The fact that my laptop, Switch, iPad, and several other devices can all share a charge has made my life much easier. I can just sprinkle a few of them throughout the house and never be without power. Before it was always a hunt to find a cable, or I had to be in [x] room to charge [y] device because that's where the charger lived.
Plus, I can charge my MacBook on either side, so that's basically life changing on its own. :)
Aha - you may find that your Switch CANNOT in fact share a charge - Nintendo's port is not necessarily safe to use with anything but its supplied charger. And I've just learned this lesson with a $60 bill from Nintendo repair after the port went pop and couldn't charge the device. I only have reputable chargers in the house from Apple and one from Anker aside from the Nintendo's own.
All my apple kit works fine off the Apple chargers, but I do have an external hard drive that has mixed Thunderbolt 3/USB 3.1 ports, which are absolutely not the same.
I love the port, but the standard just hasn't caught up and when a company like Nintendo flouts it anyway, you have a big problem.
I charge my Switch with various USB PD chargers (mostly Anker but also Apple, Google and others) and haven't had a problem so far.
I was trying to find some information about what would cause PD-compliant chargers to fry the Switch. It appears that while the switch is PD-compliant itself, they used a slightly non-standard connector that reduces tolerances and could, in some situations (most likely worn cables) cause some pins to electrically bridge and fry the port.
To be honest, this doesn't seem like an issue with USB C, just Nintendo intentionally implementing it wrong. They should have either used a proprietary port for the docking mechanism rather than modifying USB C in an unsafe way then saying only to use their proprietary charger.
I don't actually own a Switch, but my partner and I both charge our laptops (mine a Dell XPS, hers a MacBook) from the same after-market USB-C charging bricks. I don't love that it's like this, but basically the product page just lists every known-to-work device, including Nintendo Switch:
Now, I'm a cheapskate, so most of my electronics are older devices, and as a consequence we still also have various other cables kicking around— Lightning for both our iPhones and wireless earbuds, Micro USB for Kindle and PS4 controllers, even Mini USB for a few random devices.
But as far as USB-C, I would attribute the current mess to growing pains. For a few more years, charger pages will explicit list the products they work with, and eventually it will settle down to a list of must-work-with products for all chargers, and any new products with be tested to ensure that they work in the same ways as one or more of the items on that list of known-working products. Didn't HDMI have pretty much this exact issue with EDID and other chaos, until everyone basically agreed that whatever Sony was doing was the right thing and they'd copy them?
The main losers here are people trying to do new ground-up implementations, since they can't just work from the standard; they also need expensive consultants to tell them the precise subset of the standard is the actual part they can depend on. But for end users, the trend is toward an overall state of reasonable compatibility, with non-working devices quickly acquiring a reputation as such and being shunned out of the marketplace.
The Switch and Switch Dock are not USB-C devices. That you’re able to plug in a USB-C charger or USB-C device and see it supposedly work just means that you haven’t yet encountered the scenario(s) that can electronically damage the Switch. Nintendo’s warranty does not cover this damage when it occurs, requiring a full-cost repair or replacement as you connected unlicensed and unauthorized hardware to it.
The Brick-Gate issue, where many switches where bricked, was not an issue with generic chargers, but specifically 3rd party docks. And, as it turns out, the issue in that case wasn't on the switch side, but the manufacturers of the 3rd party docks, that used 9v on a normal signal pin (cc) [very much not spec compliant], which destroyed the pd chip inside the switch: https://hackaday.com/2019/08/04/the-not-quite-usb-c-of-ninte.... There have been few -if any- reports of switches being destroyed otherwise.
This is really good to hear. I hadn't heard this follow up and besides joysticks (going back to the n64 era) Nintendo's traditionally had an insanely good hardware QA so I was surprised to hear about the issues initially.
How are there multiple people here in the thread that say that the port on the Switch is not a USB-C port, when it says so in the official specs _right on their website_? https://www.nintendo.com/switch/tech-specs
Probably a corruption of the fact that the protocol to get HDMI out of the Switch is a proprietary alt-mode, which is why standard docks and USB-C to HDMI adapters don't work. But USB-PD chargers are very much intended to work.
The docks that do work generally reversed-engineered the proprietary protocol, and some have damaged Switches because they got details wrong.
The protocol to get video-out isn’t proprietary, just rare —they’re using Mobility DisplayPort from the Switch, and converting DP to HDMI in the dock.
Of course, had they used the native HDMI side-channel (which I’m not sure had been finalized at the time), they would have been able to skip this step.
I think I'm wrong, honestly, given the two replies to my two comments on the matter. It's too late to edit them but I am upvoting those replies anyways!
I do think there's still the matter of "Not all USB-PD adapters provide the specific electrical demands of a Switch or Switch Dock" to contend with — and that does tie back to the original article's point about USB-C being kind of a nightmare.
EDIT: There are still reports of someone frying a Switch with an Apple USB-C power adapter (which is USB-C compliant), no dock or anything involved. Whatever else does or doesn't work, Nintendo won't cover damage under warranty if you used a third-party charger.
I would assume that you are not allowed to call it USB-C if you don't pass the USB compliance process, which I would hope ensures that the protocol is implemented according to standard.
USB-PD is in a twilight zone where it can deliver enough power to cause safety risks but, due to its low voltage, is not subject to the level of regulatory scrutiny that other electrical products receive.
To date, the USB-IF's approach to safety and interoperability does not adequately protect consumers. USB-PD devices should not be incompatible to the point of damage but USB-IF has been unable to ensure this by keeping non-compliant products off the market.
USB-PD needs to be pulled under the IEC, NRTL (US) and CE (EU) regulatory systems and compliance overseen by entities with the legal authority to deter legitimate manufacturers/importers from selling non-compliant products.
"You can plug it in, but it might catch fire" just isn't good enough for a power delivery system that can provide 100W.
100W really isn’t that much power comparatively speaking to things that are currently regulated. The issue is the specific circumstances (tiny copper traces feeding into SMT components), not the fact that it’s 100W of power alone.
It depends, though. In all likelihood it would end up thrown back on the consumer— "Did you use a licensed/approved/certified charger? Sounds like you need to take this up with whoever made the charger that fried our product."
It might help resolve certain really common cases like compatibility between the chargers and devices of the mainstream entities. I guess I'd argue that that should be happening on its own, but Nintendo definitely dropped the ball with releasing a USB-C product in 2017 that was interoperable with Apple and other name-brand chargers which had been in existence for two years previously at that point.
The chargers that use standard plugs should also be made to support the standard or they should be held legally responsible.
In this particular case I think even well-known name brand chargers which follow standards (Apple, Anker) are breaking the Nintendo, and that's unacceptable.
Nintendo’s Switch plug happens to physically and electrically seem to accept USB-C charger connectors, but it’s not a USB-C plug, and the Switch should not be considered compatible just because it uses a similar plug.
Nintendo should have taken more steps with their charger to restrict the Switch to authorized chargers only, rather than permitting unsupported chargers (such as standard USB-C ones) from being able to power it. Or even just outright used a proprietary connector!
None of this is any fault of the chargers. They’re the ones adhering to the standards correctly. The Switch is at fault.
Whether or not this is the case, Nintendo makes it very clear in their warranty that using an unauthorized charger is not covered. They definitely did not intend for it to be a universal port.
And in a year or two I expect that clause will be found to be unreasonable by the ACCC (Australian consumer protection body) and Nintendo will end up getting fined for it.
Their website says that it uses USB-C for charging and the charging port accepts stock USB-C cables, it's not even remotely reasonable to bury within the warranty a statement which says "oh, by the way the device cannot accept USB-C cables -- if you use a made-to-spec cable that fits in the port, no warranty for you!".
The problem is that most consumers don’t read those warnings. And the “reasonable person” would assume that any USB-C cable would work if the USB-C-like receptacle mates with their USB-C cable.
Why would nintendo warranty try to cover scenarios entirely out of their hands? Just because the other guy claims they've produced a usb-c charger doesnt mean they actually did it correctly (which is apparently the case with these docks)
If you shove 9V into a 5V device, bad things will happen, regardless of Nintendo is anti-standard or not
You should look for a lawyer who would take it on contingency and sue. Sounds like a great class action. You often get more money as a class representative rather than just a class member.
They put USB-C on the box. They screwed up the design. They should be forced to have a recall, or extend the warranty.
> the Switch should not be considered compatible just because it uses a similar plug
Imagine you go to a hotel and see an USB A port on the wall and you try to charge your phone, then your phone starts to smoke or simply ignites. You find later that port was not a standard USB A port, but a 220 volt plug for something custom. Should the hotel be responsible for that? I think it should. If it looks like a duck ...
All of this just underscores what a terrible standard USB-C is. You have no idea what's what anymore by looking at it. Everything seems to fit together, but if you do it, you damage your devices.
It would have been better if they'd launched another dozen different plug standards. In situations when there's only one thing you should be connecting to your device, that's the way to go. Universal sockets only make sense if they're actually universal.
All of this just underscores what a terrible standard USB-C is.
Nothing above seems related to the standard. At the end of the day, its still comes down to the manufacturers to follow the standard in order for everything to to work. But the standard itself can't stop any particular manufacturer from making a non-compliant product.
It's a bad standard if shorting adjacent pins fries equipment. That the people created a standard like that means they aren't competent to create these sort of standards.
There are trademarks on the USB logos, so the USB consortium not enforcing their trademark on standards violators (using their logo) is something they could do, but don’t.
That is not the case. The current reports, as far as I've seen, have all (or at least mostly) been from 3rd party docks where pins on the dock side were bridged and shorted the charger, frying the Switch's port.
Edit: A poster below this question said they fried their Switch by using their Macbook charger so I may have been naively optimistic in my original statement.
I would rather like it if USB standards had better names and a definition of a "safety score" then device manufacturers have to advertise a minimum supported score (for devices) and a minimum guaranteed score (for chargers).
It matters if it short circuits, yes. (Electricians, I hope I got this right enough to convey the 'why'; I know it won't be perfect.)
The outlet plugs specify the circuit breaker limit. Most consumer electronics in the US use a 15amp plug, which can be plugged into a 15amp outlet or a 20amp outlet — but no higher, due to physical incompatibilities in the outlet design.
The electronics that use the 15amp or 20amp plugs are therefore built not only to draw no more than the amps rated by their plugs, but also to self-destruct relatively safely if they draw the maximum amps available from the circuit breaker backing that plug.
So if a cheap device correctly assumes as part of its "don't explode" protections that it will never receive more than 20amps due to using a 15-or-20 amp plug, and then it short circuits while plugged into a 25 amp circuit using an adapter, it could very well explode, because the basic guarantees of electrical safety were violated. The plug used guaranteed it would never receive more than 20amp, and now it's receiving 25!
This is especially relevant when you're considering how to make use of an idle 30A dryer outlet in a garage. If you just plug an adapter into it, and your device short circuits, it will explode even more violently. Risk of harm increases with outlet power.
There exist fancy "breaker box" adapters that have a 30A plug on one side, a fuse box with a 15A or 20A fuse in the middle, and a 15A outlet on the other side for you to use. It's not really an adapter at that point, but the presence of that 15A/20A fuse provides the missing piece of protection for your 15A/20A device that a plain adapter wouldn't have.
So in summary, the only way to safely use a 15amp device on an outlet that delivers power higher than 15-20A is to somehow inline a 15-20A breaker between the device and the outlet (or, to rewire the outlet and its power feed to 15-20A).
TL;DR: Hire a licensed electrician to tell you what your options are and decide how much you care to spend and whether you want to make permanent modifications to get the job done.
This isn't really correct though and gives a false sense of security. The house breakers are sized for the wires in the wall, not the device plugged in. Those should have their own internal fuses to protect themselves.
Most lamp cords are only sized 100ish Watts or ~ 1A with the bulb being the only fuse. If these somehow pulled 15A for any amount of time the wire would quickly get smoking hot but you still plug them into a 15A plug.
Devices are supposed to protect themselves. Most 15A devices will cause fires if they actually pull 15A for any amount of time. If you try to use a a small extension cord on your space heater, you will soon be smelling burnt plastic while never getting over 15A draw. That is part of why these are such a fire hazard.
Alos in the US a 20A socket is designed to allow a 15A plug to work in it, But not the opposite way as that would cause issues in the wall.
Right, it's even more complicated. Such breakers also don't trigger at specified current exactly. They have two breakers inside of them, one for overload protection triggering once it heats up, could be an hour for 2x current if starts cold, and one for short circuit protection triggering in less than a second, but on 3x+, 5x+ currents, etc. So a 15A breaker, a 15A outlet and a cable for 15A all could easily see 30A of current for some periods of time and heat up.
I actually used to calibrate and QC high end breakers for a well know company who's name is a letter and a shape. To pass QC the breakers would need to heat trip when run at 135% Amps between roughly 20-45 minutes. Both too fast and too slow were a failure.
