I'm a USB-C Maximalist
shkspr.mobi
shkspr.mobi
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.
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)
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.
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.
Active cables are a different story of course, but that's the same for HDMI cables.
All of the improvements in passive C cables since then are exactly the same "analog signal integrity requirements". Heck, the most common protocol for sending a display signal over USB C is literally just "send a DisplayPort signal over the superspeed lanes".
Now, USB C cables are more likely to have active retimers or redrivers in them, but a lot of that is that the highest speed signals are well above the display side. Even UHBR20/DP80 from a signaling standpoint is mostly just good old 40 gigabit Thunderbolt 3 except with everything pointed outwards (so 80 gigabit unidirectional instead of 40 gigabit bidirectional)
What if we just have different connectors for different specs? Then you'd know what supports what by what fits into the connection in the first place.
These days, ye olde parallel SCSI bus is gone. We have USB C, which is similar to SCSI in that the number of ways it can work is way more than 1. But because the connectors are all the same and the defacto labeling is awful, I can't necessarily identify the functions by sight or feel. If I have needs that extend very far beyond charging a phone and/or USB 2, then I don't know if any of the USB C cables that I find in a box will support those needs without testing them.
I have a USB-C cable pretending to do 10 Gbps + 4K60 display port. I've used it to connect my HP laptops to my HP docking station. I have two similar laptops, 840 and 845 G8s, both with two USB-C ports each.
The 840 works as expected. The 845 only works if the cable is plugged in one specific way in one specific port. I now have a Lenovo laptop, also with two USB-C ports. I haven't tried DP-out with this computer, but Linux complains about there being issues when the dock is connected with this cable. On Windows, the whole USB stack sometimes goes foobar after a sleep/wake cycle. If, say, a mouse was initially connected, it'll keep working, but any new USB device won't, even the mouse if disconnected and reconnected. Shutting down Windows takes around 10 minutes and shows some driver issue at the end. Everything works after a reboot.
With a separate no-name docking station, everything works perfectly on the 845, but the 840 can't do 4k60 on it; it doesn't show up in the options. Haven't tried the Lenovo with this particular dock.
Both docks have DP alt mode, not DisplayLink or whatever other USB-attached GPU.
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.
I buy USB C cables cheap. The last batch were Anker B8752, came in packs of 2, were bought online as clearance items from Menards. They were delivered for free to the store that I drive past twice on most days. They work fine; no complaints.
With tax, the individual cables were $0.55 each. I can afford to stock up on cables at that price, use them whimsically, cut them up for projects, and give them away to anyone when that seems useful. I don't miss them when they get lost; I just get another one. I don't have to decide between buying a decent dinner or traveling with spares; I can just toss some into my bag.
Meanwhile: I can't afford to do those things with cables that are $20 each. That's a vastly different value proposition. If I had $20 USB C cables instead, I'd guard them the same as I do the twenty-dollar bills in my wallet.
I’m not advocating using USB4 cable for everything, but I also don’t want to bother testing cables when I can buy a reliably good one for twenty bucks. I’m sure a cheaper equivalent exists.
But I love the liberty to use inexpensive not-quite-universal cables with great freedom more than I hate the former.
So since I need a bunch of USB C cables in my life, and I love using them freely, then I'm left with the following optimization: Special cables for special purposes, cheap cables for everything else, and testing them when necessary.
It's not perfect, but pragmatism seldom is. :)
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.
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.
It's not expensive or complex. It's just that somehow, no one thought to look up "how to add type c to your device" online, or ask an LLM, or put literally any effort into making sure the device works as it should.
If it is a deliberate choice, it's a really, really dumb one.
Advertising is primarily about convincing is to buy things we don't need, don't want, or which are 'stupid' in some way.
Half empty plastic packaging, especially the sort where the company spent money to [re-]design it to deceive people - stupid. It should be illegal. Near ubiquitous.
Even over on r/usbchardware it is super common for people to conflate "PD" with this missing resistor issue. Part of the confusion is that the devices that people want to charge with are very likely to be PD power supplies.
Just get an USB data blocker. I bought one off the shelf at an airport for 10€. This is the "condom" you are talking about, just a small dongle. Then travel with a fully featured cable!
I also use it to charge my phone at my workplace on the docking stations (which would be a big no-no otherwise). I think our IT provides them on request too, I've seen them advertise it.
That only works when both sides speak proper USB-C PD and not "5V or some weird-ass proprietary stuff over D+/D-".
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.
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.
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.
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.
I wrote about it a few years ago; the post does not have affiliate links: http://jackkelly.name/blog/archives/2024/10/06/travel_tip_us...
But also pack a short length of cat5 twisted pair just in case. When all else fails, it allows to rig up most anything.
Do you feel you need a write-up on how to piss in the woods too?
(If you want to overvolt an extension cord, make sure it's completely passive: no light, switch, or surge protector.)
An earthed-to-unearthed adapter (preferably with some alternate path to ground) seems like a better solution there than restricting oneself to C7 and its 2.5A max current. And when the ground prong is available in the outlet, it's often a useful mitigation against the looseness of worn-out sockets (since it adds another area of support).
If 250 W (in the absolute worst case, a 100 V .jp grid) is not enough for travel purposes, I have no idea what will satisfy your requirements.
In any case, even for single-device power supplies, pretty much all of the 165W+ ones I have are grounded (either C5 or C13). This includes the one that came with my Framework 16 (which is my backup charger if I need to pack extra light or otherwise don't want/need that 6-port squid).
I’ve slowly acquired all the global adaptors for Mac chargers. I just bring a usbc Mac charger when I travel with the destination country plug attached.
I wish Apple made gan chargers though. Those look great
Depending on where we are going and what we are doing, I also bring this thing: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08YDPB8RZ which is kind of an extension cord + USB charger + all-in-one converter as well. The plug is at a right angle and very flat, so it can fit behind furniture and such that straight cables can't.
I for years used a power cable from an Xbox with my old Magsafe1-era Macbooks.
But it does work in a pinch.
Nor does the two-prong "wall wart mode" tip many of them shipped with. The ground was only connected on the extended cord attachment.
So in this universe Apple doesn't invent its own standards...
Even the MacRumors commenters who are generally cheerleaders are scratching their heads about this one. And so do I.
> My guess is that's a fake one.
I've seen fake Apple chargers in local shops recently, with complete Apple packaging, "made by Apple in California" etc. and only detectable by close inspection of the details, specs not matching any Apple product, device info reported electronically that doesn't match any Apple specs, and the tiny inset writing not making sense when looked at under magnification. So that sounds plausible to me.
And a discussion here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/256262949?sortBy=rank
And you will notice that the regular power adapter cable is not compatible with the new 140W charger: https://www.apple.com/au/shop/product/mw2n3x/a/power-adapter...
