Life with USB-C is great, except for the one nagging problem that’s been there since the beginning – you never really know what you’re getting. While it’s not quite the “Wild West” anymore, I was thrilled to see that someone finally made a collection of USB-C cables that not only do what they say they’ll do, but literally have their specs printed on the cable itself.
USB-C is probably one of the most underrated things to happen in mobile tech, maybe ever? Even 10 years ago it was still hard to imagine being able to use the same cable type across your phone, tablet, laptop, or anything else, but that’s very much the reality of today. In theory, one could go on a trip with just a single USB-C cable and be able to charge up their laptop, smartphone, tablet, gaming handheld, headphones, and a number of other pieces of tech with just that one cable. There are still dedicated cables for some things, like smartwatches, but the “Universal” part of USB finally feels true.
The problem is just that it’s really hard to buy the right cable.
It’s not hard to find a USB-C cable – they’re literally everywhere. But the one problem with this standard is that it’s so flexible that two different cables can serve wildly different tasks. A basic cable might be able to charge up a phone at around 20W, but not be able to transfer data at all.. Meanwhile, another cable on the higher end might support 12x the power while also being capable of display output and 40GBps of data transfer. Yet, at a glance, they probably look essentially identical. Even if you bought the right cable for a specific application – let’s say charging a laptop at 100W – you might not be able to tell it apart from the dozen others in your bag.