The actual range was a bit different by Ampage which I never quite understood.
Any device that becomes significantly more dangerous when the breaker trips at 25 instead of 20 amps is relying on way too thin of a safety margin and I would consider it a lurking hazard on any circuit.
That is not how safety margins work. Safety margins are meant to give a buffer for unforeseen circumstances, they are not a ticket to just cheat. With this logic... why stop at a 25A breaker (30 in the US)? Why not just plug a 20A device into a 100A breaker, or no breaker at all?
No safety margin can account for purposeful circumvention, which is what connecting a 15/20A outlet to a 30A circuit is.
You see no difference between 20 vs. 25 amps and 20 vs. 100?
I didn't say any difference was unacceptable, but a significant difference for 20/25 should not be accepted.
If the danger gets gradually worse for every 5 amps on the fuse, that's fine. Then the excess danger at 25 or 30 amps is only a tiny fraction of the excess danger at 100 amps. Good work.
If the danger has a sudden sharp increase at a certain amperage, then that amperage threshold needs to be further away than a mere 20/25 difference. Or even 20/30.
It matters in the case of a malfunctioning device, as others have pointed out. If you're going to have an adapter than a allows a 15A device (which would normally only need to fail safely in the presence of 15A, or perhaps a very brief lighting surge) into a plug that can supply 25 or 30A, the adapter should almost certainly contain its own 15A fuse.
The reverse of this is plugging big loads like power tools or vacuum cleaners into extension cords intended for use with desk lamps, but I think most people understand that that's a bad idea.
I don't see how such a product would be useful for anyone. At least in USA, anywhere a 25A circuit is available, a 15A circuit is also available. The converse (using a 25A device on a 15A circuit) would be useful, but also wouldn't be dangerous in any way.
Looking at us (NEMA) plugs, there's plugs for 15A, 20A, 30A, and 50A. I'm going to assume everyone means 30A instead of 25A.
Generally, where there's a 30A circuit, a 15A circuit is also available, but there are exceptions. You may have wired a RV hookup with only a 30A receptacle, but you want to run some lights, or tools or ? with a 15A plug from that on a temporary basis. The circuit is (presumably) good for 30A, so adapting to a lower amp receptacle is reasonable --- it won't hurt anything to draw fewer amps through the circuit.
Adapting from a 15A socket to a 30A socket can be dangerous; the 15A or 20A[1] breaker or fuse on the circuit won't immediately open with a 30A draw, and the wiring will heat up during the time it takes for the circuit protection to open; possibly long enough to cause a fire. Of course, just because a load has a 30A plug doesn't mean it draws 30A all the time, there are conditions where using such an adapter is safe, but it requires knowledge of the load.
[1] US NEC code allows for a 20A breaker on circuits served by 15A receptacle, as long as there is more than one receptacle
> The Switch and Switch Dock are not USB-C devices.
Why? Why was it so hard for them to implement USB-C the proper way? Why were they allowed (and why did they want) to use patented USB-C plugs if they didn't want to actually implement USB-C? The only explanation I can come up with is they intended to earn money from repairing.
Why use a standard connector then? Why not use a proprietary one? The USB-C connector itself is far from perfect and I can see no reason to use it if actual compatibility is not what you seek.
Because with a standard connector they could use existing cheap suppliers for that part? And apparently one that was too cheap to properly implement the standard.
what about the switch pro controller? I'll sometimes charge it on whatever usb-c cable is nearby when I'm gaming and the controller starts to die. Is that OK?
The pro controller doesn't use PD, so there's very little risk to destroy anything with a somewhat compliant charger. (There are some out there that repurpose normal USB-A for higher voltages, but they're very rare)
I am also a cheapskate but afraid of using noname power supplies and have been very happy with the HP charger that works on all my devices including a Macbook: https://www.amazon.ca/HP-3PN48UT-USB-C-Slim-Elitebook/dp/B07... It even includes a handy USB-A port for non-USB-C cables.
A USB-C PD brink specifies which voltage and amp combos it supports charging, and the one that the dock & switch ask for as their 'optimal' power profiles most apple USB-C bricks do not deliver, despite having the wattage capability for them.
That's a slightly different problem. Charging the device vs the dock working. I almost never used the dock, but I charge my device all the time with other USB-C cables.
> It appears that while the switch is PD-compliant itself, they used a slightly non-standard connector that reduces tolerances and could, in some situations (most likely worn cables) cause some pins to electrically bridge and fry the port.
I'm pretty sure that's the dock that has a slightly nonstandard plug, not the switch itself.
From my research a few years ago, this is caused by the Switch asking the charger for 20V, but it actually expects 15V. The Nintendo charger obeys this hidden rule, but any other charger will happily provide 20V. I think the difference between a 20V and 15V charge isn't significant enough to blow the Switch up the first time you use it, but, over time it will blow up.
You purchase the switch with a provided charger. If that charger caused issues, then there's potentially a suit. It's not obvious that you'd say the same thing if they used a proprietary port like what the 3DS uses.
No, I purchase a device with a Universal charger port and a universal charger. If the device doesn't work with any other universal charger that is their problem. Likewise if I use their charger on something else and it breaks my other device that is their problem.
The purpose of universal is everything works with everything. whoever breaks that is at fault and should pay the price. If Nintendo has used some other port I wouldn't have the expectation, but they used a universal port so they need to be compatible.
Nintendo clearly states on Switch specs page that the Switch dock has a "AC adapter port". Just because it uses a connector that physically looks like USB Type-C does not mean it's actually a USB type C port.
It should be considered the same, because for all practical purposes, that's how the end users treat it - and it's not unreasonable on their behalf. If Nintendo wants a proprietary charger, they're welcome to use a proprietary port. But standards exist for a reason, and diluting them like that should be heavily regulated.
While they don't explicitly claim USB-C compatibility, creating a USB-C shaped port seems like a pretty clear representation that the dock is USB-C compatible.
More like Gen 1 Switch hardware was designed too early in USB-C era.
It’ll probably be fixed in future generations but Nintendo decided not to make design changes for Gen 1 and Gen 2 Switch to fully comply with USB-C PD specs.
The timeline here doesn’t jive. The Pixel C came out in 2015 with a USB-C port using the same SoC as the Switch (2017). Nintendo’s non-compliance is intentional.
Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence. Nintendo has a long history of proprietary plugs, if they wanted to make something proprietary, they would have just done it and nobody would bat an eye, they wouldn't bother making a slightly buggy USB-C implementation.
Do you also think that the Raspberry Pi 4 USB-C incompatibility is intentional? That came out waaay later
This is assuming Nintendo is incompetent. They have been making toys for 100 years and have been consistent pioneers in consumer electronics. They are no stranger to proprietary connectors. They opted to not develop one this time because it was seen as an unnecessary cost. Instead they took the parts of a well developed standard they liked and cut the corners they wanted to cut. They would have had a harder time finding an OTS non-compliant solution than an OTS compliant one. Playing by the standard cost too much. The only narrative here is “Nintendo sees no one is watching the cookie jar and takes from it. They prefer to be the only one with cookies anyway and don’t see the benefit of a communal jar.”, not “Nintendo don’t know what they’re doing”.
I would love to read more about this, but are you sure that's right?
I know the switch gets the spec wrong in a few places, but there is only one thing I have heard about that causes damage, and that is knockoff chargers that grossly overvolt the data pin used for power negotiation.
A device designed for 15V has some headroom. Probably 20V. It will fail immediately or it won't. The only potential variable is that your power supply is suddenly spiking to 21V or even more after prolonged use and that's what's destroying the Switch. There aren't many electronics components with a rated lifespan. Electrolytic capacitors are the most prominent ones and are easy to replace.
This is really interesting, do you remember where you read this, or have a writeup somewhere? I'm curious as to whether the Mariko/Switch Lite variants have the same problem.
I think it's fine to point out the Thunderbolt mess, or the PD vs non-PD devices (although non-PD is becoming exceedingly rare as far as I can tell at least for "larger" devices), but using the Nintendo Switch seems like a bad example in my opinion, since it explicitly does not follow all USB standards, especially in fact on charging.
Why ? You have the same plug but it's not actually compatible - this to me is a good example of confusion - I would be the first to assume you can charge it with whatever USB-C power cable available and not bother checking the docs.
It seems like a deliberate effort on Nintendo's part to cause chaos. They could've done the same thing with any other standard, including micro USB. They made it just different enough that it's dangerous to use third-party peripherals.
If there's any company that's going to take absolutely every opportunity to continue with legal proceedings against the general populace even when they're clearly in the wrong... well, it's Disney, but Nintendo's probably a close second.
Because it could have happened just as well with any other plug. It could have been a non-conforming micro-USB charging port.
Either way, it would have nothing to do with “the mess that is USB-C” (i.e. the inability to identify which of the various wire protocols that work over USB-C cables that a USB-C port follows/supports), because such a port isn’t following any of the USB-C-cable compatible standards.
It’d be like saying Nintendo hurt the mini-DVD format when they used non-compatible mini-DVDs in the GameCube. Those discs have nothing to do with the mini-DVD standard; they just happen to share a physical substrate and so a physical appearance. They’re not claiming to be mini-DVDs.
And nor does Nintendo claim the Switch’s charging port to be a USB-C port. In all the docs, it specifically says that it’s just a port for the Dock or the Switch AC charger to plug into. It just happens to share a form-factor.
Do you remember the days when every connector looked like a DB9 connector with only some of the pins populated? (E.g. the various game-controller ports on the Atari, Commodore, Amiga, etc.) Or later, when every connector looked like a PS/2 port, with only some of the pins populated (e.g. Apple Desktop Bus)? None of these were claiming to be the same type of cable or jack or socket. None of them were claiming cross-compatibility. They all just happened to share the same physical connector—because it was a cheap and plentiful, easy-to-source part to build your own proprietary cables and jacks and sockets in terms of.
Heck, do you know how many random different types of cables are terminated with TRS or RCA connectors? Would you blame your hairdryer for “destroying the audio ecosystem” because its wall-charger is terminated in an RCA jack, and you could theoretically plug said RCA jack into an iPod (probably frying it in the process)?
The outlier in all this isn’t USB-C, but rather the previous USB physical-connector standards. Pretty much nobody used those for anything other than USB devices. Probably because the connectors were 1. expensive as parts, and therefore not really worth using in your own project unless you specifically were trying to be a part of the USB ecosystem; and 2. weren’t designed to be physically capable of meeting the current-draw requirements that proprietary cabling standards would want to place on them.
In being both cheap and capable of high current delivery, USB-C connectors are just bringing us back from the temporary reprieve of USB-A/B, to the world of the 100 years before that, where a physical connector tells you nothing about what type of cable you’ve got, because every fly-by-night company uses any random connector for whatever they like.
You know how USB jacks and sockets had the USB icon on them? That was because the USB Consortium assumed people would do random things with the USB connector standard; and so the icon was meant to distinguish the USB connector as applied to a USB use-case. It never really became relevant in USB-A/B, but it’s actually relevant now in USB-C. That icon is what tells; not the shape of the socket.
Back in the 80s, I had a device that was powered by a 3.5 connector. This same device had another two 3.5 connectors for the headphones and microphones.
Somehow, I got through that time without ever having plugged the power into the microphone socket. I am not that careful.
We have a Lenovo Yoga laptop, the power and headphone sockets are about the same diameter and next to one another. Thankfully mis-plugging hasn't caused any negative hardware issues, just occasional bewilderment.
The USB Consortium’s licensing strategy is to restrict what people can label with the USB logo, by holding trademark over that logo. You then have to work out an arrangement with them, in order for your hardware to proclaim itself as USB-compatible by using the logo. This is their “in” to ensure you’re doing USB correctly.
The Nintendo charging port is not labelled with a USB logo. It’s fundamentally not a USB-C port. It doesn’t make any claim to obey any standard. The USB Consortium was not involved; nor do they have a legal right to get involved, if Nintendo has no interest in putting that USB logo on their product.
Interestingly (to me), this seems to be a central point in Nintendo’s business model: they don’t do licensing fees, if they can at-all help it. They’re willing to break compatibility with some standard, if that’s what it takes to avoid having to pay someone a fee for every unit sold. That’s not exactly why the GameCube’s discs aren’t mini-DVDs (that’s more a DRM thing); but it is why none of their peripherals so far have had a Bluetooth logo on them, despite being in essence Bluetooth peripherals (but ones that sit in a separate Bluetooth “namespace” such that you need a customized Bluetooth driver to talk to them; presumably because putting those devices into the regular Bluetooth namespace would involve doing something that infringes on the Bluetooth Special Interest Group’s IP.) It’s also, way back when, why Nintendo dropped the deal with Sony to make the Nintendo PlayStation — they didn’t want to have to pay the licensing fees for printing CD-ROMs!
