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Comment by zxexz | Hacker News Reader

Somewhat recently, on a wild night out on the town, I ended up buying a USB-C <> USB-C cable tester[0]. Using it, I managed to find a few amazing cables amongst my collection. Gave away the others with context. I want something like this for every type of cable.

[0] https://caberqu.com/20-42-c2c-caberqu.html

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I like your idea of a wild night out!

Note to others: that tester board looks fairly passive, i.e. I don't see (mention of) a microcontroller to talk to the chip that high-powered cables must have. So I guess it's somewhat limited in the number of things it can check?

More often than not just knowing the contact has OK connection is good enough.

As far as I know the marker chips is mostly to tell the devices to not abuse the cable.

I have a cheaper version, it does basically all one needs by telling you how many conductors the cable has, if it's only got 4 lights lit up it's a simple USB2, more power LEDs is a higher power charging cable, more data pairs, higher data throughput/USB3, nearly all of the lights (usually bar 1 of the CCX) it's full DP/Thunderbot, data, charging, A/V etc.

Sometimes it even shows USB-C connectors that are only wired for one orientation!

The Treedix[0] can query e-marker chips.

[0] https://treedix.com/products/treedix-usb-cable-tester-usb-c-...

Huh, looking at the photos, they really don’t do the board justice. It’s a gorgeous thing to look at and one of the only “bare pcb” tools I’ve used that still functions after years of being thrown in a backpack. It is Fully passive I think (the newer BLE one does emarker queries etc.). But it does the job very well. I haven’t had it fail to identify the capabilities of any cable yet.

I've got a Treedix[0] which does A, C to Lightning, mini-B, C, MicroB3.0, and Micro. Super handy for identifying the nonsense C-C cables you can chuck.

[0] https://treedix.com/products/treedix-usb-cable-tester-usb-c-...

What makes for an amazing cable? For USB, if it carries data and power, I’m usually pretty happy with it.

For USB, if it can carry 65W+ of power to my laptop as well as the Keyboard/Mouse inputs, 4K/60Hz display and audio back to the monitor as well as KB/Mouse and perhaps some external storage or network adapter, that's a pretty amazing cable.

I also have preferences between my cables by the quality and aesthetic, I prefer some over others because they look or feel nicer even if in testing they contain the same conductors, but that's just ... me.

I currently have 3 such cables connected to my work laptop each sending 4K/60Hz video to each of my 3 x 4k monitors, audio to my soundbar and one of them is powering the laptop at 90W and sending my keyboard, mouse and webcam inputs back.

Thanks, that's helpful!

Wow... have you found cheap cables that are able to display video despite not being advertised as such?

Generally no, you're far more likely to get something that DOESN'T do what's asvertised in my experience.

You can almost always tell the second it's in your hand; in order to do the high throughput stuff, 20Gb, 40Gb etc, the wire is much thicker and stiffer, it needs conductors for all of those contacts. Ive never counted but it's something like 20 of them vs 4 in a standard cable.

Of course always C to C; the A connectors with the extra contacts in between the normal USB 2 ones still aren't enough.

    the A connectors with the extra contacts in 
    between the normal USB 2 ones still aren't enough.

Oh jesus, I hadn't even realized that was a thing!

I just checked and there's 4 levels of data speed (including USB 4 Gen 4) and 3 levels of power (up to 240 W) but I wouldn't be surprised if that is an outdated answer.

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