USB-C head-to-head teardown - Lumafield
USB-C head-to-head teardown - Lumafield
The reign of the Lightning cable is over, and the USB-C era has begun — leaving us wondering what sets one charger apart from another. We do a teardown of Apple's Thunderbolt 4 and its competitors.
cross-posted from: https://lemdro.id/post/2469210 (!android@lemdro.id)
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Interesting find that the cheapest cable is actually not the worst. Too bad the USB-C spec allows such a mess of speeds and charging standards.
I wouldn’t mind the various levels of there were a simple, consistent marking standard for speed and power rating.
Same feeling honestly but don’t forget that it still would take research to buy the right one. Think about SD cards and their various speeds. You still need a chart to make an informed purchase.
Sure. I think they could get a lot of mileage out of color/dashed bands to mark things on the cable like:
- supports display out
- voltage for charging
- high speed data
Each of those has a spectrum of support and could be marked separately. Maybe they put it on the connector, or maybe on the head, IDK, but something on the cable somewhere so you can find it in a box.
Then repeat for your device, either next to the plug or in software. That way you could go look for the markings you need from the device on the packaging of the cable. I'm sure someone can devise an intuitive UX here.
That should be a hard requirement for advertising USB compliance, not an optional thing.
In a world of honest actors this is brilliant.
In a world of AliExpress that’s just another way to lie.
AliExpress products will always lie, that's a constant. The important thing is for people buying stuff from reputable brands. If there's an issue, people will usually blame the sketchy brand, regardless of the claim.
To be fair to AliExpress reputable dealers are plenty, they’re just hard to find amongst all the rubbish. I had an amazing experience buying from some dealers, with significantly better follow-up support than what you’d receive in the west.
Yup, the only time I buy stuff from AliExpress is from a recommendation from a friend with a direct link. There are great deals to be had, but tons of crap. Sometimes it's worth the gamble.
Colored bands is brilliant.
It's also obvious, not sure why it isn't a thing. For example:
- orange band means it supports "fast charging" and a number indicates the voltage supported
- black indicates "high speed" data, and a number indicates the speed
- green indicates display out, and a number indicates resolution
So you'd have a colored band always at the same spot (for color blindness), and a number on either side of the plug in the color band. Maybe use Roman numerals so it's easier on the eyes. No color band would indicate basic features (5v charging, slow data transfer, no display out).
Previous USB standards also used colors on the plug to indicate speed, so it fits right in.
They do have standard icons for them, but it’s not required to use them. Companies like Apple are a problem case there since they value a clean look over information, random Chinese brands sometimes use them.
That is part of it, but I kind of feel like PCs and phones need better reporting to the user, if adequate data is accessible to the host.
If I'm being bottlenecked in thoughput by speed or in power by the PD capabilities of a cable, I'd like the host to tell me if it can figure that out.
There are like 5 speed and 5 power levels. The only alternative is all cables are stupidly short and expensive.
As of USB-PD 3.1 there are now nine fixed voltages - 5, 9, 12, 15, 20, 28, 36, and 48V - and two variable-voltage modes; PPS with 3.3 - 21V in 0.02V increments, and AVS with 15 - 48V in 0.1V increments.
Combined with a few different current limits, some of these features being optional, and then doubling down with what your cable does or doesn't support, amazing anything gets charged at all.
Not to mention unhelpful names like "full speed", "hi-speed", and "super speed".
It’s not amazing, it’s just standardized.
It’s so much more reliable than 10 years ago with competing charging tech.
It’s also easy to forget that degradation on the highest spec cables is pretty severe. A 1m full spec thunderbolt 4 cable can be made dirt cheap but there extremely limited 3m cables to the point that $160 is reasonable despite it sounding silly
So I’m ignorant here, but what is the spec difference between the supplied iPhone USB-C cable and the one that comes with the newer MacBooks? I never bothered to look, but I did mark the one that came with my MacBook as I assumed it was higher rated than some other cable (although I still just charge with the MagSafe adapter anyway).