Interestingly in the UK, Nintendo _explicitly_ label it as a USB-C port. I'm not sure if they do or not elsewhere, but they definitely claim it's a USB-C port 'for AC charging' over here.
Alright, I guess I was wrong above; it certain is a "USB-C connector port." In fact, I would even say that it is a "USB port" (although they can't say that for licensing reasons.) Nintendo seem to expect and encourage you to plug USB-C peripherals into said port (e.g. any random USB game controller.) Nintendo will support such configurations just fine. You're not voiding your warranty by doing that.
What the port isn't, is a USB certified port. USB certification guarantees that it'll be safe to plug any USB-certified thing into any other USB-certified thing. Without that certification, the device isn't guaranteeing its ability to handle weird things that other USB devices might do—like sending it lots of current without doing a specific proprietary negotiation first.
It's a bit like FCC certification for "accepting radio interference." Devices that have it, are guaranteed to not melt down/throw sparks if you bring them close to e.g. HV power lines, or a radio tower. Devices that don't have it, aren't guaranteed to not do that. They might or they might not; but they weren't required to be tested to find out if they would.
But unlike FCC certification, where it's illegal to sell something in the US containing an antenna if it's not FCC certified, it's entirely legal to produce and market a device that has USB connectors, but isn't USB certified. There's nothing stopping companies from doing it—other than the expectation that consumers might care about the USB logo being on the product. If a company thinks consumers won't care about that in their case, they have no reason to bother.
(That's not to say Nintendo shouldn't have made their product fail safe under out-of-tolerance conditions from other USB devices anyway. It would just be good engineering to do that, even if you don't want to pay the licensing fee. But they didn't think to test for those conditions—likely because the USB Consortium wasn't invited to come breathe down their necks reminding them about things like that.)
I think there's very good justification for pulling USB-PD under the NRTLs and CE, so that non-compliant products are illegal to sell.
Compliance enforcement didn't matter much when USB was just data and low-wattage electricity, but USB-PD provides enough power to be hazardous. That risk is not currently being effectively managed.
"Buyer beware" isn't an adequate solution to avoiding device damage or cables catching fire.
That to me, is the key boundary being crossed, like enough to merit a large-class action award for any damages sustained anywhere by anyone who plugged a USB-C device into the port.
I do think there's something to be said for liability for creating a port that is so similar to USB-C, but also causing damage, akin to copyright laws, based on consumer confusion. I.e., if a reasonable person might think it is a variant of USB-C, and USB devices seem to work for long periods of time without apparent damage, then Nintendo is liable by virtue of resulting damage to the consumer's property (not to the USB organization). There's a certain liability for negligence in that case. But I could also see reasonable arguments that if Nintendo were explicitly saying it is not a USB port, that they shouldn't be liable (I don't agree but see it as a reasonable argument).
But if Nintendo is advertising it in anyway like that, they should be held liable. I just don't see a reasonable argument for why that wouldn't be the case. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
We don't really have class-actions in UK but under the Consumer Rights Act (CRA replaced the well known Sale of Goods Act) there's no time limit on when you can get manufacturing defects fixed so warranty repairs should be free (although you might also accept a brand new replacement and pay a little to cover the wear on your original).
In the EU there's an automatic 2 year replacement warranty on electronics too.
That seems like a bit of a grey area. I'm sure most people would assume that means it's a USB compatible port, but I'm also sure they would argue that they didn't explicitly state it to be a USB port, just a USB Type-C connector for use with the AC adapter or Switch dock.
Which makes sense to me, because “licensing the port design” would involve trying to extract money from the wrong people — it would target the bulk parts manufacturers producing the USB-C connectors. Those parts manufacturers would have to pay per connector-part produced in such a scheme. Those businesses 1. operate on razor-thin margins such that there’s no margin to extract there, and 2. don’t have nearly the tight logistics pipelines that consumer-electronics companies do, so there’d likely be huge bins of USB-C connectors laying around awaiting an order, where they’d have to eat the licensing fees in advance of receiving payment for the parts (which puts a big hole in their cashflow.)
Much better to go after the high-margin device manufacturers and OEM integrators. But you can’t really pursue them for infringing on the part; they didn’t make it, they just bought it. They’d tell you to go chase the people they bought it from. (And, as said above, you don’t want to do that.) Instead, you have to pursue them for something they’re doing. Such as adding the USB logo to their product.
There's a middle ground between Apple's rounded corner land grab and allowing non-compliant electrical devices that can cause property damage.
Consider the situation with standard NEMA 5-15R receptacles. As far as I'm aware, the design is not legally protected, but any manufacturer who made a '5-15R' receptacle that couldn't carry 15A--or any device manufacturer who decided to re-purpose the pins such that the ground conductor carried 240V--would have legal problems if they brought their product to market.
This is where USB-PD should be: in a situation where physical connector compatibility brings with it enough design assurances that any pairing of legally-available devices won't blow up, catch fire, or burn out. Ideally, any USB-PD device pairing should work, but at the moment the bare minimum needs to be that any device pairing is safe.
Round corners happen by coincidence, and Apple wouldn't let you use round corners even if you met their spec.
Someone making a port the exact size and shape of a USB-C port (within tolerances) is doing it for the purpose of being compatible, and telling them to meet the (non-onerous) spec to be allowed would not get nasty headlines.
> Someone making a port the exact size and shape of a USB-C port (within tolerances) is doing it for the purpose of being compatible
People put TRS (3.5mm audio) jacks on random proprietary wall-chargers. They don't do it so that the charger can "be compatible with" the analog-audio ecosystem (what do you want to do; plug your charger into an amplifier?)
No, these manufacturers use TRS jacks, because TRS jacks (and sockets) are cheap parts. (Remember, they're not making these parts; they're just ordering them, in bulk, from some supplier that has a warehouse full of them. And that supplier doesn't care what they're used for; they just want to get them sold.)
USB-C connectors are now also seemingly beginning to be cheap parts.
I keep hearing about USB-C ports being significantly more expensive to use than previous versions, so I guess let me know when you see someone do that. I'll be surprised to see anything mass-produced that uses a USB-C port for something entirely different.
But even if they want to, it would be better if someone stops them.
Back then sockets were known to be dumb connectors and hardware wasn’t designed to be compatible with one another (in fact it was often designed specifically to be incompatible). However these days there is an expectation, particularly with USB, that anything which looks like a USB port is in fact a USB port. They’re sold as smart ports for that reason. And the fact that the Switch does work with some USB-C chargers is evidence that it is at its heart a USB port. So it’s not unreasonable for people to expect these sockets that look like universal smart ports to behave like a universal smart port.
It's like saying that because one concrete house collapsed because the architect didn't properly so it's job concrete house are bad in general.
Also most charger are fully compatible with the switch off I remember correctly the only way to fry your switch with a charger is by using a charger with high voltage/amper support with a cable which doesn't support any form of fast charging and even then it might not happen. But most chargers which support faster charging do have the cable fixed to the charger to prevent any user confusion.
As an effect of this most (all?) USB-C PD laptop chargers work with the switch. Only with chargers for phones and small tablets do you have to be careful but again most higher quality chargers from that area work just fine, too.
It's like saying that because one concrete house collapsed because the architect didn't properly so it's job concrete house are bad in general.
I'd actually say its more like building a failed structure out of something that looks like, but actually isn't, concrete, and then saying that concrete is a terrible material to use for buildings.
I'm quite sure someone, somewhere, made a charger and port in the USB-A format, which delivered 12 volts of power without asking.
This is a violation of the USB spec, not a flaw in it. Anyone could deliver mains AC voltage over a USB-C cable, and it would fry just about everything on the market.
And yet it's a USB-C plug that, on the surface, appears to charge from USB-C chargers just fine. Nintendo is to blame, but it hurts the USB-C landscape.
Plus, Nintendo is far from the only offender in the USB-C space.
Agreed, explicit is almost exactly opposite from the truth for owners. I guess if you're a hardware implementer and poke around you'll find people saying it's not USB-C, but that's not in any way Nintendo being explicit. Why they might have been explicit about would be to never use anything that wasn't Nintendo branded at a major markeup. After the last few decades of profiteering a lot of users have been trained to assume that the only reason is money.
Additional side note: non-Apple chargers are often scary inside. They rarely contain the safeties of Apple chargers. That is outside this whole hackers setting chargers on fire issue.
I haven’t found this to be true. I’ve used 4 or more different chargers. A couple off-brand USB-C chargers, USB-C dock/charger, Apple
USB-C chargers, USB-C to USB 2.0/3.0 cables with 1A, 2.4A, 2.5A chargers. All worked without issue. In fact, I left the Nintendo wall wart at home (I usually travel for work) and just bring along a USB-C to USB cable with me.
Yes in practice it's very unlikely to accidentally fry your Switch.
Through wrt. docks there is some non standard compilant parts about switching to the "dock" alternate mode, maybe I misremeber and that can't damage your switch.
Anyway if you by anything but super cheap potentially broken chargers in 2020 I would be very surprised if it damages yours Switch. Especially laptop chargers tend to work very well with it. Actually I observed (but maybe wrongly) that somehow my Lenovo think pad laptop charger does a better job when charging and at the same time playing in handheld mode .
I use it with my Apple charger without issue, and I've done that since I got it quite a while ago. While I don't doubt your experience, it sounds like perhaps your situation isn't quite universal. Defective Switch hardware maybe? Not sure, but it works well for me.
Charging is fine, the issue is using under wattage 3rd party docks or using a bad charger for the dock while playing, as it pull more power when it is in dock mode.
Charging it has never been an issue for anyone and this is the first I heard being a charging issue
"I love the port, but the standard just hasn't caught up and when a company like Nintendo flouts it anyway, you have a big problem."
Can't this hazard be eliminated with some kind of "USB Condom" that would, at least, universalize your cables and ports ?
I have a USB condom that I use for standard USB ports for disabling data lines (turning them into power only cords) - I assume you could build a smarter, more sophisticated USB condom that would allow you to safeguard against these edge cases and incompatibilities ?
As a side note that's common for undercharged batteries.
Charging undercharged lithium batteries must be done exactly right or it can get dangerous because of this is often only supported by OEM chargers or some workaround like keep your device plugged in for 12h even through it in no way indicates that is charging and it will then magically work again (my last phone )
I was livid with Nintendo when the Switch launched. It took decades of hard work to get the interconnect industry to play nice with common standards. It’s a fragile, prosperous peace. It doesn’t take much to destroy it. Nintendo’s careless actions threaten a lot more than a few toys.
Not only has the Switch always charged safely, later revisions are also more compliant. The issue has always been with the charger and dock. Never PD compliant chargers straight in the switch.
The thunderbolt 3 + usb C thing is true though. My Thunderbolt 3 dock won't charge a non-TB3 device. I'd consider that a minor issue though, especially as USB4 fixes it entirely.
> Aha - you may find that your Switch CANNOT in fact share a charge - Nintendo's port is not necessarily safe to use with anything but its supplied charger. And I've just learned this lesson with a $60 bill from Nintendo repair after the port went pop and couldn't charge the device. I only have reputable chargers in the house from Apple and one from Anker aside from the Nintendo's own.
It has worked reliably with pretty much every charger I threw at it so this sounds like one of those urban myths.
Don’t think it’s necessarily « disrespectful « to doubt another’s account. This reminds me of the « bend gate » problem with iPhones. There were some here who reported the problem... but somehow it was not a problem in the grand scheme of things. We have a lot of skeptical folks here (a good thing!) so we should be respectfully skeptical of the skeptics at times, without an exchange of ill feelings. :)
While the whole "bend your phone in half" thing was overblown, it definitely is a major issue. The whole class of touch disease issues (where the screen has grey bars flickering and touch stops working) were caused by the same underlying problem -- the phones are less rigid and small flexing (such as in your pocket) causes the Touch IC chip to become unseated. An incredibly large number of iPhones have succumbed to this issue, and Apple had a "repair program" for it[1] (which is their terminology to get around calling it a "recall" because their product was faulty) -- and as usual their description of the problem is incredibly skewed (you don't need to drop your phone to trigger it and it affected a very large number of devices because it was a design flaw of the phone).
Another vote for the switch being evil here - just because it works for you doesn't mean it's an urban myth. The OnePlus adapters have historically had issues with the switch - https://www.reddit.com/r/oneplus/comments/5xexiz/fyi_the_one... and the iPhone usb adapters have also had issues.
With OnePlus adapters, I would only ever use it for Dash / Warp charging of their phones. It's unique enough that I wouldn't even consider attempting to charge a laptop or a switch with it.
Given the topic of the post, it's worth pointing that out. Even though both are usb c devices (switch and oneplus), they do a really good job of proving the article correct.
I think you'll find that if you do even a small amount of research you will find that this is not the case. There are many sources which confirm this, many of them official. Your comment amounts to: "Well since it hasn't happened to me then it can't possibly be true." Really?
