181–190 of 232 posts
I wish they imaged other premium third party cables like cablematters or anker.
Their choice is remarkably ridiculous. It looks like they start at a 10 and then continue with 4, 3, 2. I wonder who paid for this...how is this even getting so many upvotes? It's pretty much useless.
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it SAYS it has a 24 pin interface but have you run it through a tester tester?
Hahahahaha yes I realized it was a bit stupid as I was writing it.They only mention having 24pin interfaces, not testing though I don't see how they could do one without the other, or how it would support 120w passthrough without those pins being connected! But it's AliExpress! One of my favorite online stores, but you absolutely have to always double check what you buy. Still, more trustworthy than buying more niche…
I'd imagine simplest one would be just to... passthru pins and leech off power at whatever voltage other device is commanding.
Testing cable is a quite bit more complicated on top of acting as "PD analyzer" and if it isn't advertising it it's probably not doing it.
Speaking of USB-C 10 Gbit/s cables, I've noticed something odd about the iPhone 15 Pro: I have a USB-C cable that has been yielding 10 Gbit/s speeds (i.e. USB 3 Gen 2x1 or possibly but very unlikely 1x2) when used at my Mac with various devices (mostly SSDs). However, that same cable only gets USB 2 speeds when connecting the iPhone to my Mac. The iPhone itself also seems to only get USB 2 speeds using the SSD and th…
Apple tends to be very picky about spec compliance in some things. I wonder: is your Mac an Intel model or an Apple Silicon model? Perhaps the Intel powered ports are more lenient? It would be interesting to know of a high quality cable tester showed some other difference in capabilities between the cables that may explain it.
I'm curious about the 9-layer PCBA -- is it an amplifier or signal conditioner, to achieve 40 Gb/s? Or does it implement some protocol? Or for power delivery? I see what might be resistors or capacitors. Not sure what else.
It’s most likely 9-layers because that what you need to correctly route the traces from one set of 12 pins, to the other set of 12 pins (to make up the 24 total in USB-C), which is needed to make the connector fully reversible. There will also be a e-mark chip in there that tells any connected device what the cable is capable of doing, so you don’t accidentally send 240w down a cable only capable of carrying 100w. 9…
It's not just that. If it was just data speeds that's way easier, passive 10/40GBit DAC cables have been there for long time, they just use twinax (2 wire coax cable instead of differential pairs IIRC) and can go up to 7m passive, but that makes for not so bendy cable.
But USB-C so much more than few data lines, high power, legacy USB2, power negotiation and various alternate functions all in same connection.
This really highlights one of the disadvantages of everything going to the same physical port - it's not easy to tell what the capabilities of the port and cable are.
Feature matrix of port is less of a problem (althought can still be confusing) but fact that one feature can work with one cable but not other is massive mess.
And power direction too, it's utter mess
Cables with chipsets in them... the possibilities for data exfiltration are endless.
Insane difference between thunderbolt vs competitors. Clearly we are paying for quality here, the question is LTV how quickly does the thunderbolt break
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Hahahahaha yes I realized it was a bit stupid as I was writing it.They only mention having 24pin interfaces, not testing though I don't see how they could do one without the other, or how it would support 120w passthrough without those pins being connected! But it's AliExpress! One of my favorite online stores, but you absolutely have to always double check what you buy. Still, more trustworthy than buying more niche…
> I don't see how they could do one without the other, or how it would support 120w passthrough without those pins being connected! I'd imagine simplest one would be just to... passthru pins and leech off power at whatever voltage other device is commanding. Testing cable is a quite bit more complicated on top of acting as "PD analyzer" and if it isn't advertising it it's probably not doing it.
For data transfer that wouldn't be a good metric though, so again you are right!
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This is why I scan comments before reading the article... I'm more interested in comparison of high quality brands than junk, since I'm already not going to buy junk.
I think the idea here was to demonstrate contrast between products with the x-ray machine they sell, not to be a buyers guide of USB-C cables.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't see how they could do one without the other, or how it would support 120w passthrough without those pins being connected! I'd imagine simplest one would be just to... passthru pins and leech off power at whatever voltage other device is commanding. Testing cable is a quite bit more complicated on top of acting as "PD analyzer" and if it isn't advertising it it's probably not doing it.
It does meter the power being used though. It logs power usage and can measure resistance. You are 100% right that actual cable testers are much more capable but wouldn't that be enough to know if the cable can handle the wattage that it advertises? Wouldn't a bad cable have high resistance, or missing emarker tags (they can lie about this though) ? For data transfer that wouldn't be a good metric though, so again yo…
And maybe it won't just stop working like the one I bought did...
Which makes me sad because it was somewhat of an unique product because outside of the "chinese USB tester functions" (paging thru what negotiation succeeded and monitored voltage) it also had little buck-boost converter so I could use it as power supply (for example connect to bog standard 5V USB and boost it to 12V or current limit it).