This might if you’re from the US as I’ve collected the ends over time, but I’ve never seen them for sale except the US one: AC Power Adapter Wall Folding Plug Duck Head,US Standard Plug Duck Head Compatible with MaBook Pro Air/Maci Book/Phone/Pod Power Adapter Brick
Apple - at least used to - sell an international plug pack if you’re missing some. I can’t even remember where I got some of my plugs. They’ve been doing this for decades, and the international plugs are still compatible.
It wasn’t from Apple, but it’s basically a plastic shape and 2 or 3 (depending on end) metal parts - it’s hard to get wrong, and easy to test before use.
For devices I have a work laptop, work phone, personal laptop, personal phone, headphones, usually a couple other small devices, and a mobile battery. I usually only heavily use my work laptop and personal phone. For phones and smaller stuff, I can charge them from the laptop while the laptop charges overnight so I don't typically wish for a second charger. If your laptop has decent battery life, charging at less than max speed is no big deal (I have two 16 inch MacBook Pros).
Additionally, I've converted most of my old favourite micro-usb devices like mouses to usb-c. A search for "usb-c 4.7kohm 5v female" will give you some options for replacing micro-usb with usb-c, with hobbyist soldering skills.
For a beard trimmer, I got an Enchen boost usb-c model for $10 for travel. It works well and even has ceramic blades but I had to add 4.7k resistors to work with a c-c cable[1].
[1] Cheap devices often omit some 4.7k resistors that tell a usb-c charger to output 5V, so it outputs nothing. This is why some devices work only with usb a to c cables, as usb-a outputs 5V by default. If you can manage to add the resistors to the correct pins or replace the connector with one that has them built-in, you can fix this problem. The difficulty of doing this varies a lot by device.
What type of adapter is this? EU and UK plugs are very different.
Touring musicians do it if venues don’t have convertors.
Doesn’t work if the EU plug needs a live earth of course.
This will give you access to electricity, but the contact area is much smaller than it's designed for (round pins in a rectangular hole), so using it for anything high wattage will end poorly.
An often overlooked part of the BSA spec for type-G sockets is they're supposed to have a flat surface surrounding the socket large enough to prevent you using the earth pin of an upside down plug to do this.
... if you're hopelessly stuck without your cloverleaf charging cable you can kind of batter a figure-8 power lead over the phase and neutral pins, and you can probably find a figure-8 power lead more easily than a cloverleaf one.
Don't leave it unattended or where non-hackers can get at it.
Don't make a habit of it.
This will get you out of a hole.
The other one is twisting US/JP plug pins so they fit AU/NZ sockets...
Or so I heard someone else do.
I keep both Schuko and UK kettle leads, cloverleaf leads, and figure-8 leads in my laptop bag, having been stuck before.
It's honestly bliss when you get even close to it at home. I'm close, having only one Lightning device left (Apple TV remote) and a couple of USB-A and micro-USB devices I'll probably be stuck with for a while (avalanche pack, cat tracker, et cetera).
Figure-8 cable is usually easy to find in some old media player in someone's house.
That said usb-c chargers are quite ubiquitous now that you'll likely to find one anyway.
Also 6ft usb-c cables are very neat. IDK why Apple even ships that 3ft e-waste.
I really wanted your approach to work and went down that pathway with this [1], but its one weakness if you have multiple destinations with multiple socket types. It's not uncommon that I have to go between countries with China/Aus, EU, India (kinda-sorta EU but not), and UK plugs. That's a lot of those C7 cables. Also, having 1-2m of cable lets you put the charger on a bedside table when the only wall socket is buried under the bed for some reason, so that adds up.
I then considered one with the swappable ends, like this [2], but the advantage of the cable is that you don't get the 'this room's only socket is against the desk and fuck you if you want to plug a big wall wart into it' problem, plus as above the cable lets the charger ports be much more easily accessible. Also, many models also only have US/EU/UK adapters, without covering e.g. CN/AU style plugs.
And at that point, you're basically using of those old-style universal adapters with the universal AC input and the sliders to change the output, especially given you can now get them with integrated 65W GaN USB ports [3], so why would you fiddle with attachments you could lose?
So then there's this [4] which is so close to my ideal but isn't quite there. It has the cable advantages, minimises additional swappable weight to get different socket types, and you can even put the adapters straight on the charger if you want to omit the cable. But then I read about abysmal reliability performance and I'd rather not burn down my hotel room in a third-world country. It does have the ends that I, personally, would like but with all of these you're at the mercy of them designing them for the specific wall socket types you need. And at least with this one, the UK one doesn't include a fuse as it's supposed to, whereas IEC C7 plugs do. Further burnination possibilities.
Really, if a reputable manufacturer made [4] but sank an extra ~50% product price into proper reliability and standards compliance, as well as making a whole plethora of swappable ends for all types of wall sockets that fit both the cable and directly onto the device, I'd probably buy it and never look again. I'd even accept a proprietary swappable end form factor with the vendor lock-in risks just because it's basically the utopian ideal of what I want.
But in the meantime, I'm back to using [1] with generic basic adapters for EU and CN/AU on the end of the UK IEC C7 cable. I'll build a collection of C7 cables for each destination and when I travel to only one I'll take the appropriate cable, but when it's multiple destinations I haven't found a better solution.
[1]: Ugreen Nexode 100W GaN 4-port charger: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0B6MZYKTF?psc=1
[2]: Ugreen travel charger: https://www.amazon.co.uk/UGREEN-65W-Fast-Charger-Ports/dp/B0...
[3]: Any permutation of this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/MOMAX-Universal-Adapter-Internation...
[4]: SlimQ 100W Charger w/ extension cable and swappable ends: https://slimq.life/products/100w-3c1a-usb-c-charger
- You lose me at "toothbrush." I don't want personal care items that have internal batteries at all, because they'll eventually die on me while the device itself (brush heads notwithstanding) is otherwise perfectly functional. I'd much rather keep rechargeable AA(A)s on hand for that kind of stuff. (I still haven't found a good electric razor for this purpose, though, and have actually just gone back to manual for the foreseeable future.)
- I don't think I could live off just one charging port, but would rather just ditch USB-A entirely.
- I'm using wired earbuds, with a standard headphone jack, but with the number of full-sized cans that are using USB-C in some way it baffles me that there aren't more or them (or any, that I've been able to find) that also support using it for audio input, so you you can play them while charging.
A slight convenience when you want to charge it in that you don't have to turn it around, you can have USB headphones and also charge, you could use more accessories...
But what I'm more getting at is the other way around: that wireless headphones will already have USB-C for charging anyway. And that, particularly for larger ones (that have that port directly on the device, and not in a separate charging cradle), it really seems like a waste that more of them don't leverage that -- so that, again, you could use the headphones while you charge them.