I have a 2018 Switch and it works well with all chargers I've tested so far (mostly Apple and Lenovo besides the one that came with the Swift). My guess is that the problems that existed in the original hardware were fixed in a subsequent hardware revision.
Maybe the problems were fixed, but not by the time mine was ordered from Amazon on 8 December 2018. It charged fine with an Anker and Apple charger for, well, until it went pop this July. I'm glad yours is working fine, and it does come with a two-year warranty, but this was considered damage. From Nintendo's repair service:
> Our engineers have inspected your Switch Console and found damage due to USB-C Connector Damage. Under our warranty policy we do not cover the cost of the repair for damaged items. A payment of £53.50 is required for us to complete the repair.
Actually it isn’t but I’m not finding the article I’d previously read on the topic.
Personally I think it comes down to both the charging profiles the switch will accept are limited, such that some chargers don’t work with the switch - each USB PD charger supports a different set of charging specs (volts/amps/watts). https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/ch99aj/apple_...
I’d also suggest that some PD bricks/chargers might not be as reliable at sending power, if so, or if a cable’s wiring sends it down the wrong path, it could be disastrous for many devices that don’t take this into account. I am reminded of reviews of USB-C cables from a few years ago from Benson Leung.
Did you not read the article? Because your response doesn’t address any of the issues brought up in the article. Mainly that all the usb-c cables you sprinkle across your house might not have the same functionality. And if you plug your switch in to one it might charge it, while another will not.
With Micro-USB I had charging cables that didn't have data lines in them, Kindle power adaptors that didn't offer enough output for my phone to charge off, and non-standard devices that didn't follow the spec and only worked with certain stuff.
In my experience, it works well enough I've actively only been buying USB-C stuff where it is at all possible to do so for a while now.
It feels like these complaints are inevitable to me: a spec with no flexibility would become redundant too quickly or cost far too much to implement in most devices to ever see widespread adoption.
This is not much harder the the issue of 8P8C connectors, which some (incorrectly) call RJ45.
Depending on cable configuration, pinout, wall plate and structured wiring system, that 8P8C might be usable (or not) for multiple different types of data networking, from the assorted ethernet speeds (some of which may successfully autonegotiate, but not all) to E1 to token ring, or for a serial console, or delivering power and audio to a remote speaker, or hdmi-over-utp, or even -48V telephony, and let's not even get started on the only-subtly-different but actually incompatible RJ45S connector, or people sticking RJ11 plugs in 8P8C ports.
And yet the world has coped with this proliferation.
I have experienced none of the issues described in the article despite possessing 30+ USB Type-C devices. The article above simply comes across as an overwhelming refusal to take any personal responsibility for technical purchasing choices.
My UPS uses 8P8C for it's USB port! I can't imagine how many cents they saved over using a USB B port (but I do know that I sure as hell don't want to lose that weird RJ45 to USB cable, who knows if the pinout matches whatever cable I can find on amazon)
I did read it, and for my use cases, I don't have issues. I understand others' use cases may not match mine, but this situation seems basically like any other connectivity standard in the history of technology. Except this time, the universality for what most people use it for has actually managed to catch on. :)
I'm not sure I see how this is an interesting definition. How is it different from HDMI or LAN cables? There the cables also define capability so "cables that look identical don't actually work the same way".
> How is it different from HDMI or LAN cables? There the cables also define capability so "cables that look identical don't actually work the same way".
In theory yes. In practice most of the cables are good enough for most users - e.g. in a home LAN cables are probably 10m at most, so even a cat5 cable can probably give people a connection that's as fast as their internet uplink. If the problems with USB-C are common enough to impact normal users (and I think lack of thunderbolt falls into that category) then that's a major difference in practice.
Quick check: how many of your USB-C cables can actually carry the 5Gbps (3.1) or 10GBps (3.2) bandwidth? Because I've had to try multiple products, all claiming USB-3 speeds, before I finally found one that delivered more than 480MBps (USB 2.0 speed).
It sounds like you've experienced either just pure luck or that you've carefully selected your components (which degrades the "universality" claim), at least for the Switch, since it doesn't fully implement PD and can short out.
Exactly! This has been my experience. I bought 3 different USB-C cables for my keyboard until I found one that let the keyboard work as the original did. I have a few usb-c cables that will charge my gopro and a few that won't. I like the form factor, but the standard itself is a mess.
> Mainly that all the usb-c cables you sprinkle across your house might not have the same functionality.
this is a problem if you expect things to be like USB2 where you can collect all these random cables and power blocks and use them interchangeably. this wasn't always true with USB2 anyway, with all the out of spec "fast charge" implementations.
there are a lot of optional features and speed tiers for USB3, which is certainly annoying. but you have the option of buying a bunch of cables that support everything you need/use and scatter those around your house. they will work with any standards compliant equipment, which is really the best you can hope for with any standard.
> this is a problem if you expect things to be like USB2 where you can collect all these random cables and power blocks and use them interchangeably. this wasn't always true with USB2 anyway, with all the out of spec "fast charge" implementations.
Silly question time, why would we not expect that?
I mean you can expect whatever you want. what I'm saying is the beautiful past where all USB cables were perfectly interchangeable never existed. in the last generation we had power-only cables, data-only (although this is out of spec, I believe), and various out of spec fast charging implementations. if you pick up a random usb charging block and micro-usb cable, there was never any guarantee that it would transfer data to your phone, fast charge it, or even charge it at all.
It is still correct for the end user to expect that. If you make something that breaks the expectation it should be your fault. A connector is a connector, a cable it a cable. If they all physically fit it should just work, and whoever broke that should be legally at fault. Now I will admit that cables break, and connectors wear out, both of which are not the fault of the manufacture. However it should just work.
Note that if you connect two usb-6 devices with a usb-5 cable (Intentionally using standards that don't exist yet) is may drop back to working like usb-5. If you connect a usb-5 device to a usb-6 device it should all just work - to the limits of usb-5 of course.
In other words, one kind of cable plus out of spec trash (but mostly benign micro-USB chargers with no chance of people attempting data transfers). The worst I've encountered with "old" USB is a vintage Nokia phone that refuses to charge from its data-only micro USB port.
With USB-C there are multiple official cable types, all with the same connectors, plus high voltages that can fry devices, plus complex protocols that are apparently too much for some manufacturers to implement safely.
I've only seen one charging-only cable, and it was a very weird shape. I've never seen a data-only cable. And while proprietary fast-charging exists does that affect the cables?
The cable situation before was pretty good, honestly. And if we could just mark the speed rating on USB-C cables it would solve almost all the problems. Maybe another symbol for the ones that can do >60 watts but even that is quite niche in comparison.
sure, if you're familiar with the pinout, you can tell whether the data or power lines are completely missing. there was still no guarantee that any arbitrary cable would work with whatever fast charge implementation you were using. you would likely get 0.5A trickle charging at least, but the device could also just refuse to charge at all.
from my perspective, USB-IF has taken a bunch of random shit that manufacturers were going to do anyway and made them proper (though optional) parts of the spec. I understand it didn't work out perfectly, but I don't really understand why they are getting so much flak for it. I'd much rather have a bunch of cables and devices that at least try to meet an official spec than to have a bunch of proprietary implementations that make no effort at being compatible.
Literally half the pins are missing on charge-only cables.
>but I don't really understand why they are getting so much flak for it.
From me, because my partner bought an USB-C to 3.5mm jack converter that refused to work with "this device only supports official huawei converters". That, and two completely different cables with almost disjoint functionality look _the same_. If they mandated color coding or anything else to be able to physically determine what cable is what, I wouldn't complain.
That all said, the _charging_ story is decent enough, everything else is garbage.
> Literally half the pins are missing on charge-only cables.
okay, but unless you know which pins are missing, how do you know you're not looking at a data-only cable?
> From me, because my partner bought an USB-C to 3.5mm jack converter that refused to work with "this device only supports official huawei converters". That, and two completely different cables with almost disjoint functionality look _the same_. If they mandated color coding or anything else to be able to physically determine what cable is what, I wouldn't complain.
this sounds like more of a huawei issue than a USB-C issue. if a manufacturer is just going to refuse to support a standards-compliant cable, you're out of luck either way. color coding would be nice though, they could have made that mandatory rather than recommended. I'm sure companies like apple wouldn't give a fuck either way and would just go with whatever looked aesthetically pleasing, USB-IF cert be damned.
> That all said, the _charging_ story is decent enough, everything else is garbage.
what "everything else" is garbage? there are higher speed variants, but you seem to already consider it reasonable to look at pins, so that shouldn't be a problem for you. thunderbolt support doesn't need any special pins; it just needs a high quality cable, which is analogous to the charging situation for this and the previous generation.
>okay, but unless you know which pins are missing, how do you know you're not looking at a data-only cable?
You know it's a different cable and that's enough.
>this sounds like more of a huawei issue than a USB-C issue. if a manufacturer is just going to refuse to support a standards-compliant cable, you're out of luck either way. color coding would be nice though, they could have made that mandatory rather than recommended. I'm sure companies like apple wouldn't give a fuck either way and would just go with whatever looked aesthetically pleasing, USB-IF cert be damned.
That is made possible by USB-C standard. USB-A and USB-B cables were too dumb to support that.
>you seem to already consider it reasonable to look at pins
The pinouts are the same for all different types of cables. It is literally impossible to differentiate cables based on visual inspection. The USB-C standard is a unified charger and a bunch of different cables in with the same connector.
I just grabbed a power-only microUSB cable out of my cable box (it came with a microUSB-powered soap dispenser!), and it has all the pins, but only the power pins are actually wired.
And how exactly are you going to keep track of which cable is which?
It might not be so terrible if they came labeled with symbols or letters or colors or something. But there is absolutely no way to know which cable does what once you've taken it out of its packaging that (hopefully) lists its specifications correctly.
Good luck remembering which white cable was which.
> And how exactly are you going to keep track of which cable is which?
it's really not that hard. for travel, I have three identical cables that work with all my portable devices. for devices that spend their whole lives in one place, I use the cable it came with.
FWIW I've never had an issue with the cables. The only time USB-C has bitten me is when trying to charge a device using a charger meant for a lower tier of hardware. I've never had any issues with USB-PD chargers. For example my MBP charger works on everything. My phone chargers don't work at all on my cheap Chinese laptop, but they'll trickle charge my MBP (which has honestly been a lifesaver). Even my $20 battery pack will get me a few hours of laptop life
Exactly, and honestly it's pretty intuitive: big devices need big chargers. For me, my laptop is the only device I own that needs a big 100w adapter, everything else can share smaller adapters.
And one big benefit of the current USB-C era is that 15-18W power adapters are more ubiquitous than ever, and compact enough that there's almost never any reason to use a smaller one anymore. And more and more devices are not coming with their own power adapter these days, which is better for the environment and simplifies my life, every usb-c device I own can be charged by the same chargers and will charge quickly.
It's way better than each device coming with its own adapter of arbitrary shape that may or may not be able to be plugged in without blocking the adjacent socket on the wall or power strip, with seemingly arbitrary max power output, with an arbitrary choice of using usb A/mini/micro connector.
This is a problem with essentially any cable. The only difference between old and new is that the new problem is with a single plug instead of a handful of plugs.
> Mainly that all the usb-c cables you sprinkle across your house might not have the same functionality.
If you buy decent cables they all do. The reality is that whatever devices you're plugging the cables into might not support every feature you're looking for. Instead of blaming poorly built devices or ignorant consumers it must be the shape of the cable that's the problem surely.
This is a simple problem, and there's a simple solution.
Problem: Physical connectors previous encoded information about data/power transfer mode support. When USB C unified the physical connector, that information was lost.
Solution: Mandate visually encoded supported standards on the USB cable in colored ring form, a la resistors.
Make them plastic, so you can snip them off if the aesthetic bothers. But I should be able to reach into a bin of different USB C cables, and determine what each cable can and can't do.
The law here for specifications teams should be: assume the consumer is never going to read your spec. Their ability to use the technology shouldn't be contingent on their doing so.
> Solution: Mandate visually encoded supported standards on the USB cable in colored ring form, a la resistors.
I agree in principal, but please don't do it with colored rings. Many of us have much more limited color perception due to colorblindness. I recently purchased some 8 cable 1/4" TRS snakes, and the only thing identifying which connector on one side of the snake was connected to a connector on the other side were colored bands--many of which I couldn't tell apart. I ended up pulling out a multimeter to test continuity, and then labeled then with unique glyphs on each end that weren't dependent on color (i.e. 1, 2, 3, etc.).
About 10% of the male population has some form of colour blindness, which is a fairly large percentage. Letting the market make decisions only leads to discriminatory practices. Worse, these practices can have an impact upon a person's life. For example: it can, and already does, affect employability.
Also keep in mind features that address a disability can be of benefit to everyone. For example: being able to identify something by shape can be useful to the colour blind, blind, and sighted people.
