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> There shouldn't even need to be a label. A USB-C cable should be a USB-C cable should be a USB-C cable.

Then USB is forever frozen in time, unless we start using new connectors.

This was the tradeoff we got when standardizing on one connector. The protocol versions change (USB, USB-PD, Thunderbolt), the cables that go between each connector change based on the needs of the spec they supports. But the connectors stay the same.

In my opinion, this was a poor tradeoff and now we’re living in the hell we asked for.

If you want every cable to support the latest and greatest of whatever exists as of right now, you can do that. By all means, buy Apple’s USB-C Thunderbolt 5 cables. They’ll run you $70 apiece but you’ll be buying a cable that makes no compromises.

My personal approach is to just use whatever cable came with the device for anything for which that’s convenient and plausible. For mobile devices with relatively limited charging speeds over USB-PD and for which portability and durability are typically important, I buy the latest Apple woven cables. For high-bandwidth devices I spend the big bucks on the Apple Thunderbolt 5 cables. I discard any cables of unknown provenance.

Unless you want all cables to be thick, $60, and cap out at 1 meter long, this is not a reasonable standard. 480mbps USB-C is perfectly adequate for many applications. Likewise for 60W cables.

I think you didn't put a lot of research in before making this recommendation. Labels make more sense because the top tier USB c specs are darn expensive.....

They are not TB5 compatible though, and if you are going to drive monitors through it, or connect external GPU, 120Gbit (TB5) is much better than 40Gbit TB4 gives you. If you are willing to pay a bit more, consider TB5 cables from CalDigit, StarTech, CableMatters, or Apple.

By chance, has anyone tested Cable Matters' cables?

I just bought a couple of their Thunderbolt™ 5 cables. They seem like a reputable company that would make their cables true-to-spec. Thanks in advance!

They also crackle out of the package, or at least the 5 I got did. Kind of sound like the thin glow sticks a bit.

I have a few of these cables, pretty decent although I think the USB-C ports are a bit too thin? They feel lose in multiple of my devices

I managed to get a few and so far am impressed. They are definitely on the chunky side but that probably comes with the durability

This keeps needing to be pointed out every thread this appears on. Plenty of cables have eMarkers that claim "40Gbps" or whatever speeds, or support 240W PD...but absolutely cannot deliver either of those. And none of these consumer level testers can test either of those claims.

Resistance measurements can cursorily test claims of 240W but resistance changes with temperature which changes with current...so unless your tester puts 5 amps down the wire for 5 minutes and then tests resistance it's not a very good test.

Why on earth is so much more expensive than an arbitrary pair of devices that could max out a cable?

It’s much cheaper to just buy your cables from Apple or LTT knowing they tested them on a 6 figure testing rig.

I throw out every usb cable that comes bundled with devices because they are literal junk.

Every not-broken USB C cable allows for 480Mbps USB 2 speeds and 60W charging. In USB C terms, it doesn't get any more basic than this; that's as low-and-slow the specification tolerates.

The issues come into play with going beyond that. USB 3 speeds? USB 4? Thunderbolt? DisplayPort (4k uncompressed video!) alt modes? 240W charging? These are all practical things that regular people use USB C cables for every day, but they require very specific support from the cables themselves, and that support is widely varied.

Your cables work fine for what you're doing with them, but you're really barely scratching the surface of the kinds of things that can be done. :)

It’s because you are using the lowest use case for usb (like most people). Literally everything can manage 65w power only.

All of these “usb sucks” posts are about using multiple 4k 120hz monitors dasychained while pumping 140w and a handful of other dongles hanging off which pushes usb to the limit and requires carefully selecting the highest quality cables.

It's surprising to me you've been that lucky with Belkin. They do not have a good reputation. Maybe cables are easy so that's an easy bar to pass.

What 6 port charging hub do you have? I have a broken UGREEN one.

This effectively only tells you what the E-Marker reports though, the actual capabilities of the cable are still unknown.

You can say the cable can do whatever you want on the E-Marker, its not the source of truth.

The problem is, to actually benchmark everything, voltage drop, resistance, actual bandwidth (especially at Thunderbolt 5 speeds) requires a lot of hardware.

Using a USB-C Test Controller ($13,000), connected to a Pro Keysight Infiniium oscilloscope ($258,809) is the proper way to test it. https://www.keysight.com/au/en/product/N7018A/type-c-test-co...

They are just catching up with ShowHN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47972511

It's not actually free, it's $14 to unlock all the features.

$45 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DYJL5Z67

This is the one I use and I quite like it. I've had it for a little over a year and a half. I used it to sort (or trash) all my cables and to test new incoming cables.

I'm not so sure about cheap. All the cheap ones I've tried have been pretty flaky, and ended up in the junk bin. I picked up this guy for work: https://bit-trade-one.co.jp/en/adusbcim/ and it's been pretty good. That was a while ago though, and some of the cheaper ones might have caught up.

A consumer grade tester test only the continuity and read the chip.

To actually test for the bandwidth those are hell expensive.

Now people starting test for the chip, those scammers will install more fake chip ...

But how can we know which tester is good and which one is scammy?

I don't think there's a USB-C charger out there that can actually pump out anything close to their rated maximum.

> One of those is way thicker than the other, at least.

I bet there's at least one brand with extra–thick plastic insulation.

> I would love for something to force a speed and power rating on USB-C plugs.

This already exists. Cable makers can certify their cables and mark them with their data speed and wattage.

I buy only certified, marked cables. If I see an unmarked cable, I assume it’s slow and low-powered…which is good enough for some things.

USB-IF certified is a certification that the cable follows the spec, but that spans usb 2.0-only cables up to USB4v2 cables. The tester shows you what the capabilities are.

Yes, there's even a spec here: https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/usb_type-c_cable_log...

The cables are supposed to be labelled with their maximum speed (5, 10, 20, 40, or 80 Gbps or nothing if no data) and maximum wattage (60W or 240W).

HOWEVER, I don't remember ever seeing a cable with such a label. I'm sure they exist, but I don't see them. Requiring products to be labelled, and treating mislabelling as fraud, could mostly solve this. It's definitely a real problem.

This is really good. The base is open source, and has both GUI and a CLI. For the purposes of this article, identifying what each cable can actually do, that’s covered. There’s additional Pro capabilities that you can pay for.

Sure, but that doesn't allow the author to share an Amazon affiliate link for a product.

then you have a bunch of cables and wires that with all different types of connector that you can 'easily' identify which one is for which device. sounds familiar hah