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New USB-C logos make picking USB cables, chargers less confusing

pcworld.com

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Re: New USB-C logos make picking USB cables, chargers less confusing

#71

Post by viraptor »

maxerickson wrote: post #6
city41 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently received a new work laptop in the mail. And IT had stuck a piece of paper inside explaining it is essential I only charge it with the charger it came with, other usb-c chargers/cables might not work and could possibly damage the laptop. I am very ignorant on usb-c, but to me it seems crazy it's come to things like that.

How true is it?

Not common, but there are models more susceptible to issues than others. For example I've got a Lenovo Yoga which breaks when connected to an apple charger. The touchpad starts to misbehave and if you put it to sleep, it won't wake up until you disconnect the charger. (no long term damage though as far as I can tell) OnePlus 6 phone behaves correctly, but gets much hotter with the apple charger than with its own / google nexus / lenovo.

Re: New USB-C logos make picking USB cables, chargers less confusing

#73

Post by mschuster91 »

atatatat wrote: post #16
maxerickson wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How true is it?

Lots of Nintendo Switch charger/dock anecdotes revealing issues here.

Most of the anecdotes revolve around a specific faulty dock whose manufacturer thought it were a brilliant idea to implement PD with a microcontroller that used 9V signalling level, whereas the (standard compliant!) Switch PD chip expected 5V (with 6V max) and as a result, the dock fried the Switch's PD chip.

Also, the Nintendo Switch Dock's male USB-C plug is a tiny bit more narrow to provide a smooth slide in/out (and the Switch-side female receptacle is standard-conforming)... un-licensed and thus unaware dock vendors cluelessly tried to emulate that and botched the tolerances, exposing the CC pins to 15V.

See https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/08/heres-why-nintendo-sw... for more.

tl;dr: the Switch is standards-compliant, the problem are third party accessories.

Re: New USB-C logos make picking USB cables, chargers less confusing

#74

Post by viraptor »

hbosch wrote: post #39

Please, for the love of god, make it obvious if a USB C cable can be used as a display cable or not. One thing that absolutely blows about USB C is that they all look the same, but to connect my LG UltraFine to my GTX 2070 I had to do literally hours of research before I could find a reliable cable on Amazon that was a “bidirectional USB C DisplayPort” cable because I naively assumed that USB C was a general purpose…

> Having one plug be capable (or incapable) of doing so many things melted my brain.

That's not different than USB-A. You can have charging-only, USB 2, USB 3, etc. cables. We had this for decades.

Re: New USB-C logos make picking USB cables, chargers less confusing

#75

Post by viraptor »

dirtyid wrote: post #44

I remember reading USB-C cables are still relativley expensive to manufacture. Wonder how long before baseline cable quality is good and cheap enough that any cable will do.

For the original USB that took close to a decade. There were many years of cables of with just the right resistor to work with samsung phones for example.

Re: New USB-C logos make picking USB cables, chargers less confusing

#76

Post by lozenge »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #59
gumby wrote: post #23

In classic USB committee style, they try to do the right thing and still bungle the naming/marketing. Just like the absurd “hi-speed/super speed” debacle, they fail to mention what people really want to know: “Will this drive my monitor?” — bandwidth tells me most of what I need to know but to the average user it makes no sense. “Is this a fast cable for my external drive”? “Is this really expensive cable overkill fo…

> most people will have to guess, and will get the more expensive one “just in case” Good. The more full-features and the less underfeatured USB cables are bought and found around - the better for everyone. I don't buy/grab a USB cable "for the drive" I expect it to do the job every time I happen to need a USB cable. In fact I'd like a single ultimate USB-n-All logo to exist which would mean the cable is fully and re…

A 2m cable with 100W charging (the highest currently, but not for long) and video using Thunderbolt 3 is £70 inc sales tax, it's also stiffer and heavier than other cables. How many of those do you plan to just have lying around for convenience?

My XPS 15 already takes more power than that so has its own charger with a physical USB C connector (but also accepts standard USB C chargers with lower wattage). The next version will probably use the new USB C charging standard that the current cables don't support. Time to throw out all those cables I guess.

Re: New USB-C logos make picking USB cables, chargers less confusing

#78

Post by viraptor »

randy408 wrote: post #36
MBCook wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USB 4 is supposed to fix this by basically removing all the optionality. Of course I don’t know how you tell if a device/cable is reliably USB 4 or not.

Doesn't USB4 also introduce its own optional PCIe tunneling spec which isn't exactly the same as Thunderbolt?

That's not a terrible thing, considering Thunderbolt is Intel-specific.

Re: New USB-C logos make picking USB cables, chargers less confusing

#79

Post by ducktective »

0x_rs wrote: post #70

This is all too confusing to me. Why isn't there a mandatory (or reference) specification string that combines all the necessary, useful information in one neat package instead of countless repetitive and easily misunderstood logos? Something like (just a basic, messy example) USB-C/ / / / / /etc. I had to buy some cables recently and really couldn't pick one nor distinguish particular features at glance, and the ite…

If it were so clear, who's gonna confuse the customers?

I hope EU force a law to remove marketing bullshit phrases for USB and Bluetooth.

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