> Physical connectors previous encoded information about data/power transfer mode support. When USB C unified the physical connector, that information was lost.
this is not strictly true, at least for USB. you can use a USB 1.x to connect USB2/3 endpoints, but you will only get 1.x speeds. there were power-only cables that didn't transfer data at all. they are all physically compatible. unless you're familiar with the pin layout, there's no way to distinguish the different flavors of A ports.
It's rather ubiquitous, I'm surprised you haven't seen them. The plastic bits in the USB 3 ports in my motherboard, case, keyboard, _and_ the USB ports built into my monitor arms are all blue. Lower USBs are black. It's not universal, but it is very common.
There's a lot of telephone garbling going on in a lot of the replies to this thread about the switch.
There's a really detailed post from one of the third party dock makers (genki) about all the specifics of the switch's usb-c PD implementation, including the fact that the switch uses a (nearly) bog standard usb-c pd controller chip: https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/ckaiiv/an_e...
Just because nintendo won't warrant use of third party docks or claim compatibility doesn't mean it's not compatible. Nor does any anecdotal experience of a usb-c charger frying a switch (I've fried a dell laptop's battery with a busted usb-c cable, does that mean dells aren't conformant?).
Same, USB-C is one of those things that for me just works.
I buy USB-PD chargers and cables from reputable brands, and everything just charges. When I use the cables for data transfer, it just works -- no muss or fuss like there were with some of the charge-only converter cables for charging micro-USB devices.
Now if I were using Thunderbolt 3, yeah, you need a higher-end cable and there are restrictions on cable length for speed purposes (or moving up to a more expensive active cable). But I think that's a fair trade-off for being able to use that same cable for everything else as well.
We cannot WAIT until our household says goodbye to the last couple devices with legacy ports and we can throw the last few converter dongles in a drawer. Looking at you, Apple and Amazon Kindle -- when are you going to get with the program and ditch your legacy Lightning and micro-USB ports respectively?
Yes, the signal degrades more with longer cables which reduces the usable bandwidth. Short cables up to about 0.5m (1.5 feet) can use the full 40 Gbps. Slightly longer cables up to 1m can still carry enough signal for Thunderbolt 3 but usually at reduced speeds (20 Gbps).
Above about 1m (3 feet) a passive cable usually isn't good enough for TB3 connections and you have to use a more expensive "active" cable. Active cables have built in signal-boosting circuits -- they're amplifying and re-transmitting signals, not just passing them over the wires.
Anker, Belkin, and Cable Matters cables are solid. For chargers, Anker and RavPower. Aukey can be good too.
For other brands you need to check the specs carefully to see what the rated power and transmission speeds are (and take anything from a fly-by-night brand out of China with a grain of salt).
100% agree with you on how convenient USB-C can make things. Being able to carry one 60-90w brick with multiple USB-C PD outputs and charge pretty much all of my devices off of it is amazing.
On the other hand, I would say that all of us here on HN probably aren't the target audience for this article. Collectively, I'd say HN readers are likely to understand that different USB-C bricks, cables, and devices are going to support different things and research our purchases accordingly. The article seems to be more targeted at people who will grab a $3.50 gas station cable and expect it to charge their phone at 18w and laptop at 65w.
> The article seems to be more targeted at people who will grab a $3.50 gas station cable and expect it to charge their phone at 18w and laptop at 65w.
In their defense, all those cable look exactly the same.
I haven't gone through the whole usb-c/thunderbolt reading yet [1], so I might as well make the same mistake. And the fact that you're supposed to do the whole reading thing is probably the source of the problem.
You see the same plug, same colors on the connector, you EXPECT to work the same.
--
[1] Most of my devices are micro-usb, my Dell work laptop charges via thunderbolt/usb-c but I've got the Dell dock for that.
Yeah, I definitely understand the complaint. As I said in another comment, I think we're slowly approaching the point where you can mostly expect them to work the same. When the first Macbooks and other laptops with USB-C arrived, compatibility and adoption was awful, and we're finally getting to a point where things are less awful.
Would it have been better if they all worked exactly the same from day 1? Absolutely. Do I think we'll get to a point where USB-C is categorically better than what came before? Also yes.
I wouldn't say that they're in the wrong, but I would expect people to have some expectations about the quality, durability, and capabilities of a super cheap cable.
Overall, I don't think it's entirely unfair to expect people to pay $10-15 for a quality cable, especially since these modern cables are often expected to carry significant amounts of power.
No, $10 for a cable with significant amount of power is unreasonable. If you ever dealt with some power cables, you'd know that 1 meter of the highest quality copper power cable for continuous delivery of say 15 amps (3 x 1.5 mm^2) shouldn't cost more than $0.6. And that's enough for 300 watts of power given 20 volts. But you probably will never see that much copper in a USB-C cable, at best you'll see third of that and with a flimsy insulation, which costs two orders of magnitude less than $10.
Power cords aren't that different - you can buy cheap and crap 6ft cords for $3 that won't last or you can buy construction-site worthy cords that get thrown around for $30+
Most charging cables get treated more like a power cord on a construction site - they don't just get plugged in and hidden behind a TV so the quality of the shielding and connectors is paramount to withstand the twisting and strains
Getting into anecdotal evidence here, but, as a consumer, I've seen what happens to the hyper-cheap cables after a few weeks to months of use: they tend to fall apart or fail in fun and interesting ways.
On the other hand, I have never had a $10-15 Anker or some other brand cable fail on me without serious abuse. As a consumer, I'll happily pay the extra few dollars for the expectation of durability, a warranty of some sort, and the knowledge that the cable should Just Work with most of my devices, even if I know that the price is way out of proportion to the materials involved.
Can't speak for all other consumers, of course, but I would expect that many have figured the same thing out over the years of purchasing Micro USB/Lightning/30pin/etc cables.
$1 for the 2m of cable, another $1 for plugs, $1 for manufacturing costs/packaging/shipping = $3. This results in a market price of $10 (30% goes to the retailer [amazon FBA fees etc], 30% goes to the manufacturer and these have to cover salaries, office space, tax, etc etc)
Part of me thinks we're just in a very long, drawn-out adoption process for all of this.
Things seem to have gotten much better since the first USB-C only Macbooks and other devices started to arrive, so my hope is that we'll reach a point within another few years where one can pretty confidently purchase a cable or charger and assume it'll work with a standard device. It certainly does suck for now that you can end up with the wrong thing if you don't do a ton of compatibility checking.
Nintendo says you shouldn't use anything except 1st party cables with the Switch. There were articles a couple of years ago talking about Switches being bricked.
No, but the average consumer doesn't care who's actually at fault. They're just confused when their stuff doesn't work/is flaky. There is a difference between the standard in theory and the standard in practice, and I've seen a remarkable number of ordinary people very confused about whether various things actually work with each other, and a lot of it out in the real world is very poorly communicated and out-of-spec.
Bricking is generally considered to be invisible destruction that renders a device useless but still cosmetically intact. People used to call these things paperweights with a hint of irony because there are lots of fancy paperweight designs. Nowadays people view such devices to be as useful as bricks. They are heavy and take up space but they are still intact and jokingly enough you could actually use them as construction material.
A car that was destroyed in an accident would not be considered bricked because it has sustained cosmetic damage. You can't use it for it's aesthetics alone. e.g. in a museum.
A Tesla car where the battery charger has died could be considered a bricked car though.
This doesn't seem like a factor in favor of USB-C. I regularly charge any of two dozen USB device in my house from any of a half dozen smart chargers, using too many micro-B cables to count, and it has been months since I spent even one moment thinking about compatibility among them all. This kind of setup was already common.
My USB-C devices are the ones I need to worry about. All of the chargers I've bought (not the ones that came with devices) have at least one USB-C port, but the charger I have in my bedroom is too weak for the laptop I'm using in the family room right now, which is precisely why they stay in different rooms. And then there's the Switch, as others have mentioned. At least for the devices I own, USB-C is far more differentiated/fragmented than USB-B. The only thing that's unified is the physical connector.
ETA: I see a lot of other comments saying they don't have problems. Almost to a one, they seem to be Mac users talking about fairly static setups, and recommend "top of the line" (i.e. expensive) docks etc. I suggest that those experiences are even less representative of the typical non-HN user than my own.
> Almost to a one, they seem to be Mac users talking about fairly static setups, and recommend "top of the line" (i.e. expensive) docks etc.
You don't need "Top of the Line" anything, you just need to avoid random junk. Micro-USB isn't much better in this regard. The cheaper cables charge slower and have slower data transfer rates.
The big difference here is many USB-C devices need a lot more power, so when you buy a crappy cable, it's a lot more of an issue.
Bringing up the Switch is unfair to USB-C. That would be like complaining about IEC C14 if Nintendo decided to make a connector that was just a hair larger and swapped hot and ground. Not being compliant is completely Nintendo's fault.
Not really. Other interconnect standards have often (sadly not always) made it much harder for a small error like this to cause actual physical damage. USB-C made it easy, despite decades of learning on the subject. Yes, the fault is mostly Nintendo's, but USB-IF wasn't totally innocent either.
Every discussion about USB-C quickly devolves into one group saying that it's a mess and pointing out all the intricacies and complexities, and another group saying "hey, I'm charging my stuff and it's fine!".
USB-C was not supposed to be a glorified power cable. It promised much, much more, and manufacturers annoyingly restricting the port choices on newer laptops made that promise even more prominent. It has failed miserably on that promise.
I don't think the public knows or cares about any promises made. The vast majority of people are extremely happy that they can charge their laptop and their phone with the same cable. That's a major improvement from previous generations of chargers and has absolutely simplified the situation. And it's only getting better.
I agree completely and we should blame Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch.
Speaking about Thunderbolt via USB-C it is incredible to sit in my work desk, connect a single cable to the notebook and suddenly having a desktop computer with three external monitors, keyboard, mouse, and many other ports. I have not tried an eGPU yet but will be happier if thunderbolt evolves faster and gives more extensibility options to notebooks. I cannot forget to mention that another USB-C dongle that I use can also be connected to the mobile phone and converting the mobile phone into another desktop computer with mouse, keyboard, and an external monitor. Before USB-C and Thunderbolt you should acquire specific dongles for specific devices.
Until they manage to get Ethernet through that cable without a converter - it's no bueno.
As for an eGPU user - the issue with eGPU is the cost of setup, but Thunderbolt docks are also stupid expensive(above $200 for one). I built my eGPU setup for $350(PowerColor+RX550), as a good Thunderbolt dock is in the range of $300.
There is a preferred side, but if you need juice, you can sit down in a coffee shop[1] you don't need to worry about it. Just make sure your main setup at home/ your office is correct.
[1] we'll be able to do that again sometime right?
Because I've had my MBP plugged in for the last 6 months, driving 2 external 4K displays on one side, power-in on the other, and an OWC 10Gigabit dock in the last port.
It's cool to touch, but I have the lid open (I use the LCD as the third display). I've read of people saying it gets hot when the lid is closed...
Nope, it's open; I use it as a second monitor as well. It's also on a stand (Roost) that exposes probably 99% of the bottom of the computer to air as well. 2019 Macbook Pro 16".
This is while the computer is under load (a Google Meet in Chrome, which is a power hungry little SOB). Also, the power is the only thing in the hot corner.
If it's always plugged in, then you're not charging the battery and there is less heat generated. I only have issues when it's charging the battery (maybe the battery controller is over there?)
The mess isn't about you, it's about the rest of us.
Old USB printer cables have a "USB-A" end that goes into your computer and the USB-B end for the printer. You can't mess that up.
I've recently handled multiple support calls from a family member due to USB-C confusion. I have to explain "This USB port is only for power, this USB port is for power and data. And don't try to try use HDMI through your USB hub because it some some strange problem. Use this other USB-C port only for your monitor".
Maybe USB C is better for a few, but it's worse for many.
I have an external IDE/SATA hard disk dock that has a USB A port on it... and comes with a USB A to A cable. It's absolutely insane.
Stupid manufacturers will do stupid things with any standard. Nobody should be making a laptop with one USB C port that's power only and one that's power and data.
Yeah, the worst part about USB C is that PD is optional. The electrical requirements of PD make it difficult to support on all ports though. If you have USB C ports on the left and right side you would have to route power from one side to the other. If your PCB traces have to support 5A over a long distance then things can get quite difficult.
Am I the only one who misses the Magsafe chargers? My kid just yesterday pulled my wife's laptop off her desk to the ground because she got caught in the charging cable.
It was such a game changer to not bend plugs/break laptops when you got the cord stuck on something.. and we gave that all up just to have one port.
I do miss it but less than what I expected. My laptop has a good autonomy, so I'm less dependent on charging. Also, most of the charging happens when it's linked to the usb-c monitor where you can't trip on the cable (which is above the desk).
It gets even better when you find out you can get a HDMI/Power dock that works with Switch, laptop, phone and can provide video and charge them all without having to carry 15 cables with you.
