for charging my phone in bed isn't ideal.

Length and thickness/flexibility of cable are also very important although the latter is harder to quantify.

I'll try to keep factors in mind for the future, each cable is tagged with it's capabilities and any cable that meets all the user's requirements just get returned for now.

Working on filtering out the unreasonable results.

I disagree. This page is about the technical capabilities of the cable. 3ft vs 6ft is something you pick when adding the cable to your Amazon cart or whatever.

The recommended thunderbolt cable has no such selection.

PSA: USB-C is not Thunderbolt. Yes, you know this already. I know this already.

Yet I spent an hour or so just last night trying to figure out why I was having trouble connecting two Macs before I remembered. The error message was something like "Use a Thunderbolt port..." and as I was only half paying attention, I thought, "Aren't they all Thunderbolt ports on this M1??", then I spent a while swapping dongles around and then swapping USB cables, then looking at support pages, then I finally thought, "You idiot." and ordered the right cable. Don't be me.

But USB4 (sort of) is.

Best way that I've seen to explain is: Thunderbolt 4 is USB 4 with all the optional parts active.

USB4 is based on Thunderbolt 3

The landing page needs a clear statement of what the purpose of the site is. I thought it was going to help you identify an unknown USB cable.

That would be super useful, but is it possible? Would it depend on cable markings?

I bought a gadget from eBay that does this. You plug both ends of the cable into it and it tells you what's inside the cable.

It doesn't look like it's made anymore but there are similar gadgets still on eBay.

Do you have a link to one of them? I am having trouble finding anything that looks like this.

Here's one. You can buy from Tindie or there are some on eBay too, although they might be clones. https://www.tindie.com/products/petl/usb-c-cable-tester-c2c-...

https://aliexpress.com/item/1005002835878171.html

That's not the same thing at all. That measures power flowing through a USB cable, which is still useful, but doesn't tell you anything about the capabilities of the cable.

Look more closely at the pictures, all of them.

Seems to have a lot of holes. I'm going with a use case of connecting an audio interface. I choose "Connecting a device to a peripheral such as a keyboard, mouse, or monitor". Then I'm stuck choosing between keyboard mouse or monitor, with no way to go back. None of these are right.

Just for the record, audio interface pretty much counts as a "keyboard or mouse" here.

The quiz also limits the returned options to Thunderbolt cables once you select "external hard drive" - which is pretty silly; I have plenty of external hard drives around here - all of them use USB 3 and none does Thunderbolt.

I think the quiz is taking the opinionated conclusion that your cable must connect to any external hard drive and provide maximum throughput.

And for that, you need Thunderbolt 4.

...and yet it's still suggesting a Thunderbolt 3 cable as well.

Do you plan to use affiliate links? I think it's fine and if search engines like you it might even make you some money. Just disclose it on the site.

Also: Please make the same thing for HDMI cables as well.

Not planning on it but if I did, I will make sure to disclose.

The quiz is simple and to the point, with no cruft, so the overall experience is pretty good.

But I have a (slightly tangential) UX/design question: if now you are compelled to remove the Next button from the question pages, how would you achieve it, without reduction of functionality?

For example, on the first question, which is a single-choice question, if you make it submit on-click, then the user would lose the ability to change their mind before submitting, which is reduction of functionality. So maybe you'd consider doing a swipe-to-submit (punishing mouse users).

Then you have multiple-choice questions. Has anyone seen something clever that is both intuitive and removes the need for extra travel to the next button?

Click to submit for single choice questions and keep next button for multi choice. Perhaps add checkboxes / radios so it's more clear which one is which.

I'm totally okay with clicking Next button.

