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USB-C head-to-head comparison

lumafield.com

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Re: USB-C head-to-head comparison

#61

Post by marcosdumay »

bee_rider wrote: post #47
floatrock wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> accumulated 29 one-star reviews on Amazon and was discontinued the day after we bought it. They forgot to say how it re-appeared the next day under some other manufacturer name that's a random assortment of words and letters slightly different than "NiceTQ"

It is annoying that these sellers do this, but it is a pretty obvious thing to do, it is economically incentivized, and so it is totally unsurprising. The weird thing, IMO, is that Amazon doesn’t see this as a big problem that they need to solve. I mean if I was to give somebody advice as to which cables they should buy on Amazon, it would have to be: use a brand you know and make sure you buy it directly from their…

> make sure you buy it directly from their account

Commingling makes this advice useless.

Re: USB-C head-to-head comparison

#62

Post by addaon »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #48

“ Another curiosity hidden in the circuit board is this wiggle on one of the traces. It contains a tiny detour to make sure it’s the same length as its paired trace, which is especially important when dealing with extra-high-speed data transmission.” A wiggle that small is adding picosecond delays. I’m surprised that’s necessary. Cool!

This comes up all the time in the context of DRAM routing. See e.g. the first image at https://resources.altium.com/p/pcb-routing-guidelines-ddr4-m....

Re: USB-C head-to-head comparison

#63

Post by krooj »

Their 3D reconstruction viewer has some neat examples - there's a carbon fiber bicycle saddle where you can absolutely see voids in the layup process and step through the sagittal slices to see the propagation characteristics.

Re: USB-C head-to-head comparison

#64

Post by cmiller1 »

culopatin wrote: post #6

I wish they had compared to off brand thunderbolt cables to see if Apple’s is worth the premium

In my experience having bought cheap, middle of the road, and high end USB-C cables and adaptors, Apple's have been the only ones that have lasted me more than a year.

Re: USB-C head-to-head comparison

#65

Post by killjoywashere »

galangalalgol wrote: post #10
gregmac wrote: post #2

> This manufacturer claims the cable transmits data at up to 10 Gbps – a speed that corresponds to USB 3.1 Gen 2 – but it only has enough pins and wires to support USB 2.0 at up to 480 Mbps. In any case, this cable accumulated 29 one-star reviews on Amazon and was discontinued the day after we bought it. Pretty much sums up the experience of buying cables in the past couple years.

It seems like a niche for someone to step in and provide a service for QC.

Benson Leung was doing this for a while. It does seem like something Consumer Reports might take on, but they'd have to sub to Benson or someone like him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benson_Leung

Outside the consumer space, I suspect any serious business relying on USB is going to have an EE or 10 who are happy to inform the buying decisions.

Re: USB-C head-to-head comparison

#66

Post by aalimov_ »

kalleboo wrote: post #30
brightball wrote: post #15

This stuff is what worries me about the whole EU standards body issue. I'd rather Apple be able to innovate and create a better connector than locking them into this mismatched and inconsistent reality.

Apple created a better connector it's called USB-C, they adopted it among all their other devices aside from the iPhone (Mac and iPad) in fact they were the pioneers in adopting it on computers. The worst USB-C to C cable is still no worse than the best Lightning cable

Personally I wish that usbc cables were more like lightning cables in terms of form factor (both sides being lightning would have been neat). They fit snugly and it is easier to clean the ports that receive them imo... Anyway thats all in some other timeline >:V

Re: USB-C head-to-head comparison

#67

Post by jamesdwilson »

mardifoufs wrote: post #54
larschdk wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tons of 4-pin cable testers, no 24-pin testers that I can find.

I have the FNB-58 which says has a 24 pin interface but that might not necessarily mean that it tests all of them! I should probably test it. It's a bit pricy but very well built, and pretty stable as long as you update the firmware or get one with a newer version already installed.

it SAYS it has a 24 pin interface but have you run it through a tester tester?

Re: USB-C head-to-head comparison

#68

Post by jonhohle »

WestCoastJustin wrote: post #42

Hold on a sec.. I need to update the firmware on my USB-C cable. Crazy how miniature and advanced things are becoming.

Let me introduce you to the Lightning Digital AV Adapter - https://panic.com/blog/the-lightning-digital-av-adapter-surp...

If an anonymous comment[0] is to be believed, the adapter runs XNU (the macOS kernel) on an ARM SOC with 2GB of RAM. The OS for the adapter is pushed down when the device connects.

0 - https://panic.com/blog/the-lightning-digital-av-adapter-surp...

Re: USB-C head-to-head comparison

#69

Post by mrweasel »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #36
aalimov_ wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could get a 1m Belkin Thunderbolt 4 cable for about $40. Afaik Intel controls/certifies Thunderbolt cables and Apple just has free use of name or something.

So should any Thunderbolt branded cable have similar performance and build quality to the Apple cable, then? Cause I wanted to know the same thing - I came away honestly impressed and thinking maybe I should buy an Apple cable even though I don't own an iPhone. But the real question is whether other vendors have the same quality at a lower price point, because I don't feel the desire to pay the Apple price if they ar…

I haven't tested the theory yet, but I do need a longer USB-C cable, the recommandation I heard was that even if you just need a USB-C cable, go buy a Thunderbolt cable, because they you'll be sure that it will also work for all USB-C use cases.

Re: USB-C head-to-head comparison

#70

Post by freedomben »

LeanderK wrote: post #60
mastax wrote: post #29

> Why does this cable have all 24 pins when only half of them are connected? The extra pins could help the plug sit more securely in its socket. Another guess: the same factory makes Thunderbolt cables, and it’s cheaper to maintain just one design, even though that means wasted material and effort. The highest volume manufacturers may be fully integrated. Usually how it works, especially for these relatively low volu…

are they really hand-soldered? They look so small! Isn't there a machine that is cheaper for high volume soldering of those small connections?

> are they really hand-soldered?

Probably not, at least not in the way most people think of hand-soldered. There are hybrids where a human drives the soldering iron electronically rather than holding it in their hands, although even this the rate of defects would be so high it would make it impractical at even a small scale.

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