Can it be confusing? Yes. But it's a hellova improvement from bunch of disjoint cable standards we had before.
I could see it being great if all your devices are on it. But when you have usb-c, usb micro, usb mini and usb-b devices, the cables are a total pain. On top of the special pain usb-c brings onto itself. I have a cabinet that is basically dedicated to usb cables, using organizers to keep them all accessible and searchable. That does help a lot. But I feel like having to go that far is a sign usb was not as well thought out as it could have been.
Heh :) a lot of current devices I buy still use usb micro. I'm mostly dealing with modern fpga recreations of old game consoles like analogue.co's products. Maybe usb-c has some kind of licensing cost that makes it prohibitive for smaller companies?
The versatility of the port is amazing. It’s very useful to be able to use the same cable to charge, move data, and push audio and video.
However, it’s confusing AF. I feel like the first failure really is that it’s very unclear which ports and which cables support which features and how fast. You really have to know the technical differences when shopping. And you basically have to label every cable you buy, otherwise you have no idea what it’s capabilities are when you find it in your closet a year after buying it.
The other huge issue is spec compliance. It’s not clear to the average consumer whether they’re buying spec-compliant devices or non-compliant device-killers.
Did you read the article? USB-C is not just a charging cable. I can understand you are happy, but your happiness could have been achieved with ubiquitous micro-USB with extra power delivery capability.
The real disappointment is that USB-C could unite power and data delivery so that you won’t have to think about using a different shaped input for display/power. Due to patchy support this is not possible. It is explained in the article well.
This is also my experience. Quest, iPad, MacBook, headphones etc can all mostly use the same chargers. Really all I need to track is that the MacBook needs a thicker cable and this pretty much solves any compatibility issues.
This article feels like an engineer complaining like: "the spec is too long for me to read and is therefore bad."
Same for me, also that I can use the same docking station for my work and my private laptop is awesome. Of course the support for the (quite complex) standard is not fully there yet, so one cannot blindly buy or connect new stuff.
I haven't experienced USB-C much yet, but I have a good tangle of micro-USB cables that I need to label:
* Some carry data, but won't charge things.
* Some charge, but don't carry data.
* Some charge at a higher amperage.
Once upon a time, back when we used PS-2 connectors for keyboards and mice, we had the same problem. A keyboard wouldn't work in a mouse port (although they were the same physical connector), but a mouse might work in a keyboard port.
Would it be wrong for me to say I would like to take an old PS-2 cable and strangle anyone who thinks this kind of antics are a good idea?
Well, tfa mentions the Switch in particular as having potential issues with some chargers:
>Other devices, like the Nintendo Switch, only partially support the standard, and some unsupported chargers have bricked devices, reportedly due to the Switch’s maximum voltage being exceeded.
It also mentions issues with some devices/ports supporting "Power Delivery" and some not, and no way to tell them apart by just looking at them.
So, yeah, you can get lucky and everything just works, but that's not universal.
If you ignore laptops, then Micro-B basically did charge everything in my house. The introduction of USB-C made things worse, because now I have to deal with both connectors.
Sharing a charger isn't the only cool thing. Being able to attach an ordinary USB-C thumb drive to an iPad is a very useful too. If only computers (including MacBooks and desktop PCs) had more (2 is never enough) full-featured (Thunderbolt-enabled) USB-C ports (and didn't give up built-in SD card readers) that would really be awesome.
That's how I wish it was for me but it's not. So far the largest charger I've been able to find only has 2 USB-C plugs. So, switch + pixel + pocket wifi + macbook air
Then I have lots different computers. My Macbook Air has USB-C, my MacBook Pro has USB-A, My brand new desktop PC has USB-A, my Razer laptop has both USB-A and USB-C, my Playstation has USB-A. I have USB-A SD-Card readers and USB-A hubs.
Then, when If first got the Macbook Air I ended up going through 3 different USB-C hubs until I finally figured out how to buy one that actually supported 4k-60hz (the first 2 only supported 4k-30hz). Then later, I tried to use the Razer on a USB-C monitor. It worked but at some point the keyboard and mouse were flaky. Turned out apparently I needed a Thunderbolt HUB, not a USB-C hub (plugs are the same) so now I've gone through 4 hubs.
you can read about the 4 or 5 kinds of possible USB-C hubs you might end up with if you're not careful. I have no idea how a non-techie figures this out.
And then, I still have 3 iPhones that all use lighting (USB-A to lighting) and a few other devices at are USB-Micro (Kindle for example)
And several external hard-drives that are all that USB-3 wide plug to USB-A
I'm sure by the time USB-D arrives USB-C will be great and all my cables will be USB-C on both ends and all my devices will only have USB-C sockets but right now it's a mess
Now when I travel I use my Lenovo charger to charge my Android phones and tablet.
Unfortunately work provides me with an iPhone so that's still one more charger. One more piece of plastic floating around the ocean in the future. God damnit apple...
Yea I agree. I'm super negative and I don't think I've ever liked any other USB before, but this standard is great. I only wish some of my older hardware had it, won't buy a new tablet without USB-C.
My HP Elite X2 G3 tablet charges with other usb chargers only when off. When on, a HP windows utility pop ups that says not a good charger and then stops charging.
>> The fact that my laptop, Switch, iPad, and several other devices can all share a charge has made my life much easier.
It must be nice to have all new things. I cannot afford to renew all my devices every few years, nor do I want too. Just looking around my room now, I probably have several thousand dollars worth of SDR dongles, battery packs, wifi adapters, raspberry bits and external drives for various projects. They are all on the old connectors/standards but work perfectly well. I have no intention of tossing everything because there is a new cable standard with go-faster stripes.
Same, I'm a big fan. The only issue I have is that 1) the power bricks aren't cheap, small, and powerful enough and 2) charging things through my MBP doesn't work well because the wattage (60) isn't high enough. The external hard drive won't work if my phone is plugged in as well.
GaN chargers are pretty cool. I found the Hyper Juice to be a shit product though. Still waiting for Anker to release some high watt chargers.
Yet, over the years, I've only had one or two break. I have years-old Motorola micro usb cables that still work perfectly, and which are still in use. They were not all garbage.
USB-C is mostly a mess if you try to get away using the cheapest adapters/cables you can find, that often times won't follow the spec. Most of the issues vanish if you use high-end cables/adapters from reputable manufacturers. This is a departure from the world of Micro USB where most cheap cables worked just as good as "high end" cables.
There are caveats. For example, my Nintendo Switch, a major electronics device from a major company, doesn't fully comply with the full USB-C PD spec. As a result, you can't assume any power adapter will work.
It's these caveats that are the real downfall... for those of us in the technology world, it's easy for us to be aware of them. For everyone else, it's not. There's also the whole Thunderbolt 3 & 4 using USB-C thing. I do feel bad for non-technology people trying to wrap their heads around this one.
In general, I've had good luck with USB-C. I can power my laptop and display to a 4K monitor with a single cable. It's awesome. I've also had plenty of frustrating experiences and weird USB bugs with certain hardware combinations.
Despite some of the issues, I think it's still a net positive.
Right, that's what I'd call a mess. The purpose of a standard should be that if a product conforms to it, the consumer can trust that the product will work.
That isn't the case with USB-C.
I've had some "USB-C" cables that can charge but not transmit video, some that can transmit video but not charge, and some that can do both. It shouldn't be possible to sell a cable that can't do both and call it USB-C.
You can't have a cable that transmits video and does not charge. Even when using USB-C for video, e.g. displayport, it negotiates through a USB 2.0 connection which guarantees 5V @ 500mA.
There is nothing, however, stopping a manufacturer from making USB-C cables with very fine-gauge power conductors[1]: electrons could flow, and a data connection could be negotiated, but resistive losses at high power consumption would cause the voltage to sag below the minimum of 4.40V.
Such a cable would not be standards-compliant, since USB-C cables are required to be able to carry 3 Amperes at 20V. However, for pure data-transfer purposes, the cable would work fine, and be cheaper that fully-compliant cables.
[1] After all, a full-featured cable needs to fit 16 (!) conductors, and the shield, into one flexible cable.
> [1] After all, a full-featured cable needs to fit 16 (!) conductors, and the shield, into one flexible cable.
I only have two real USB-C cables (that can do DPoUSB-C and PD, all other cables only do power and USB 2.0), both of them a really stiff, even more so than a thin DisplayPort cable.
Yeah, it's annoying if you want a number of watts that's specifically between 60 and 100. The vast majority of cables are limited to 60. But that's a far cry from being unable to charge things!
Perhaps the only way this could be resolved is some kind of certification and education of consumers that only certified cables/devices should be used.
For others they should go after the vendors for not following spec. Yes there are fakes, but companies like Nintendo could be forced to either comply or if they don't want to, use a proprietary port like they usually did.
And how exactly does one know they have received a "high end" cable or charger? Because it cost enough? Because a website claimed it was "Offishial Ankker CABLE"?
I'm with you; as an educated techie I'm confident I can find a setup that works for my devices, but I'm far from the common denominator here. Frankly I'm a little concerned when HN thinks, "Nah this isn't a problem, USB-C is working just fine for me. None of my devices have blown up yet" says anything about whether it's a good standard.
It's also absurd to respond to a real-world problem like this by saying "well actually if everyone knew what they were doing and behaved perfectly, this wouldn't be an issue". Of course that's the case, but that sort of utopianism is unhelpful in the real world, away from the informed masses of HN.
> And how exactly does one know they have received a "high end" cable or charger? Because it cost enough? Because a website claimed it was "Offishial Ankker CABLE"?
Ensure that whatever peripherals you buy that need high speed connectivity _come_ with the USB-C cables they need. Since the cable is part of the product the manufacturer will ensure they will bundle the cheapest cable that still works for that product as advertised. This works naturally for devices like USB-C docks, USB-C monitors and hubs.
The problem with USB-C is that many people look at it as a connector _and_ transmission standard but it is not, it's only a connector standard. The transmission standards are specified separately and they are many. Depending on your application (what do you use the USB-C for) certain cables may work or not. You'd have to do the research to determine which signal do you need to transport over that USB-C cable: is it PD power (up to what wattage/amperage), is it USB2 (how many devices), is it DisplayPort or is it Thunderbolt3. Then buy a cable that advertises support for the signal you need.
Alternatively, buy a cable that advertises support for the highest bitrate of all those transmission types, essentially buy a cable that advertises Thunderbolt3 support, but in that case don't be surprised why almost all TB3 cables are very short, it's not easy to transport 40Gbit/sec reliably. There are longer, but active and a lot more expensive, TB3 cables.
> You'd have to do the research to determine which signal do you need to transport over that USB-C cable: is it PD power (up to what wattage/amperage), is it USB2 (how many devices), is it DisplayPort or is it Thunderbolt3.
This is the whole point. Why do we now expect a layperson to "do the research" before they can charge their headphones?
> Alternatively, buy a cable that advertises support for the highest bitrate of all those transmission types, essentially buy a cable that advertises Thunderbolt3 support
God, I wish.
But half the thunderbolt cables don't support USB!
Crossing my fingers for that godawful decision to be fixed with USB4.
Another caveat is that many monitors have USB-C ports, but many (most?) cables do not support video. Even my cable from a luxury brand in Cupertino doesn't support it, so it's not just about sticking to famous brands.
I'm not sure how a regular consumer is supposed to understand this. In the past, it wasn't possible to plug a VGA cable into a PS/2 port. Now, you just have to know these hidden properties of each cable.
I think we need a better way to differentiate between the capabilities of the cable and port type. I like having a unified port, and I think it's ok that not all cables will do everything as a way to save cost, but it needs to be apparent to the consumer in easily identifiable manor.
A simple pictorial system for showing these capabilities should have been part of the spec, like how USB-A connectors must have the USB logo on the top. Most manufacturers complied with that.
By any passive thunderbolt 3 cable from apple (longest is up to 0.8m) and you are guaranteed to have displayport and thunderbolt 3 support, in addition to USB3.
Perhaps you're right, but when your £500 phone with brand new USB-C port doesn't support the so-called "killer app" you bought it for, its a bit of a pain. Luckily mine was refurbished and a few versions behind the current edition at the time, so I only paid £130 for a phone with no HDMI out.
Ironically, if you used the fancier cables with the Pi4 instead of cheap ones, it won't power on. Which supports the "mess" argument, and another example of manufacturers are the culprit.
> mostly a mess if you try to get away using the cheapest adapters/cables you can find
Which, these days, is more or less everything you're likely to pull up on an Amazon search.
Cheap Chinese manufacturing has been amazing for providing the hobbyist with low cost electronics components but a nightmare for consumers that can often end up with something sub-par.
> It's these caveats that are the real downfall... for those of us in the technology world, it's easy for us to be aware of them. For everyone else, it's not.