But if you really insist, then do what @yreg says, but include big, BIG back button at the top. Bonus points if you can make it look like stacked papers on the desktop:

    ───┬───┬───────────────┐
       │   │               │
     1 │ 2 │ <-            │
       │   │               │
       │   │ A. Lorem ...  │
       │   │               │
       │   │ B. Ipsum ...  │
       │   │               │
       │   │               │
       │   │               │
    ───┴───┴───────────────┘

For the mobile in the portrait mode this is not the best option, but still could work if using vertical stack of cards layout:

     ┌─────────────┐
     │ 1           │
     ├─────────────┤
     │ 2           │
     ├─────────────┤
     │ <-          │
     │             │
     │ A. Lorem ...│
     │             │
     │ B. Ipsum ...│
     │             │
     │             │
     │             │
     │             │
     │             │
     └─────────────┘

NB Next button should be present always, even if it would be meaningless because you would advance on a single-choice question automatically. Thing is, sometimes things break and then someone would need to press the Next button.

Also you can use colour coding for multiple-choice questions by highlighting the Next button if anything selected, confirming for the user what they can advance.

And no, grey on white is the worst possible colour scheme ever.

Love this idea, will try my hand at this soon.

thanks for running through the thought experiment, this is pretty clever!

Why get rid of the next button? Stop that. Has any actual user ever asked to get rid of the next button?

I do. It's clunky to have to confirm each press of a button by pressing another button.

We recently removed the next button from some of our customer flows because we had a lot of users repeatedly clicking on the option they selected instead of clicking the giant next button right below the options that even had animations after you selected an option.

We just gave them a back button if they make a mistake, which they rarely do.

I have iterated a fair bit of quizzing and surveying experiences.

Fewer clicks or taps always win, especially in the single radio button option scenarios. Visitors seem to appreciate that kind of seamless help as long as they can go back and forth if needed.

One simple approach for multiple-answer questions is to branch the additional resulting questions into the same queue to generate more than one scenario. There is a fair bit of tech out there to handle such decision making pretty easily.

PinePower's cables seem good enough for everything except probably the high-res display / PCIE cases

https://pine64.com/product/usb-type-c-to-usb-type-c-silicone... https://pine64.com/product/usb-type-c-to-usb-type-c-silicone...

It works fine for power, but is terrible for data. I have one, and I only get USB 2.0 speeds through it, tested with multiple devices. If I use a certified USB4 cable, no issues. But, that's the difference between a $4 cable and a $40 cable.

It's not really about certification. I would be surprised if a "charging cable" wasn't USB 2.0

USB 2, 3 (or at least the speeds introduced with 3), and 4 are all valid choices for cables.

Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with USB 2.0 cables existing, I’m just saying: that’s less than ideal for a lot more than just PCIE or high res displays. Even if you put a $3 flash drive at the other end, you’re going to cut the transfer speeds in half.

what $3 flash drive is faster than USB 2.0?

https://www.microcenter.com/product/657530/micro-center-16gb...

Worse yet, my Pixel 4a (a USB 3+ phone) shipped with a USB 2 charging cable, throttling the speeds at which I can transfer totally legal files I don't want to upload to the cloud or perform internal storage backups through adb push/pull.

>seem

That's the problem with USB cables. They all seem to work when you don't look too closely.

Hm, it suggests a single Amazon Basics USB-C to USB-C (100W, 6ft) for $15 when I could have an Anker 2-pack with the same specs for $20.

Working on adding more products to recommend!

On the question "Warning! Most monitors do not have USB-C ports. What port does your monitor have? Choose one." I am getting three options: HDMI, DisplayPort or USB-C.

Shouldn't this also have 'Thunderbolt' as an option? Maybe it's because I am still confused about the topic, but the port has the Thunderbolt 'lightning bolt' symbol next to it. Even if the three options given are technically sufficient, I feel that confused consumers like me would benefit from an additional 'Thunderbolt' option.

Neat site. One more angle I didn't think about until recently was buying a USB-C cable that was magnetic/breakaway to minimize port wear on a laptop that only has one usb c/thunderbolt.

I spend a bit of time around quizzing and surveying, that brain enjoyed this quiz and the following ideas popped to mind.

- Like the big font. Could be even a bit bigger. Playing with centering could help draw attention down a bit easier.