Yes! And you could charge them off your phone!
If I could dream: wouldn't it be nice if you had headphones with charging cables attached to them so that you never had to worry about losing them.
And phones could have a convenient extra port for plugging such headphones into.
Ah, one could only dream.
What if the same port could be on both headphones and phone?
For convenience, we could make it, like, round so it could go in which every way.
Then you could use whatever male-to-male cable you want if and when the one you have goes bad.
My other phones (Samsung Galaxy A23 etc) have a USB-C and a 3.5mm headphone jack as Lord intended, so I don't have the idiotic problem of choosing between charging or using headphones / aux cable / etc.
There's no reason to not have two USB-C ports and a 3.5mmm headphone jack too in a device that already costs hundreds of dollars and is, on average, brick-sized, other than fuck you, that's why (aka being "brave").
I.e., same reason that some phones (not mine) don't have a microSD card slot. Particularly those shipped with atrociously little internal memory at a time when a 1TB memory card costs a few dozen dollars.
Anyways, unless the EU rolls out new legislation (like the one that forced Apple to include USB-C on their phones), looks like it's not going to change any time soon.
Apple has enough money to bravely get away with whatever anti-consumer BS they want, paving the way for others to copy them for fashion and profit.
Sure there are exceptions (which is what I buy). But they're not the norm, as evidenced by comments here. Voting with one's wallet buys very little in terms of impact.
People still decry the loss of the 3.5mm TRRS headphone jack, which didn't really go away and never had to.
____
¹ It's an "AR processor", i.e. an Android phone without the phone plus 3D camera and special sauce
I know what you're saying, but to be a little pedantic about it it's actually only USB 3.
(I wish there were mobile devices supporting USB4; it would bring them significantly closer to feature parity with larger devices.)
I don't remember when I actually plugged my phone for anything other than charging. Must be nearly a decade. And wireless charging is becoming good, albeit not ubiquitous quite yet.
Isn't this just a USB 3.x hub?
If you sell a 10 port USB-C charged someone is going to plug 10 MacBooks into it and complain it doesnt work.
The best I have seen for what you want is
https://ca.ugreen.com/products/ugreen-500w-desktop-charger
but is not cheap at all or something like
https://www.amazon.ca/Powered-Aluminum-Adapter-Computer-Prin...
But your point is still valid. As a nerd I really appreciate being able to use say, my 100W laptop charger or the car jumpstarter pack I have to charge up my earbuds or an electric toothbrush, since it reduces the number of weird little cables or chargers I have to keep track of, but it sure does baffle the non-technical majority that their toothbrush charger fits their laptop 'for some reason' but of course does nothing - plus the confusion when they realize they could physically plug the toothbrush into a pair of headphones, or plug two portable batteries together.
500W (with 1 port being true 240 W) is the highest legitimate one I've run across - and I search often for real alternatives to buy. Even bulky GaN PC PSUs selling for $500 can't exceed 700W without assisted cooling due to efficiency->heat reasons.
I will just quote myself to answer that.
> or so they claim
> a no name Chinese brand I am not going to trust
> But they do seem to exist
I still have my bridge to sell. Quoting the parts which lead to a reply isn't really a response as it's guaranteed to lead to the same place.
It must have been crazy overspecced, I expected it to be a 5-year disposable piece of non-serviceable tech.
That said, I have never had a Sonicare run out of battery either.
EDIT: just looked. current ones have bluetooth and an app. sigh.
And of course, it charges with USB-C.
Their kid's app has been great.
I've found that one can buy just new handles on ebay though, without the head and chargers, for only like half the super high retail prices or less, even for the "higher end" models, so I do that every 5-8 years or so if one gets too bad.
I agree (and am sad) that it's not a ubiquitous feature, but headphones with a built-in dac do exist
Here's how the last few broke:
* Phone with typical inadequate battery + external portable battery pack plugged in, shoved in together in pocket running Google Maps navigation via bluetooth, and biking. My thigh bent the USB connector.
* USB-C got mangled by office chair. If I had been a USB designer in an office, this would have been the FIRST thing I would have stress tested for
* USB-C plugged into phone and sat on while on car seat. Another thing any half-competent design intern would have listed on their stress test scenario list but it seems the senior designers missed
* Laptop plugged in on the edge of standing desk, USB cable got jammed in gap between adjacent desks.
I much preferred real, sturdy mechanical connections. They should just miniatureize the IEC power connectors and put straight up 19VDC through them.
Stress relief is a thing, people in the 2020s have somehow forgetten about it.
My kids haven’t broken a single one either and they destroyed plenty of lightning cables.
> USB-C got mangled by office chair. If I had been a USB designer in an office, this would have been the FIRST thing I would have stress tested for
Seems like you managed to break one even though it was in the environment that you're saying they're designed for. Maybe you're the problem and USB-C, the technology that billions of people manage to use just fine without breaking on a daily basis, is perfectly fine.
I don’t believe you.
I haven’t broken a plug yet and I’ve used usb c on all my devices for years now
I do everything on your list. I also have young children who grab and play with things. Our household breaks 1 USB-C plug per year, if that.
I don't know if you were embellishing for effect, but anyone breaking 50 connectors a year probably isn't going to have success with anything short of a fully ruggedized connector solution, which is not something you're going to get on affordable consumer devices.
> which is not something you're going to get on affordable consumer devices
Not true. 1990s connectors hardly ever broke for me. They were all super rugged. I've dropped several-kilogram objects onto VGA connectors, SCSI connectors, and DC barrel jacks and nothing ever happened.
VGA connectors? I've bent the shield on more than one VGA or DVI cable, and it's a nightmare to get a pin straight enough if you happen to bend one... but possible sometimes.
I put fully ruggedized connectors on several shipping products. You would not like the cost nor space requirements.
> I've dropped several-kilogram objects onto VGA connectors, SCSI connectors, and DC barrel jacks and nothing ever happened.
VGA and SCSI connectors are rarely exposed like a phone connector and they're in a completely different class anyway. Nobody wants a phone with a giant SCSI size connector on the bottom.
I hate to say it, but the fact that you have this many anecdotes of dropping "several-kilogram objects" on to connectors is a clue that you're an outlier in how hard you treat connectors, if breaking 50 USB connectors a year wasn't already an indicator.
Expecting consumer connectors to stand up to this outlier level of abuse is unrealistic.
That's a you problem. I have never done this, and neither have any of the dozen people I just asked in my office.
Wild. How often do you break the phone itself?
For everything else there are magnetic USB-C connectors
This should be federal law and written into the constitution
One of the problems with USB mini-A was that the socket would fail, meaning the device had to be repaired or discarded. Combined with the short lifetime (about 300 insertions) it was a disaster which is why you almost never see it.