I have the contrary impression: understanding the "caveat" implies strong distrust for the experts who know that "maybe it works" means "assume it doesn't work", while a blissfully unaware consumer could get lucky and never know that USB-C is actually fragmented and difficult to use.
Sometimes it seems like I'm the only person with absolutely zero issues with USB-C. I have a Lenovo monitor that delivers power+HDMI+usbhub to my laptop, and having to only plug one thing in to access all my peripherals is amazing. I used a bog standard Anker USB-C cable for this.
It isn’t a nightmare, but it is an issue of conflicting compatibility. He flat out states that it is a vast improvement, and then goes into the issues it does have and what fixes should be focused on as we iterate in the future. I personally have had some of these issues, where some of my older chargers and cables do not work with more modern devices, as well as some devices having proprietary chargers and cables to get full power (looking at you, Oneplus “warp charging”). It isn’t the end of the world, but they are issues I hope people work on, so we can move closer to more universal standards and interconnectability. USB C is a huge step towards that, but it isn’t’ there yet.
I have a 34WK95U-W 5k monitor I use for the same setup :
- initially OSX had a bug with my 2018 Vega20 MBP and I couldn't even use the monitor it would keep glitching out - I had to switch to beta channel to get it working
- I cannot get DP 1.4 to work properly - I can either have half resolution with HDR on DP 1.4 or I can switch monitor to DP 1.2 and get full 5k without HDR
- I cannot use the monitor with my wife's Lenovo laptop for charging and 5k display - if I try to do both it constantly resets the display - I'm assuming it draws too much power, when I plug a separate power adapter it works fine
- I am not sure if this monitor would work with an AMD laptop that has USB 3.2 as LG only advertises thunderbolt support but theoretically DisplayPort Alternate Mode should work. Also have no clue if it would charge or if the USB hub functionality would work
Overall this was a pretty unsatisfying experience for a 2000$ device.
Definitely not alone. I have a USB A headset. I have a new macbook pro with USB(C/thunderf*ck?) adapter that lets me use this headset on my mac. No biggy.
Anyway one day I was like, huh, I bet this won't work, but I plugged my Mac adapter into my Oneplus phone, with the USB A headset attached. The phone actually detected the headset, including the volume up/down button built in.
I have not had a problem with anything. Multiple MacBook Pros, Switch, Quest, iPad, thumb drives, external drives, monitors, portable monitors, XPS13, and more. Never had a problem with a cable, and never had a problem with a power adapter.
Maybe it's just luck? Maybe it's because I generally avoid the cheapest items on Amazon? I've been swapping cables and adapters around for 3+ years now with no issues.
For some reason text doesn't render sharply over USB-C on my 4K. So I just switched back to display port instead, and continued with life. That's been the only issue.
> I have a Lenovo monitor that delivers power+HDMI+usbhub to my laptop, and having to only plug one thing in to access all my peripherals is amazing.
I've been all-in on USB-C for a while now, and I just finally got to use a friend's monitor with that feature set the other day. It was so awesome! I expected to have to plug a keyboard and mouse in, etc., but I just sat down and plugged in the USB-C cable to my MBP and everything just worked.
So I was the same until the cable that I used with the monitor broke and I thought I could just use the same cable that shipped with my MacBook Pro (which are quite pricey), it didn't work as I had no idea you needed a cable that supported video and for a while assumed my monitor was broken. Now imagine a less technically literate person experiencing this.
USB-C monitors are a complete mess too. My LG monitor only charges at 65W over USB-C, so I still need to plug in my MBP charger to avoid depleting my battery. A lot of docks also face this problem.
Bah, in my days we wrote a dozen of drivers per day and that's only because we had to fight the network admins in hand to hand combat during the afternoon....
Hehe, my new work Lenovo laptop needs some kind of USB-C dongle for it to connect an external monitor. In the end, one needs two Lenovo chargers, the dongle and cables. Fun stuff. Plus the power supply to the monitor, of course.
I expected what you said, got something else altogether.
It's honestly such a complete joke it's not even funny anymore. My USB-C MacBook Pro with it's pathetic two ports that my work bought for me is now old enough that the battery is starting to fail and we're still in a world where this single cable for power, screen and ports just doesn't seem to really exist.
I'm starting to be convinced the port is fundamentally flawed, dongles with multiple ports are never reliable enough to keep a drive mounted for any heavy work, HDMI glitches out. Doesn't matter what dongle I try they all have some sort of thing wrong with them.
The only dongle that works reliably enough to do light video editing with a drive is the $20 Apple single USB-C to A adapter, which converts one of your single USB-C ports to a single USB-A port.
The fact that Apple hasn't released a usb-c hub speaks volumes, lets be honest they could charge $500 for it and people would still defend and buy it. But I feel the reason they haven't it because the technology fundamentally doesn't deliver on this promise and it would be just as unreliable as the 3rd party ones.
A good (read expensive) dongle will work fine. I have one that reliably powers 2 monitors (a 5k and a 4k), 1gb network and powers my macbook.
I think the real problem is we get a lot of cheap products coming from China with very little quality control. QC is poor because they have no incentive to build in quality. E.g. you likely don't realize how flaky the dongle is until after the 30 day return policy, the branding on many of these plugs is minimal so you don't even know which company to avoid for your next purchase.
This is exactly it. If you want anything that actually works and is reliable, you pretty much cannot buy it on Amazon, you need to buy it directly from the company that makes it. I have a Henge Dock for my older 13" MBP and it's worked perfectly for years over USB-C, and on my newer Touchbar 13" I havea a 2-port USB-C microdock from HyperDrive. I use Anker PD/IQ3 chargers and cables, and I have no issues whatsoever.
There are companies making good products, but you have to be willing to pay for them and you have to buy them directly from that company usually. Even if you find that product on Amazon, due to SKU commingling you can assume most of the inventory is counterfeit.
Too many people go to Amazon, type some generic keywords in, and pick "Amazon's Choice", which is some "brand" off AliExpress with no QC. It's not just electronics, this is true for things like car parts and tools as well. It's somewhat shocking how much Chinesium-grade products have infected every aspect of American life due to the ubiquity of people buying through Amazon and Amazon's complete lack of inventory QC.
Friends are amazed that so much of my stuff works, and it seems the only way people find out about good stuff now is via word of mouth because you can't trust online review sites which are mostly just reformatting Amazon star rankings with affiliate links. The state of ecommerce in 2020 is appalling.
> If you want anything that actually works and is reliable, you pretty much cannot buy it on Amazon, you need to buy it directly from the company that makes it.
I remember several years ago purchasing the $70 digital adapter from Apple. It's the one with 3 ports and merges into one. I forget which version it was.
It was horrible. The HDMI port wouldn't work.
I had purchased two. They were absolute trash. That's $140.
I replaced them with two Amazon versions for half the cost. They worked.
It was only after I purchased that I noticed that the reviews on Apple's own website showed it rated under 2-stars, with lots of angry reviews from people having the same exact problem.
I will say Belkin's USB-C dock works amazingly well. I love it.
> I replaced them with two Amazon versions for half the cost. They worked.
The point is that you don't know what you get on Amazon these days. It could be that you get a working version and I get a counterfeit version even though we both buy the same article on Amazon as they are just all in the same storage box.
Anker generally keeps their old products around, but they don’t sell their gen 1 thunderbolt 3 dongle anymore. Too many problems.
I had two of them (they sent me a second because I was having problems). If you plugged the dongle into the wall but not a laptop, it would send the wrong voltage to the USB ports. I mostly keep it around to flash SD cards.
I own a 4k @ 60Hz monitor. If I were to buy a laptop, I'd like to connect it and a bunch of USB devices via a single USB C cable. Easy, right?
Except that the monitor only supports DisplayPort 1.2. 4k60 requires a bandwidth of 12.54 Gbit/s. DP 1.2 consists of four data lanes, each providing 4.32 GBit/s, so my monitor requires four full lanes. DP 1.3 and up provide at least 7.48 Gbit/s, so 4k60 would only require two lanes for that.
USB C consists of 4 data lanes. When using the DisplayPort alternate mode, it can assign either 1, 2, or 4 data lanes to DP. The other lanes can be used for USB. In addition to that, it also offers a single USB 2.0 lane.
If a dock - even an expensive one - supports a resolution of 4k60 via DP and provides USB 3 ports, will it actually work for me? It could use DP 1.2 by assigning four data links to DP , but that means USB gets downgraded to 2.0 and I don't think any hub actually supports this. It could use DP 1.3+ and assign two data links to DP and two to USB, but if it outputs that same DP signal, it won't provide the bandwidth my monitor needs so it must actively convert two-link DP 1.3 to four-link DP 1.2. Again, I don't think any hub actually supports this.
The hardware I need can definitely exist. It's a pretty normal thing to ask for. A lot of docks, even the expensive ones, will claim to support what I need, but as far as I can tell not a single dock actually can. Because USB C has so many protocol options, figuring out what is supported has become nearly impossible.
Yep, docks are known not to request 4 lanes for DP even when there's only a display plugged in. In fact even dongles that don't have anything other than a display output on them sometimes only ever request 2 lanes, sadly.
You can't really blame them, though. The vast, vast majority of users will be absolutely fine with 2 lanes, especially with DP 1.3+. USB C is mainly used on laptops, and your office projector just isn't going to support 8K120 with HDR. Why spent the extra money if virtually nobody needs it?
An external GPU box would work for you, since the offboard GPU would have a full-bandwidth link to the monitor. Depending on which GPU you put in it, though, it would probably be cheaper to buy a new monitor.
That would absolutely be a (albeit very expensive) solution, I didn't even think of that! But that would require Thunderbolt support, which is still a bit rare. And I don't think that would support USB at the same time, right?
They use a Thunderbolt hub (CalDigit TS3 Plus) to a Thunderbolt GPU box. (Razer core X) A single cable goes to the hub, GPU box and all your USB peripherals plug into the hub. The hub itself claims it can run a DP 1.2 monitor, so you could skip the GPU box, if you don't need graphics performance.
I had bought a "top reviewed" HDMI / USBC cable on Amazon. It seemed to have issues overheating and dying. Bought the Insignia version of the same from BestBuy and it works like a champ (even when it's 100f outside and my house has no AC).
It's not about where you buy it, but the quality matters.
It was an eye opening experience when I left the 1 star review, the vendor keeps pinging me with bribe offers to take it down. So when you see even a little bump of 1 star reviews, you have to know that those are the people who have some integrity and there likely is a proportion missing.
Don't cheap out on a USB-C hub: get a Thunderbolt 3 hub.
I have a few CalDigit Thunderbolt 3 hubs. They're great. 4k monitor, gigabit ethernet, a number of USB-3 devices, and power-delivery for my Macbook. They are decidedly not cheap, but I wasted a lot of money on plain USB-C hubs (not Thuderbolt 3 which uses the same port but is not the same) that are now effectively trash.
I've got one at all of the "workstations" in the house. Tired of working in the bedroom? Unplug one cable and move to the office that has an identical setup and everything works and is easy.
Or spring for a monitor with thunderbolt on it, and ditch the dongle or move it to a permanent location behind the monitor.
I am currently waiting for thunderbolt 4 support to upgrade my other monitor, so can have a hub in there somewhere instead of some devices plugged into each monitor.
I mean if you can suggest one that actually does that I’ll get right on pestering my work for one. But considering the fact they bought the basically useless base model MacBook “pro” I don’t fancy my chances.
It appears that in the last 6 months the average price of TB3 displays has gone up (I'm seeing a lot of 5k models on offer).
My selection is the same price, and instead of being near the top of the pack, it's near the bottom. Might have something to do with Apple's re-entry into the market at such a high price point.
Are you using drives that have their own power source? I found that (a) using the “right” cable (determined through experimentation), and (b) only using mains-powered external hard drives made a big difference.
But oh god why do we even need the dongle! What backwards world is 2020 where you can't plug a monitor into your computer?! At least, not any actual real monitor I have at home or have seen in the office.
>and we're still in a world where this single cable for power, screen and ports just doesn't seem to really exist.
I have a Dell XPS with a dock. There's only one USB-C connection between my laptop and the dock which provides power, screen and usb ports. It's pretty nice to come into the office and plug only one cable in (back in the pre-pandemic days)
> we're still in a world where this single cable for power, screen and ports just doesn't seem to really exist
It does. I have a Macbook Pro that connects to two screens, a keyboard, mouse and ethernet via a single USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 cable. The fact that not all USB-C cables are Thunderbolt 3 cables is annoying, but at least they label them pretty clearly.
I bought a Dell UltraSharp U2719D explicitly for use with my work-issued 2019 MBP and it’s worked a treat. Plug one cable in, the display lights up, laptop starts charging, USB devices attached to the monitor connect, just like that.
Since the only place I “dock up” is at home it’s been a perfect solution. This right here is where USB-C should be heading, not annoying docks you need to lug around.