- Try removing the next button for single choice options. Button can stay for multiple buttons. If you imagine it on a mobile device, if it's just making one selection, it is confirmation enough most of the time if you want more people to be able to get through to the end quickly, or perhaps have more clicks left in their attention to go back and try different scenarios. Having a next button is nice for summative testing in online courses to confirm your answer, but here it might be low risk enough to be able to go back and adjust if needed.

- On the results page - I'm guessing more will come here but showing me a summary of what I entered, and the cables that came up, and retailers I can get it from might be interesting.

- The progress bar is helpful to know. If you like playing with them, progress bars with circles for each step/stage could allow you to put a graphic of a laptop, phone, or a USB_A connector on end perhaps. Going through the questions made me think about "building your wire/use case" to see the options.

- If by chance you are considering leaving this up as a possible side-hustle to help people shortlist their cable, in exchange for offering an affiliate link, it would be helpful to consider getting them through as few clicks for their benefit as possible, and if that works and if you have repeat visitors, perhaps consider asking them to subscribe to an email list to keep in the loop for updates.

- What kind of updates, Decision models are fun times. Bonus points could exist offering to earn visitors email address by offering to update visitors by email if other options become available for their choices. A bit more work here to save their answers but hey. An offer to notify them of price drops (via camelcamelcamel) or things being in stock could be useful to some too for folks looking to replace more usb-a cables than they realize.

> Neat site. One more angle I didn't think about until recently was buying a USB-C cable that was magnetic/breakaway to minimize port wear on a laptop that only has one usb c/thunderbolt.

This is a horrific idea if you care about your devices; they can detach and become misaligned, applying Vbus to pins that are definitely not capable of handling 20 V.

Interesting. Just keeping an extra macbook for longer

Maybe there’s a MagSafe to Thunderbolt adapter that is a bit safer. Seems reasonable enough

https://elecjet.com/products/magthunder-x-magnetic-thunderbo...

In terms of caring about my devices it’s the other way around. While I’m gentle, Apple stopped caring about longevity for the latest and most thinnest. Maybe the current gen will finally outdo the peak of 2014 MBP.

After a number of laptops, it starts to feel like you’re buying another premature death of a new laptop instead of a new laptop.

Have hopes for the new series. Maybe in a year or two.

Edit: clarity, link

Some additional options would be cool; for example, I’m fond of both CableMatters and CalDigit’s certified TB4 cables.

Noted, still working on adding quality cables to the database. Thanks for the suggestion!

Anker’s cables are high quality as well, but I don’t think they’re in the list

I've thrown some demanding use cases at the CableMatters certified USB4 cables and they've been solid for me. And they feel well made.

I just keep things simple.

These are universal cables.

https://a.co/d/7nEV04h

- USB A and USB C on one end

- USB C, Micro USB, and Lightning on the other end

- 10 Gbps transfer

- video over USB C for my portable second display.

- 100W power.

I travel a lot and I got tired of trying to pick out the right cable for the right circumstance.

But is it shielded?

Is it a trade-off on capability or just cost? That is, is there an expensive cable that does it all perfectly?

A certified Thunderbolt 4 cable should do everything (at least until TB5 comes out), but they cost more than some USB-C devices.

It would be silly to charge your phone with one of these, but there is a high likelihood it would work great: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MN713AM/A/thunderbolt-4-p...

For sure. Cost is always a very important constraint. Setting aside cost just helps me understand the problem space better. I’ve heard such horror stories about USB-C that I thought it would Be unsurprising if the answer was no.

Nah, the high-cost Thunderbolt cables do everything, it's just that paying 50$ for 1m of a charging cable is kind of a silly idea since you don't need 40Gbps data transfer capability to charge your headphones.

Its cost, compatibility, and age. A full thunderbolt cable is very expensive to make and it’s quite thick so completely pointless for a phone charger. And then you just have cables that are quite old, maybe old stock being sold and it all mostly has to work together.

USB-C isn’t uniquely bad here. HDMI also has this issue where depending on the cable you use, you’ll be able to achieve certain resolutions and refresh rates. The hdmi spec is seemingly never printed on the cable so you’ll have to plug it in to find out.

Cheap cables are also often missing the shielding which makes them work dismally at higher resolutions.

I had an infuriating time with HDMI in that way. Wondering why I only get 4K@30hz. Never suspecting the brand name cable branded “hi speed” on the sleeve.

I'm going to add: Length. Six foot USB-C cables with USB 2.0 are cheap and easy to find. More than three foot for a 40Gbit/s USB4 cable requires active components which are expensive and usually not future-proof.

I love this idea! I do think the method of picking results needs a bit of tweaking. I tried the most basic case, charging a laptop with a C-to-C cable, and it suggested two Thunderbolt cables and a 5 Gbps cable, all of which are overkill (and less than ideal given their length limitations).

But isn't that part of why the standard is so terrible? Isn't the only way to get maximum power delivery over a Thunderbolt cable? You can probably charge a laptop over a standard cheap USB-C cable..but you might not depending on how many watts your laptop wants.

> But isn't that part of why the standard is so terrible? Isn't the only way to get maximum power delivery over a Thunderbolt cable?

No. Cables should be rated by data speed and max charging rate supported. If it is just for charging, it’ll be a “charging” cable with USB 2.0 speed.

If they don’t give you that but put tech garbage like “USB 3.2 gen 1” instead, keep looking.

There are USB cables rated to supply up to 240W, which most thunderbolt cables don’t currently support.

Could it also recommend a corresponding wall plug that would allow for fast charging USB C to C?

So the table lists "USB 40Gbps" as supporting an 8k display at 60hz, then "Thunderbolt 3" is listed as supporting that transfer speed, but not an 8k display at 60 hz? Which is it?

Maybe someone who understands the specs better can add more information, but as far as I can tell from Wikipedia, USB4 supports DP in two different ways: tunneling and alternate mode.

When tunneling, you are limited to DP 1.4a and wouldn't be able to do 8k/60Hz without compression (which is also optional, I believe). In alternate mode, which essentially runs DP over the USB cable without wrapping the protocol, you can use DP 2.0 and should be able to do 8k/60Hz. 8k/60Hz requires more than 25.92 Gbit/s (which is what you get in DP 1.4 HBR3, 32.40 Gbit/s including the encoding symbols), so I assume the alternate mode is not actually limited to the 40 Gbit/s bandwidth of USB4. Because it is unidirectional, I believe it can use up to 80 GBit/s.

It looks like Thunderbolt 3 only supports DP 1.4 (optionally, only 1.2 is mandatory), and you'd be limited to the same speeds as tunneling in USB4.

Honestly, if we are confused about this then I have no idea how the general public can be expected to know what their ports are capable of.

That seems about right.

> which is also optional, I believe

Compression support (DSC) is mandatory since DP 2.0. So running DisplayPort Alt Mode 2.0 (which is basically "DP 2.0 over USB-C") should guarantee DSC support. The new USB4 Version 2 also bumps tunneled Displayport to the latest DisplayPort 2.1 spec. Then you can tunnel up-to 80 GBit/s as well (without using alt-mode).

Thunderbolt 3 is a funny protocol, because in reality only Intel made PHYs for it, so the DP version is bound to whatever Intel controller you've got. The 6000 series controllers have DP 1.2, the 7000 series has DP 1.4 and DSC.

The data transfer table is not quite correct; before these new "USB x Gbps" branding the recommended branding was "SuperSpeed USB", "SuperSpeed USB 10 Gbps" etc

AFAIK the connector you name simply "Thunderbolt" is Mini-DisplayPort. It is mostly found on old MacBooks and mostly used to connect external displays, isn't it?

Thunderbolt 1 & 2 used the Mini-DisplayPort connector. Thunderbolt 3 & 4 use the USB C connector. Thunderbolt is like external PCIE, you can connect a lot more than monitors with things like external GPUs being possible. You can use Thunderbolt 1&2 ports just as Mini-DisplayPorts too just like TB3&4 ports can be used just like USB C ports but they do more.

Sure. That's why I wrote "mostly".

thunderbolt swamped minidp in interest basically as soon as it launched: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%...

i saw more people using og thunderbolt for hard drives, capture cards, and audio interfaces than for displays. getting out of the split firewire ecosystem was a big deal

Does anyone know why USB-C doesn't have a form factor similar or equal to Lightning (which I think is substantially better)? Would it be technically possible?

My understanding is that In any connector there are contacts and pins, the pins move a little each time the connector is engaged and disengaged making the pins eventually fail (or they could become damaged). In lightning connections the pins are on the phone, contacts on the cable, making the phone a potential failure point. In usb c the pins are in the cable, the contacts are in the phone, making the most vulnerable part of the connection in the easily replaceable cable (not the expensive to repair phone)…

Why would apple choose to do that, surely that just increases their repairs costs bill? Is the cynical answer that it will fail well past warrenty in most cases, so prompting the consumer to upgrade because their phone has worn out?

There must be a more charitable explaination.

It's more difficult to design and build pins for longevity in a cable? I think the logic with Lightning is that Apple can build a very structurally sound connector with pins inside the phone. After all, we have seen few issues with pins in phones failing.

The more charitable explanation is that the pins for the lightning connectors really do not wear out. This complaint is a made-up problem and in the real world it does not actually happen any more than someone accidentally jamming something into the usb-c port and breaking the center connector. Lighting ports do have one problem usb-c lacks: they collect a bit of pocket lint that can impact connections and eventually needs to be scraped out using the sim ejector tool (or a paperclip.)

True about lint in lightning ports, but not entirely true it doesn’t happen in USBC. Probably less common, but I know somebody who had to get some saw dust out of a usb-c port.

USB-C also has the lint problem, at least for me.

I don’t know if it’s this difference in structure that makes it so or not, but what I’ve found with USB-C cables (very limited experience on my part compared to lightning cables) to be more flimsy. Somehow it seems to wiggle more or is loose to connect well and the fit isn’t right sometimes. It’s tough to use such a cable when charging something like an Apple TV remote where there’s no display to show charging status.

When selecting which porta my monitor supports, I should be allowed to select multiple ports as my monitor supports both HDMI & DisplayPort

Some feedbacks:

* Typo "through it’s 24 pins" -> its

* Tables should be consistent in sorting order (some are low specs to high specs, some are the other way around)

Nice, but it could use expanding a bit to cover VR headsets.

Back in the day it was very hard to find a cable that would work with the Quest 2 in Link mode.

I can’t wait for Thunderbolt 4 flash sticks, or even Thunderbolt 3! Do any exist yet?

You can build your own by using Thunderbolt NVME enclosures and an NVME SSD.

Clicking "Next" does nothing. Firecocks 50.

I am so glad europe forced this shit show on us all

There are no fast charging USB C to A cables?

USB C->A by the standards maxes out at 5V and 2.4A.

Ah, thanks! Was confused by the OnePlus' "Dash chargers" which don't go by the standard and do more.

USB-A port doesn't have extra pins required for USB-PD fast charging.

Maybe not by USB standards, yet plenty of chargers have no problem using other protocols to negotiate e.g. 9V charging. My Pixel 6 Pro for example negotiates 9V charging from USB-A ports that support it.

Define "fast charging".

The best you can get via USB BC1.2 is 1.5A at 5V. This doesn't rely on anything special in the cable aside of requiring it to be able to carry USB 1.0/2.0 data, since it's signaled over D-/D+ pins.

You can get more than that, but then you're entering a proprietary mess territory where all bets are off.

tl;dr get belkin thunderbolt 4 cables for fast charging and fast speed, get something else for the A-type connector

While the idea behind it is nice, the number of possible outcomes isn't high enough to justify the complex decision tree the user has to go through. Here's a much easier way to represent it:

Amazon Basics standard USB-C – slow charging phones, connecting simple peripherals

Amazon Basics 100W USB-C with PD – fast charging phones, laptops, connecting monitors

Apple or Belkin Thunderbolt – connecting ultra hi res/high refresh rate monitors, high speed data transfer

I wouldn't be surprised if far more cables are added, and more scenarios.

Anker has USB 4 (aka Thunderbolt 3) cables now that are getting cheap enough that I would consider just using them for everything by default, or at least for any new devices.

Thunderbolt USB-C cables are thick and heavy though.

Just what we need... more leverage on the connector.

It reminds me of an old idea i had where you specify all of your home theater equipment (tv, receiver, set tops, consoles, etc) and it draws a wiring diagram + cable list for optimal configuration

Did you get anywhere with this idea? I work in this space and I’d certainly be interested. Especially WRT to control. Just to scratch the surface: the xyz Display (TV) supports IR, RS-232, & IP control- how should I determine what is optimal? Fewer wires (IP, possibly) JustWorks™ (IR), MostlyJustWorks and gives feedback (RS-232), YOLO (CEC). Oh great, its 2023 and xyz have dropped support for RS-232 on the 75” model, but it’s still there on the 65” and 85.”

Sadly no. It was maybe 10 years ago when my parents needed to unplug and redo their home theater and I was living away from home. But this is a good example. It should be easy for software to figure out. The hard part would be populating the database. however, it could be crowd sourced maybe.

> While the idea behind it is nice, the number of possible outcomes isn't high enough to justify the complex decision tree the user has to go through.

Why did this need to be said?

Sure, for a tech employee it may be heavy handed. However I could definitely see my older parents finding this quite helpful for them.

Your old parents will just use the cable they got with the monitor / dock / phone and be fine.

These contortions and hand wringing is pretty much a property of overthinking neck beards.

I don't think either a new laptop or a new monitor comes with a Thunderbolt 3 cable. Your parents will have to purchase that separately.

I have never ever bought a Belkin product that turned out to be good. Their cables work fine for a time and then break.

Soon enough I'm going to just set up an Amazon recurring delivery of a set of my favorite cheap USB-C cables, with at least some that are 10 foot for night time charging. I'm giving up and going for volume. The bricks don't wear out, the cables always do. And yes, actually real PD all in one bricks / cords are amazing, I'm just not sure what duty cycle mine will handle.

It would be a better user experience if it was possible to display the reason no cable could be found. All searches I tried came up with no result so I left feeling frustrated, but then I flicked through this comment section and saw that because I had set "fast charging" and "USB-A", this was an impossibility!

If there were other explanations like that that could be easily mapped and displayed, it would improve the UX imo.

I selected any kind of charging cable and got 0 results so I think it's an error on the server probably due to overload.

@dang some of OP's comments are unintentionally being killed by the spam filter :)

Tip for the future: If you click on the time stamp of a comment, you'll see (perhaps only for accounts over a certain age and/or karma, I can't remember) additional things to click - "flag" on a currently live comment, or "vouch" on a currently dead comment.

When seeing a dead comment that doesn't deserve to be, click into it and then click on "vouch" and the comment can be brought back to life without needing dang to get involved. Of course one vouch may not be enough on its own, but hopefully others will do also.

Thank you! I've never noticed this. Now I need to find some dead comment to check whether I have the vouch button.

Slightly off-topic

Just this Christmas I was trying to connect my "portable" (minisforum b550) computer to a portable monitor that only has an USB-C port. So, I would need a HDMI + power to USB-C adapter. I only found the expensive ($100) Club3D CAC-1336[1], which they call "active" adapter.

Any other option out there ? DP + power to USB-C would work as well.

[1] https://www.club-3d.com/en/detail/2610/hdmi_micro_usb_to_usb...

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