You’d be more unhappy of those failures had happened in your expensive device rather than your cheap cables.
Then eventually I finally was forced to admit that I'd just been choosing to move about the world as a bit of a careless brute who treats my things with disrespect, and by being more intentional with the way I move about the world, all my stuff suddenly lasts 10x longer.
Interestingly, I'm not sure it's worth the trade-off, but it's been kind of wild to experience.
MagSafe/Qi2 is ideal for this.
I can't think of any connector that would work well shoved in a pocket moving around. Had to re-solder too many headphone jacks back in the day, and anything that screws in would cause way too much leverage, probably ruining the small slim device.
Also "phone with typical inadequate battery". Just get a battery replacement and make sure you only use it between 60% and 80%. If you don't do that you're degrading the battery.
You might think "but now I only have 1/5 of the capacity" yeah and it will now last much longer than if you degraded the battery.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=rechargeable+aa+batteries+usb+c
But in practice, I greatly prefer devices with integrated batteries, because they're more likely to be able to give me useful feedback about the battery level (e.g. a reliable low-battery indicator), rather than just winding down, or having a low-battery indicator with only a passing correlation to reality.
(I also find this important for gamepads, to the extent that I don't just opt to play wired.)
But in the absence of that, I'll take USB-C and the ability to charge while actively using. I find that useful even for wireless gamepads, because then I can attach them to a generic charger on one side of the room, and not run a cable across the room to the console/TV area, because the communication is still wireless and only the power isn't.
That has less to do with the battery being integrated and more to do with different battery chemistries having different voltage curves.
Nothing would prevent a device from accurately detecting battery levels of NiMH batteries. The problem is all these devices are tuned to an Alkaline battery voltage curve which is much more slanted than NiMH. NiMH has a nearly flat curve with a sudden drop off while Alkaline have a pretty steady decent (with a sudden drop off).
Wouldn’t the NiMH batteries have to be smarter in that case, keeping track of their own historical behavior? That changes over time, and devices with integrated batteries can take that into account to indicate charge levels. If you can swap batteries, you lose that information.
I thought the same, but that'll happen with devices that use AA batteries too.
I was using a cheap Panasonic EW-DJ10 water flosser that uses AA batteries, but the battery compartment contacts would corrode after some time.
I then switched to one of those China USB-C water flossers, but I think the built-in lithium battery's nearing the end of its life since it'll cut off randomly now. I also used to worry about charging it, since the USB-C port would need to be dried out before I plugged the charging cable in.
No idea what's a happy medium for electronics that need to work near water.
For those of you that are wondering, Mitch Hedburg was a relatively famous stand-up comedian whose special went viral.
In said special was this classic:
“I like an escalator because an escalator can never break; it can only become stairs. There would never be an 'escalator temporarily out of order' sign, only 'escalator temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience.’”
RIP indeed.
Same goes for those seemingly-useless, single-purpose kitchen devices. You're just probably not in the target audience.
I've had an Oral B electric brush for around 3 years now and it hasn't skipped a beat. I'd hate to have to change batteries when I can just pop it on a inductive charging dock every night.
I don't like USB-C for toothbrushes to charge because there's water in the bathroom. The proprietary inductive charger/stand that comes with Sonicare/Oral-B electric toothbrushes are ideal.
Sucks that they are proprietary but they have been trivially easy to clone by third party manufacturers. $7 on Amazon.
The old charging glass isn't compatible with newer ones, so I have a couple of those laying around as junk. All the travel cases used micro usb-a, which is super inconvenient.
So no "ecosystem" buy-in into any Philips line from me anymore. They have a very bad product lines anyway.. Super complex, tons of SKUs with minimal differences. But they do have some good products.
Of course, another way to think about it is that the most expensive preventative care is better than the cheapest corrective care.
I don't really consider these an "ecosystem" like tech. An ecosystem implies there's a big cost in both time and money to switching to something else.
In my case, I'm either going to buy Sonicare or Oral-B because those are the options with bulk refills Costco. There are brands out there that are cheaper, but not by much. If they break, I buy another one. Such is life.
Of course, you can clean your teeth just as well with a cheap toothbrush and a much less expensive budget if you are diligent and thorough with your brushing. Flossing is also more important, anyway.
But I'm not messing around with my teeth: if my dentist recommends an electric toothbrush, I'm buying one.
This subject also reminds me of the razor blade market. A whole lot of "disruption" has taken place over the years with online shaver brands supposedly offering "the same" product as incumbents like Gillette.
But if you shave your head bald you'll know that a Harry's razor is really inferior compared to a Gillette razor. Sometimes the overpriced brand names are simply the best options on the market, even if they have been cost-cut or are otherwise "not what they used to be," and I feel similarly about Sonicare. I could buy some off-brand electric toothbrush and maybe it's 70-90% as good, but that juice isn't worth the squeeze.
My solution to this was to get an electric razor that doesn't use batteries. My 20-year-old no-battery electric Norelco razor was bought in a chain pharmacy. I've looked in recent years, and I don't see them any more in brick-and-mortar stores, but they're still made, and available online.
The (minor, IME) downside is that electric razors without batteries are generally on the low-end of the spectrum, rarely including the fancy (even non-battery-related) features found on the high end electric razors.
My only issues so far come from charging protocols rather than cables anyway.
Moreover, stuff like how many watts a cable supports are issues that happen regardless connector type.
This device let me categorize all my loose cables (and throw out the truly terrible ones). It was worth every penny.
That app is probably a good place to start but I wouldn't trust it fully.
Good thing nobody lies.
Before getting the tester I just kept buying new "known good" cables whenever I needed one since my cable drawer was just a huge unknown.
With USB-C cables I tend to throw them out unless they are premium cables that cost upwards of $20, I mean I could keep the cheap ones around to charge this or that but cheap cables have this way of going bad, like they are supposed to work if you plug them in either way except they don't, you plug your cheap device in overnight to charge and it doesn't really charge, etc. No way I could trust my wife to handle it.
Personally I think USB got worse in a lot of ways in the 3.0 generation, like at 1.0 they designed a bus architecture that could enumerate 127 devices on a root hub. USB 3.0 doesn't promise anything and ff you start plugging in hubs to your laptop you will hit undocumented limits and find devices start dropping out randomly when you've plugged in several devices and it gives me the heebie jeebies because a mass storage device could drop out. I know mainstream filesytems today are pretty durable but still...
We blame usb-c for all this, but it does feel like some mffrs are going out of their way to screw it up.
The more I age, and the more I expect my devices to justwork™, the more I appreciate Apple’s pro consumer monopolistic moves.
This kind of defect is extremely rare since this would basically be a USB killer frying every other device you plug it in to. 99% of the time it's the device is missing some resistors on the cc pins which signal to the charger to send 5v. Since usb-c it defaults to 0v until you request something. But USB-A has no CC pins so it just puts 5v out at all times.