My wife and I have both been using the "CalDigit TS3 Plus" nearly every single day since December 2018. 3-4 different laptops, 2-3 monitors each, endless accessories and drives, etc. Zero issues.
I keep this hub[0] in my laptop bag for traveling and I haven't had any issues with it in over two years, either. I've plug in monitors, daisy chained USB-C, plugged in my iPad as a second monitor, and projected over HDMI numerous times.
I tried some cheaper, smaller hubs for my ~2018 macbook pro 13", and nothing worked well. They either didn't work with an external monitor, or they did but they interfered with wifi.
I finally bought a CalDigit TS3 Plus. It was way more than I had hoped to have to spend on a hub, but it has worked without issue for over a year now.
+1 for the TS3 Plus. I spent A LOT of time looking around at the dock/hub state of affairs when I got my 2018 MBP 15" because I wanted to drive 3-4 external monitors and wanted as few cables as possible. The CalDigit drives my 2 2K monitors (but can drive higher, at least 4K IIRC) via DisplayPort and then I plug in 1-2 other Thunderbolt 3 -> DisplayPort (or HDMI for my older monitor).
From the hub (read: 1 TB3 cable plugged into my MBP) I get:
* Gigabit ethernet
* PD to my laptop
* 1 DisplayPort (which I use to drive 1 monitor)
* Digital Optical (I don't use it)
* 1 TB3 port (which I use to drive the other monitor with a TB3->DP cable)
* 1 USB-C 10Gbps port
* 1 USB-C 5Gbps port
* 5 USB3 5Gbps ports (old square style)
* SD card reader
* Headphones/Mic output/input
It is wonderful to plug in 1 cable and get my power for my laptop, internet, monitors, webcam, wired mouse/keyboard, Lightning cable for iOS development, Micro-usb for Android development, external SSD for CCC backups, and label printer (and probably something else I'm forgetting). I just want to reiterate, all of that from ONE cable. It's pretty amazing.
This is, by far, the best setup I've ever had and I have never had a problem with it in the 2+ years that I've been using it. I picked mine up for $299.99 and it's worth every penny. I see it's $250 on Amazon right now and if this thing died today I would (after a tiny bit of research) re-buy it immediately.
I have used three USB-C displays extensively: a Dell U3219Q, an LG 27ud88 and an LG 32ud89. The 32" Dell and 27" LG work flawlessly: usb ethernet dongle, usb ssd drives, USB audio interface, mouse and keyboard work great. They don't even crap out on sleep/suspend. My LG 32UD89 has been rubbish though, it needs to be powered on before the macbook wakes up or it needs a hard power cycle to detect USB-C input.
Its not USB-C so much as those MBP ports are a bit buggy. Depending on the model, you might have better success if you try the port that's on the other side of the laptop.
Have you tried powered adapters? That's what I'm using and I've had zero problems. This includes adding things that wouldn't work with a passive adapter.
It's a mess, but it still seems much better than the situation before to me. It's true, you currently need to be careful when buying cables, but if you are, you can charge all your devices with the same plug. And usb-c video means your monitor can act as usb hub for keyboard and mouse over the video cable, so you only need to replug a single cable to move video and mouse and keyboard between computers. I use this a lot with my laptops, I find it super convenient. It's not like the previous situation was easier to navigate for consumers. Sure, I'd be nice if usb-c was an even bigger improvement, but it doesn't deserve to be called "total mess".
> but if you are, you can charge all your devices with the same plug
I have expressly found this to not be true. I have a bluetooth headset that has a USB-C plug, but it only charges from a USB-A to USB-C cord. It also won't connect to a computer using a straight USB-C cord, but it will with a USB-C to USB-A adapter and a USB-A to USB-C cord.
The Switch won't always charge from every adapter (and some folks have reported damage from trying to use a generic adapter).
I tried to use an Apple USB-C charger with a Lenovo chromebook, and the chromebook would flash as if you were plugging and unplugging the computer every second.
I have a USB-C dock (Anker brand) for my work computer, and it works (mostly) but the power is so noisy that I have to use a separate port with a USB-C to USB-A for my USB headset.
Yeah, but try explaining to your non-technical friend with two monitors why connecting their laptop to both via USB C works, but their phone only gives video output on one.
There are at least 5 ways to transfer video over USB C: Straight USB, HDMI alternate mode, DisplayPort alternate mode, MHL alternate mode, and Thunderbolt. Then it's also possible for an alternate mode to only use a subset of the available lanes, the lane count doesn't match the lanes available in the "real" connector, and the protocols have multiple versions.
Labeling all of that as "USB C" is a massive mistake.
Really? I wasn't aware about the HDMI dongle thing!
But yeah, you're right of course - I'm being pedantic. Yet it still worries me that those are all officially supported as part of the USB C standards. It's confusing even when everyone is following the standards, and it gets even worse when vendors start ignoring them. It's definitely not making it any easier.
Would the situation be better when you'd have to explain why does his monitor have 3 different connection ports but not the 5th one he needs? Or that he's lacking the right converter cables for all different 5 possible types?
"If it fits, it works" is pretty easy to explain. An adapter cable is also easy to explain: it fits, so it will work. With USB C, there are scenarios where you can have an adapter cable and it'll still not work.
If I recall correctly, DVI had three main variants: -I, -A, and -D. A DVI-to-VGA adapter would have a DVI-A plug. The video card would have either DVI-I or DVI-D. If the card had DVI-D, it only offered digital and the DVI-A plug would not physically fit. If the card had DVI-I, it would offer both analog and digital and both DVI-A and DVI-D would fit. So, if it fits it works!
And yeah, the HDMI thing is of course true, I'll give you that. :-)
The pin helped sometimes but there were a few arrangements that fit but did not work. Female DVI to Female VGA adapters existed for going from VGA to DVI-A but this meant you could fit a pinless DVI-D cable and a VGA cable together this way.
For "normal" people like my mother, it is worse. She ended up in a situation recently where something worked with one cable, but not with a different cable. She thought the cable must be broken. I explained the issue to her, and she understands now, but she still has a hard time remembering which cables and adapters to use for the various purposes. She can't just keep them in a drawer all together. She also has trouble telling USB C from USB micro and mini A since they are all somewhat similar in appearance. She still has many non-C USB devices.
It was easy for her to set up her computer back when we had color-coded and large, distinctively-shaped ports. For example: PS/2 for keyboard and mouse (violet and green), VGA for monitor (blue), 3.5mm audio for speakers and microphone (green and pink), C13/14 for power. Obviously, usability is way better these days; she can use her laptop without plugging in anything, and mostly things Just Work. However, I think these basic child's-toy-like usability cues were valuable, and maybe we need something similar to keep USB C easily-understandable.
One day I hope that it will all be sorted out. Every USB cable and adapter will have full support. You can plug any USB C into any USB C and it will work like magic.
Misses the point, and wouldn't be foolproof. You might be able to send video over a certain cable to a certain monitor when connected directly, but not when connected through a hub.
Would it be possible for our existing USB-C interfaces (software and hardware) to provide more information to the user? I mean, could the UI tell us:
(1) Your external device is <whatever class of device> and it requests power at 12V, minimum 15W, up to 40W, and it requests data at up to 100Mbps down/5Mbps up
(2) Your cable promises to accept power at up to 25W, and data at up to 40Mbps bidirectional
(3) I can offer power up to 60W, and data up to 500M/100M
And, this is what we have negotiated (and what appears to be working):
Data: 40M/5Mbps and
Power: 12V/25W from host
* *
Is that feasible? It would be nice.
I don't agree USB-C is a 'total mess' (the physical interface is quite good), but it is a sad disappointment. I hope it will get better.
The power portion is already handled by USB-PD protocol. Part of the negotiation protocol is telling each side "what they can offer" and "what they accept" and picking the highest one that matches both sides. It often isn't displayed in software because I'm not sure there's a way (or at least a unified way) to display that back to a host processor.
Data doesn't make sense since USB2 is USB2, there's no context on how 'fast' it is (besides USB high speed vs. standard speed). USB3/Thunderbolt/etc is more complicated, but that's also a tricky behavior.
In principle, I agree that it would be nice if there was a unified software that could tell you what is negotiated and what an upstream device is 'looking for'. I imagine we might eventually get there... maybe... kinda depends on hardware vendors to enable that though.
And for manufacturers to accurately label what their devices can do, so there's no surprises when you read one thing only to find out its false and you can't get HDMI out of your phone
That would also be good. The possibility that a USB-C device might support some extended standard, for video or high bandwidth or high power and so on, has been abused for marketing purposes, and now this is damaging the public perception of USB-C
There would still be surprises when you plug in the wrong kind of cable, unfortunately, even if the device is honestly described
It would be nice. But just trying to buy a DisplayPort 1.4 cable tells you that companies selling cables would rather sell you a "4K" DP cable instead of referring to the standard, leaving you non the wiser.
The article mentions Power Delivery being present/not present as a compat issue, but even without Power Delivery, the amount of power a USB-C port can provide is inconsistent. From Wikipedia:
VBUS and GND provide 5 V up to 900 mA, in accordance with the USB 3.1 specification. A specific USB-C mode may also be entered, where 5 V at either 1.5 A or 3 A is provided.[55] A third alternative is to establish a Power Delivery contract.
I spent hours trying to find how to add a USB-C port to my PC that supports the 15W (5V at 3A) one of my VR devices requires, and about gave up. (You're lucky if most motherboard or add-in card even tell you how much power they can deliver).
I get the desire to make the spec flexible so it can be simple/cheap when the extra speed & juice isn't needed, but it is really a confusing mess, and not helpful to consumers who just think "Oh it has a USB-C port. That'll work then".
I believe USB 4 was created to try to reduce this fragmentation and confusion, but not much in the way of implementation yet. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB4)
I'm just surprised there are still a lot of mainstream accessories that aren't available in USB-C.
I bought a Logitech C920 webcam the other day (the most pouplar model)... and it's still only available in USB-A. If you want a Logitech webcam with USB-C, you've got to pay over twice as much for a model like their StreamCam.
I'm happy to use dongles for HDMI or Ethernet when I have to. But the fact that I still have to use dongles with brand-new devices that are still only made in USB-A seems ridiculous. At this rate, I don't see how we're ever going to move on.
Even today, new desktop mainboards have 6-8 USB-A ports and zero or one USB-C ports. So it is not surprising that accessories (especially ones for desktops) are offered with USB-A connectors.
That's because it is still the most common type of port out there and it doesn't require a huge bandwidth that USB-C provides. If anything it would be overkill and over priced for what you get.
I think logitech is waiting for USB-C to become more prevalent and the cost to manufacture to drop.
The interesting thing is that for small-bandwidth applications, USB C isn't that difficult to add. Compared to USB A, it's literally a different connector and two additional resistors on the CC pins. The power / data pins of USB C are completely compatible with USB 2.0.
Yeah, it's a chicken-and-egg problem. As long as most devices are A, most ports will be A as well. And until C ports are more common, it's no use making C devices. That's made even worse because adapters for C female to A male are explicitly forbidden by the specs, so there's no cheap way to support both. A manufacturer could put a female C port on the device and ship both C-to-C and C-to-A cables, but that's expensive.
So after more than 5 years, USB-C is still too expensive and "overkill"?
That might be true, but then it's a massive failure. The entire point of USB-C is for the whole computing ecosystem to migrate. If that's prohibitively expensive for a common webcam, then it's an utter design failure.
But I have a hard time believig it actually is true, since I can also find a bunch of cheap USB-C stuff on Amazon as well. So I hope it's not true, at least.
> So after more than 5 years, USB-C is still too expensive and "overkill"?
Yes, if you already have a working design that uses USB-A and you don't want to mess around with the manufacturing process.
Also three are a log of people out there with no USB-C ports on their machine or existing USB-C chargers so you end up needing to provide at least an A->C adaptor (OK, these aren't expensive, but it costs >$0 to include one) or if your device charges too slowly off non-PD ports then you need to provide a wall-wart where you otherwise might get away with being cheap and not.
Furthermore, I know some people who are actively avoiding USB-C (seems odd, but true) as they already have a pile of devices/wallwarts/batteries/cables that are based on the older connectors.
A USB-C male to USB-A female adapter is to spec, but a USB-A male to USB-C female is not allowed. This asymmetry is the reason why USB-A is the common denominator.
It turns out that making power/data cables work without irritating the hell out humanity as a whole is a task that humans are uniquely unsuited to solving. We'll have to wait for AI or aliens to fix this.
Meanwhile, stop expecting the next standard to work as a standard. Buy a nice little bag for housing your cables, dongles, adapters and such. Keep it stocked. Remember to throw out defunct ones biannually.
Douglas Adams wants a standard 12V connector? Those 2.1mm barrel plugs are basically that. Most any 12V LED strip you buy from amazon will come with jacks already attached and maybe include a power supply. Half the small electronic devices I buy (USB hubs, