Usbc.wtf – an article and quiz to find the right USB-C cable

Have to point a couple things out I found.

The USB versioning table needs some corrections:

- USB 3.1 Gen 2 is the same as USB 3.2 Gen 2 and is only found at 10Gbps.

- The 40Gbps entry is wrong, the real spec name is USB4 Gen 3x2. But it was never really advertised as such so I'd leave that out.

- 20Gbps is either USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 or USB4 Gen3x1, but I'd caution against adding this as the latter is quite rare to see (plus the above reason).

For the quiz, I would split up connecting storage devices and PCIE enclosures. Most storage only goes up to 10Gbps, and it will specifically say if it's built for Thunderbolt.

Its cost, compatibility, and age. A full thunderbolt cable is very expensive to make and it’s quite thick so completely pointless for a phone charger. And then you just have cables that are quite old, maybe old stock being sold and it all mostly has to work together.

USB-C isn’t uniquely bad here. HDMI also has this issue where depending on the cable you use, you’ll be able to achieve certain resolutions and refresh rates. The hdmi spec is seemingly never printed on the cable so you’ll have to plug it in to find out.

Cheap cables are also often missing the shielding which makes them work dismally at higher resolutions.

>seem

That's the problem with USB cables. They all seem to work when you don't look too closely.

Neat site. One more angle I didn't think about until recently was buying a USB-C cable that was magnetic/breakaway to minimize port wear on a laptop that only has one usb c/thunderbolt.

I spend a bit of time around quizzing and surveying, that brain enjoyed this quiz and the following ideas popped to mind.

- Like the big font. Could be even a bit bigger. Playing with centering could help draw attention down a bit easier.

- Try removing the next button for single choice options. Button can stay for multiple buttons. If you imagine it on a mobile device, if it's just making one selection, it is confirmation enough most of the time if you want more people to be able to get through to the end quickly, or perhaps have more clicks left in their attention to go back and try different scenarios. Having a next button is nice for summative testing in online courses to confirm your answer, but here it might be low risk enough to be able to go back and adjust if needed.

- On the results page - I'm guessing more will come here but showing me a summary of what I entered, and the cables that came up, and retailers I can get it from might be interesting.

- The progress bar is helpful to know. If you like playing with them, progress bars with circles for each step/stage could allow you to put a graphic of a laptop, phone, or a USB_A connector on end perhaps. Going through the questions made me think about "building your wire/use case" to see the options.

- If by chance you are considering leaving this up as a possible side-hustle to help people shortlist their cable, in exchange for offering an affiliate link, it would be helpful to consider getting them through as few clicks for their benefit as possible, and if that works and if you have repeat visitors, perhaps consider asking them to subscribe to an email list to keep in the loop for updates.

- What kind of updates, Decision models are fun times. Bonus points could exist offering to earn visitors email address by offering to update visitors by email if other options become available for their choices. A bit more work here to save their answers but hey. An offer to notify them of price drops (via camelcamelcamel) or things being in stock could be useful to some too for folks looking to replace more usb-a cables than they realize.

Anker has USB 4 (aka Thunderbolt 3) cables now that are getting cheap enough that I would consider just using them for everything by default, or at least for any new devices.