For universal USB-C power support that works with modern power bricks, you need to tie 5k resistors to two pins of the port on the device. This tells the charger to use 5v. I can’t tell you how much cheap stuff out there omits these. They cost almost nothing but they still screw this up over and over, and people blame the standard or the cable…
The device charges via usb-c, but refuses to do so if the charger is any relatively modern usb-c based brick. Only usb-a!
It seems everyone in the Durable Medical Equipment space for diabetes stuff just wants everything to be a smartphone app now- which is fine honestly, it’s convenient for those that want to use it, but I’ve been informed that many manufacturers (at least a good number of Continuous Glucose Monitor makers) have completely forgone native controllers these days. Omnipod just seems to have said “we’ll make one program because maintaining two could be problematic for consistency (and probably certification) reasons”, and then made the logical-enough extrapolation that their native controller can just be an android device. They just chose a cheap/shit one- which is fair! It runs AN app! But it also means I have to keep USB A to C chargers on me 24/7 :/
I’m just glad they at least do that, as smartphone-only options are problematic for a number of reasons, among them being the lack of ability to bring them into restricted areas. I hadn’t thought about it before, but it’d also be a problem for events where they use those stupid yondr bags, or even schools that use them now.
I guess you could just get your own little junkpile android for the sole purpose of being a controller, but still. sigh
Many people don't realize that USB-C (USB Type-C) just refers to the physical connector. At minimum, speed and power ratings should have been required for any cable using USB-C at one or both ends. It's almost breathtaking to consider how the USB Implementers Forum has fumbled these kinds of basic issues over the years.
Short of making USB proprietary and behind a licensing and certification scheme there is no way to solve this. People need to stop buying cheap junk.
Especially my cheap consumer electronics. Sometimes they will charge, sometimes they won't charge
This has nothing to do with feels.
Yes that's the fault of the manufacturer. But the wildly flexible spec for USB-C let it happen.
For data transfer you can just pick up one or two thunderbolt 5 rated cables, they will do max transfer for USB4, or any other spec in the near future. The LTT true spec cables are fairly priced but there are other big brands that sell the same thing.
Keep a shitty USB-A to C for those devices that do not have the correct pulldown resistor to support 5v 2a charging.
The alternative is barrel connectors. If you plug in the wrong one, there's a decent chance that it a) won't work, or b) never work again.
Or you just borrow their USB-C adapter and don't have any worries.
I remember my parents had a D-Link ADSL modem and a D-Link router. They even stacked onto of each other with rubber feet! They had identical-looking power bricks, with the same barrel plug.
They were different voltages!
It’s still a minor frustration if you have to borrow a cable, but that’s solved by packing a cable, and by encouraging as many other people as possible to also throw out their cheap cables.
that's what i've been paying for cables, and it seems reasonable to me.
For all the cables that are your flex carrying around places where you don't know how it'll be used tomorrow, get a good cable and you won't have any issues.
They could have made it just DC +19V and GND over 14 gauge wire with a nice, outdoor-recreation-grade connector and called it a day.
(I used Thunderbolt so that touch and pen inputs could go over the one cable. These days though I just use a MacBook Pro, and hook up a capture card when I need to access the Windows)
I dunno, Cat8 is 40gbps and pretty cheap. DOCSIS 4.0 does 10Gbps on some really ancient cables. I'm sure Cat9 will do even better, at least the cat people and the doc people are trying harder than the USB people.
Unifi even has a PoE-over-coax solution. Add some Anker GaN shit and I'm sure it can be miniaturized.
> outside of connecting a laptop to your monitor
As soon as I need a "special" cable to connect a laptop to a monitor, we're effectively back to the 1990s-2000s when I needed a special monitor cable. There is no point to connector standardization if any cable can't do any function.
The whole point of this thread was "one type of cable for everything" and "grab any USB-C cable from your personal stash and they all work for every use case".
I completely disagree.
When the only difference between cables is max speed, that's still a huge improvement over a nest of different cable types, half of which are custom. And it's easy to get into a position where all your USB-C cables differ only by max speed.
It's even worse for non-techies, who don't understand what a gbps or a watt is, and who will leave a 1-star review, or worse, trash their cable, because their cable was "slow" but was meant for 240W PD but only supported USB 2.0. They purchased it initially because it had 5 stars.
Ideally, there should only be "5 star" USB cables, and they should all work for all purposes that they can physically plug into.
The situation in the early 2000s is I could spot the cable I needed from a mile away.
We need better labeling rather than making every single USB cable a 40gbit thunderbolt cable.
> Ideally, there should only be "5 star" USB cables, and they should all work for all purposes that they can physically plug into.
That requires they never increase the speed again. Seems like a bad starting point.
And most people will accept the tradeoff of different cable speeds when it means long charging cables can be 10x cheaper. The problem is when manufacturers choose to use bad labels.
And if you push people off USB they're going to use 27 different kinds of cable and you won't be able to spot which generic black wire you need from across the room.
Also, if we pretend they set the max speed in stone in 2013, it's easy to get yourself a full set of 240W 10Gbps-per-lane do-everything cables in every length from 0 to 2.5 meters. $25 isn't an amazing price but sticking with passive cables keeps you out of the real nasty prices.
While I now no longer have to carry around a bag of chargers when I travel or fish through a bucket of black DC adapters for the right one.
Ethernet is notoriously power hungry, but I bet you can use a phone cable and still get tens of Gb over a very short range.
Is it really though? People are selling cables, but 40Gbase-T hardware does not exist, and 10Gbase-T hardware is already crazy power hungry and the SFP+s heat up much you burn yourself if you touch them. Meanwhile USB-C 10 Gbps works on an iPhone.
Meanwhile, Coax is huge and stiff. Good high-speed USB-C cables actually have mini coax inside.
Sodding things only charge with their special USB-A to USB-C cable. They're in the bag labeled "cursed usb-c charge cables".
Thankfully this defect is becoming less common outside of temu junk.
By standard, USB C provides no power at all unless the device being powered follows the rules. They're easy rules to follow. The minimum viable way of doing it right requires just two tiny resistors inside of the device.
USB-A has always-on VBUS while USB-C doesn't. Because the spec allows for always-on VBUS in a USB-A to USB-C cable, some devices just assume that they're always being powered by one of those cables.
> encouraging as many other people as possible to also throw out their cheap cables
One of the main advantages of a single standardized plug is reducing e-waste. This just sounds irresponsible. Having a single tool that covers every possible use case is rarely a good solution.
Things are shifting though. Ikea ships their USB-C stuff without cables now.
The irresponsibility lies with the companies making the non-compliant trash in the first place.
You can fix that by buying USB-C to USB-C adapters with 5.1 kiloohm resistors.
It should have taken the manufacturer less than one cent to include the resistors, but as a consumer product they will unfortunately cost at least a dollar each.
Your chance is 100% because the charger for GBC is 2 AA batteries ;)
Throughout the years they were cautious when it was introduced, thankful after it was established, and now they are too young to know any other world.
And yes, USB as main connection standard was driven by Apple. But USB as main charging standard was set by the EU.
Hard disagree. Yes, they were quick to say that if you want to connect a device to their computers, you'd better be prepared for it to be USB. But their computer market share simply wasn't there to drive anything. More of a "lead by example" deal.
With phones OTOH, they COULD have driven it, but in the end they had to be whipped by Brussels to adopt standard USB(c).
Some years ago I may have cheered on the pushes to get iPhones to use USB-C, but at this point I think lightning is a superior connector in that sense. I’ve almost never had one break off.
But every so many months I had to replace the cable because the 4th pin would be burned.
I don't have that issue with USB-C. But I do feel that the lightning receiver is less fragile over the USB-C one. Removing lint from a USB-C receiver is harder.
It should be considered a defective design and recalled, I have been burned several times by this.
Looking back 15 years or so, I remember the old ThinkPad and Dell Latitude/Precision docking stations functioned reliably for as long as I can remember.
Today I have a variety of USB-C and thunderbolt 3/4 docking stations, all of which have been affected by various issues. The the manufacturers of these things don't care.
The latest casualty is a Pluggable TBT4-UDZ, which randomly decided one day that I should only have one working monitor instead of two. Doesn't matter if I use Windows, Mac or Linux. Meanwhile, the same monitors & cables work fine with my desktop.
I appreciate USB-C as a means to charge my stuff, but from now on, I'm going to try and use other ports and cables for everything else. Every laptop's settings will assume only the main screen will ever be used. I've no time to get used to a nice multi-monitor setup just to have it taken away when the USB-C dock starts acting up.
I had a hp nc2400 that had a very nice little dock where you'd set the laptop on top of two guide poles an then slide the dock connector in from the side. A very compact design.
The thinkpad docks just always used so much space on my desk.
Both have their advantages and disadvantages, depending on your port configuration, number of monitors and OS (the Displaylink docks require drive installation).
FWIW, on Linux, the best choice for me was a non-Displaylink one from Lenovo.
Terrence's issue here is that he is over complicating things:
- Toothbrush - Just take a non-battery toothbrush, it's perfectly fine and will not break down or need charging.
- Tracker - I'm doubtful you will get it back in most countries. Always keep the essentials such as phone, wallet and passport on your physical person where possible.
- Bug Bite Zapper - Do as the locals do, they too don't want to be swamped with insects.
The only thing that perpetually annoys me for charging is the Apple Watch, which requires the dumb little puck charger and doesn't have enough battery life to make it even one extra day without being charged. I wish it had gotten the inelegant "flip it over a shove a cable in" like the Magic Mouse did.
That’s the dream, anyway. Life rarely works out quite that cleanly for me.
I use a 140w USBC charger -> USBC to Barrel Jack -> LG Ergo screen -> USBC -> Laptop. One AC plug powers the display & laptop.
Fairly high. Nitpick time: The Gameboy Color[0] took a standard-size battery that you can still buy today. It did not need to be charged, but you did have to turn the system off to swap batteries unless you had a barrel-jack adapter.
Barrel-jack DC wasn't quite standard, but you might be able to find something compatible if you went to an electronics supply store and paid careful attention to the listed input voltage and polarity on the device. Regardless, most people didn't bother tethering their Gameboy and just fed it batteries since it ran forever on them.
The real proprietary hellhole started with the Gameboy Advance SP, and didn't end until the Switch used Type-C. Hell, the SP is basically a modern smartphone:
1. Proprietary form-fitting battery pack
2. Custom power input connector
3. No separate headphone output
Bonus points: the headphone adapter Nintendo sold for the SP didn't have a power pass-through, so you had to choose between headphones or charging. Though there are third-party ones now that do both headphone output and USB-C power input.
[0] No "u", not even in the UK
I recently looked at the connector and reflected on how insanely small it is. It's no wonder it took decades to get to this point, and it's a very neat physical design at a great price. 16 pins and 10A in that little thing. Amazing.
If we designed it now it would be up to 48V from the get go, USB-PD only (there is zero reason for static modes aside from fallback 5V for simple gadgets) and be just a PCIe transport . USB to HDMI could just be a single chip that does PCIe framebuffer device.
A few samples:
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11021665 (read comments)
- https://www.quora.com/Is-it-just-me-or-are-USB-C-ports-not-actually-very-durable-or-stable
- https://www.reddit.com/r/PSVR/comments/11mdfn8/so_this_happened_accidentally_tugged_cable_ps5/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/daddit/comments/1s1kk4i/pro_dad_tip_if_your_kids_have_lights_or_toys_that/
65watts isn't even that much, but its enough that I don't need:
- the mac charger that's always connected to the magsafe cable I can't use with anything else,
- the dinky iPhone brick with the cable that needs USB-C on both ends,
- and the slightly less dinky pocketbook e-reader charger with the cable that needs USB-A on the brick-end and micro USB on the business-end.
2x 65 watt USB-C ports and 1x USB-A running at whatever anemic power USB-A is capable of pitfully spitting at my ancient e-reader without drawing the ire of UL or something (5v/500ma still?), perfection.
You should go purpose-buy a charging brick, anything is better than the freebie ones you get with stuff.
I really don't get that. Why not a handheld fan? It's cheap, doesn't require a battery, and doesn't need electronics.
I see more electronic fans than handheld fans, and I just don't get it. People like buying brittle plastic future e-waste?
Is there a good reason we can't hook one (or both?) end(s) of a cable to a computer and use a program to tell what it does?
I vaguely recall someone from Google working on this issue for Chromebooks. I'm surprised Apple hasn't solved this since they control the OS and hardware. For now you can buy tester devices which read the emarker info and show it on a small display. There's also more advanced testers which test the actual signal integrity and error rates, but these are very expensive and made for the cable manufacturers.
Well, when someone figures out a "standardized way for the controller chip to pass this info up" I hope they do it better than S.M.A.R.T. for disks.
I was afraid this article was going to say one connector for everything when it said maximalist. If it had said to kill eSATA, SPF+, RJ-45, DisplayPort, HDMI, 3.5mm audio, and a bunch of other ports it would have been far more controversial. I’ve seen people saying we don’t need card formats anymore because everything can just be an external USB-C flash drive. I’m glad this article wasn’t that maximalist.
The Lightning holdouts:
* My wife and I both still have Lightning phones with plenty of life left in them. My 14Pro was actually replaced under AppleCare not quite a year ago, so it's nearly new!
* I have two sets of headphones that are Lightning: Airpods Pro and Max. Both still have great battery life despite years of use. If either failed tomorrow, I'd buy a new example, but I'm not spending that money without good reason.
* I have a full suite of Apple desktop peripherals (trackpad, mouse, and keyboard) that I swap in from time to time for variety. Like most Apple kit, they're all very well made and will last a long time -- and all charge by Lightning.
MicroUSB holds on, too:
* The battery charger for my bicycle's derailleurs is MicroUSB -- and SRAM still isn't selling a USB-C version, which is crazy. I could by an aftermarket one, but why?
* Likewise, the charger for my camera batteries is Micro.
* My bicycle headlight and taillight are both Micro.
* We have two Kindles that are both Micro.
All these things work just fine. The MicroUSB stuff is less annoying, since most of those things don't need to travel, but the Lightning holdouts are the ironic downside to Apple's generally high level of hardware quality.
Yes, USB-C is very common in Europe, and indeed worldwide. And this is partly as a result of European policy:
> One common charging solution for all
> USB-C is the common port.
https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/sectors/electrica...
The charging port on my motorola phone got so loose that I frequently end up with an uncharged phone after a full night of "charging", just because the cable's own weight keeps yanking it out of the phone. The phone is not even 3 years old.
It would be nice to get a user replaceable USB port. Meanwhile, I'm not sure if those magnetic USB cables help this situation any bit or they further damage the port.
(This is a frequently toted-out argument about USB-C superiority over Lightning.)
So if you only bring a single power bank on a trip, make sure it can power all of your devices, especially if some of them are by third-party unknown manufacturers.
For sources, I basically have an INUI battery bank and a 100W wall adapter, then everything is a USB-C sink: Lenovo X1, Pixel 10, Nintendo Switch, Sennheiser headphones
This is not to spec, and to my knowledge this was a cost-cutting measure done by Chinese companies to cheapen manufacturing costs.
So for that reason I CANNOT simply rely on USB-C, I also have to have a USB-C-to-A converter and a USB-A-to-C cable, which is of course ridiculous. Thanks, China.
My ONLY problem with it is it's just a bit too small. That creates mechanical problems within the plug which are annoying. Plug it in and pull it out 1 too many times and eventually you get a loose connector cable that needs to be replaced.
Generally that's fine as all my chargers have replaceable cables, it's just an annoyance.
That being said, in ten plus years of using USB-c.. this has never happened to me or anyone that I know.
It's actually kind of impressive, all things considered.
I have had a failed port on my laptop - fortunately the laptop can charge on two of its ports but it sucks to have lost one.
I have had a failed port on an iPad, and on my phone. Again I was fortunate to have a fairphone, so I just replaced the port.
You can't be saying the first with a straight face if you then type the second about a specialized hardware testing device that no average consumer will ever use
The average consumer is never going to find most of the weird configurations that cause problems with USB-C cables (i.e. shit like wanting DP-altmode at 4K120hz over the same cable you are running 100w PD)
> Tracker What if someone steals my bag? Hopefully the PebbleBee "Find My" device will help me recover it.
In your review (from last year) of the tracker, you wrote it doesn't work with Graphene. [1] From the linked issue, looks like there's partial support now. [2] What's the experience like now on Graphene? Is it good enough for tracking a checked bag or similar?
[1] https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/01/review-pebblebee-clip-unive...
[2] https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/4079
The next phase I wish hotels all around the world provide USB-C Port by default with a few high power port of 60W Plus.
Like AC power strips, with a long cable and a body maybe 12" long with spaced out USB-C and a few USB-A ports.
I'd also like a version that sits on top of a desk and is angled towards you.
They make things like this for AC, but not USB.
(actually there are a few out there by no-name brands, but not many)
Because the usecase of charging many (think 5 or more) devices at the same time for hours is pretty rare.
But I would like having a table with a plethora of sockets and cables available.
Lots of times, I come in and want to charge a bunch of things. Charge a few drone batteries + the controller. laptop, camera + camera batteries. charge things for a long drive, or a longer trip.
As to cables, sometimes I need USB-C, but there are lots of things that require other connectors like micro-usb, or a garmin watch. And sometimes cables go to other devices like wireless chargers.
Yes, you can buy adapters, but you end up w/device warts that don't work w/normal USB-C cords and my understanding that they are for the most part pretty dangerously out of spec
Magnetic coupling is an incredibly underutilized user experience tool
We could have had a USB Type-M. (Or, alternatively, Type-F -- for "magnets, how do they work?")
I usb-c modded my DSi a little while back and it's awesome. No worries about trying to find an out of date charger, just smash it in the same one my phone uses and it's fine. I used this one https://github.com/giltesa/Nintendo-DSi-USB-C-Mod and while the reassembly of the DSi was a nightmare, it works fine apart from that. Needed a bit of case modding with some side cutters though
Someone's trying to talk about stuff they never used, experienced or googled ever.
But yeah game boy advance cable is $2.5 one day delivery here in Poland
Anyway, the exact charger for a GameBoy Colour doesn't exist as the GBC takes AA batteries and can't charge them even if you connect the power brick to it.
Likely not, at least police won't care about location info. Theft is painful for many reasons, especially because most countries don't consider it "serious". And trying to find thieves yourself is a bad idea either.
Best advice is to be aware of your belongings at all times.
[0] https://www.anker.com/products/a2687-anker-prime-charger-160...
I imagine whatever replaces USB-C in the future should fix this issue and make a more solid connection like USB-A. However USB-C could be the last wired interface as everything in the future will move to wireless.
What would be even better is an electric toothbrush that doesn't contain a battery that would work with USB-PD plugged in. Why? Because I like putting my electric toothbrush in my checked bag because it's not essential, and technically you're not supposed to put lithium batteries in checked bags.
- Vacuum, $???, Xiaomi, okay (hard to clean filter): https://www.mi.com/global/product/xiaomi-vacuum-cleaner-p30/ (gift from friends)
- Beard trimmer, $90, Manscaped, great (but I just got it): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BQ1GZY7H
- Shaver, $20, Xiaomi, great: https://www.mi.com/global/product/xiaomi-electric-shaver-s20... (purchased at Xiaomi store in Manila)
- Front door palm reader lock, $299, Eufy, good (slow charge speed mitigated by second built-in battery): https://www.amazon.com/eufy-FamiLock-Smart-Lock-Recognition/...
- Lighter, 10 for $66 after negotiating, Shenzhen Vasipor Technology Co, good but needs USB-A-to-USB-C cable: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/High-Powered-Recharge...
what really gets me though is products that support usb-c and then don't support PD, so you end up charging at a glacial pace. The most upsetting incidence of this I've seen is a powerbank charging via usb-c but not supporting PD. So slow!
I love USB-C and I guess the device(s) weren’t to spec, but if it plugs, it ought to be safe. Kind of a surprising miss to be honest. Usually the cheap Amazon crap isn’t this bad.
A compliant device has quite a lot of protection against all sorts of faults (short to VBUS etc.) but if the device was non-compliant then all bets are off.
Who knows, the charger might have been so non-compliant that it could have somehow got mains onto the connector, which is potentially deadly so probably good if it's stopped working...
But at the end of the day you shouldn't judge a standard by dodgy and possibly dangerous electronics that completely fail to comply to that specification!
My BT in-ears charge with Micro USB, my 2 bike lights do, my flashlight does. The only downside of my Suunto watch is the proprietary charger cable (USB A on the other end)
And yeah, adapters exist of course, but still.
- 12 V × 5 A = 60 W
- 20 V × 5 A = 100 W
- 28 V × 5 A = 140 W
Meanwhile, that Xbox roughly needs 12 V at 7.5 A (let's say 90 W, but the internal supply is 165W) . So there is just no easy way to do it with USB-PD. Technically, you can make/buy some sort of USB-PD bench power supply to do this, but I'm unaware of anything on the market right now. One that I use (DPS-150) is limited to 5A output.
You're better off buying some chunky power bank (like Anker Solix) that has your regular wall plug outlets.
Doesn't help that many market their power adapters as such, but when you look deeper, it's something like 2x75W + 3x50W + 4x10W.
As far as I could tell the cable is dumb. If you plug the cable into a regular USB-C socket (which I do not recommend) then the tip is +5V and the rest is ground.
In fact it's designed to plug into the plug marked "mobile" on the amp and the 3.5mm end goes into the line out of something else, providing AUX input, which is mixed straight through to the output of the amp (which is thankfully a regular 3.5mm headphone jack).
I guess they over-ordered USB-C sockets and decided to yolo it, or else for some reason only USB-C footprints fit into the space on the PCB. (But they still had to manufacture or were able to obtain these cursed cables ... it doesn't make a lot of sense.)
User replaceable batteries next: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47098687 .
That's a problem that people need a solution for? To the point of packing an additional device for it when "traveling lightly"?
Devices like this usually come with an A-to-C cable in the box and that's a warning sign, but an even more twisted version of this is when they come with a C-to-C cable and a Type C charger that does not support PD. That's the only combination they tested, and that's your problem now.
I now carry enough adapter cables that I can deliberately take PD out of the equation just to work around these devices.
Supposedly would unify things, but can't find two cables that have same specs.
It's idiotic that companies don't even test this properly and never read the specs, but here we are. Many cheap Chinese devices like toothbrushes will have this problem.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FC1HSS9X/ for RJ45/Ethernet - these are super small and deliver full gigabit speed, for instance.
Similar things for video (tiny HDMI male adapter), and even my walkie-talkie (the Chinese market has come up with Motorola programming cable adapters that are just little dongles - https://www.ebay.com/itm/800104798120 - I can reprogram and even reload AES256 keys into my radio!).
PD triggers let my travel CPAP run off of battery (using a Transcend Micro - it only needs a 19V PD trigger and a solid 100W).
And of course... an Ecoflow solar hat and a battery I can shove in my back pocket for when I'm wandering around in the open air.
... and I just realized I can hook my Sony Reon Pocket cooler up to the solar hat...
more of a trimmer but this had an alright replaceable blade set up and has USB c. if you need the rotating heads I haven't seen one just yet though
Shaver: I purchased this in-person at a Xiaomi store in Manila, very happy with it especially for the price ($20-ish): https://www.mi.com/global/product/xiaomi-electric-shaver-s20...; Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Xiaomi-Electric-Skin-Touch-Waterproof... "Xiaomi Electric Shaver S200"
I've had a couple be broken by getting "squashed" because there's no mechanical support because of the rounded edges so the metal easily pancakes.
They also seem to be easily damaged such they stop connecting through a failure mechanism I haven't quite figured out (my macbook air no longer reliably connects to them).
Finally, the ports don't have reliable insertion and they're sharp, so they scratch up whatever device they're on as people repeatedly miss the insertion position resulting in surface scuffing. Phones especially should not be using them because of this issue and should be using something like lightning that did not have any sharp edges which avoided most scratching.
USB-C is not so great for PC peripherals because of how hard/pricey it is to get more of those ports and how unclear the capabilities are. That's why so many peripherals are still USB-A. Some keyboards even have USB-C input but come with an adapter to -A because they know that's how you're plugging it into your PC. Also have never had a reliable video dongle, so either the display has USB-C or it's gonna be annoying. So uh yeah HDMI is great on my MBP, please add a USB-A port too now.
For video input it seems almost deliberate since the TV brands all benefit from licensing out HDMI and forcing it to be the only way to connect to a TV.
The charging standards, voltages, and data rates, are frustrating because they're almost never labeled. This is especially true on low end, cables, and device devices. The worst offenders will only charge with a USB-A to C cable with low voltage, which is not what I hope for when I see a USB-C port on a device.
No end to the official Apple lighting cables that died on me over the years, and across iphones and ipads.
USB-C being "one standard" is a bit of a stretch. It is the Unintuitive Serial Bus, after all. Most will charge. Some faster than others. Some will supply data with 2.0 speeds, others 3.0, yet others will do more. Some will only work with the other devices they came with. Few cables will tell you which is which, unless you have a tester.
To have unmarked cables. This should have been explicitly forbidden by spec as non-compliant. Today unmarked is the norm, even with premium brands. And the few ones that actually mark their cables have their own markings (which I assume is because the official logos are so incredibly bad). So now instead of wondering if the charger will work, you’re wondering if the cable will work.
Secondly, the USB-C rollout was only successful on the sink (device) side. Almost all cheap gadgets come with an A-to-C cable, and chargers and PC ecosystems are very biased on the A ports for the host side. This created an awfully ugly side effect: devices are not always compliant with even basic charging. Since C-to-C should not have live 5V line active at all times, these devices don’t charge at all. I think they’re missing that resistor that tells a compliant charger to make it live. But in either case they only work with A-to-C.
Wait until they discover off brand usb cable with incorrect e-marker.
Except this isn't true. Different power delivery capabilities, different standards. Some can transfer data, some can transfer 4K, some support quick charge, others don't. I love USB C but different cable standards all looking identical is infuriating sometimes
Equivalent hanging mass:
8 N is 0.82 kg
20 N is 2.04 kg
As an aside, the specified extraction force for USB A is:
10 N minimum when new
8 N minimum after durability cycling
I don't have problems with USB-C connectors per se. I think HDMI is worse in terms of durability.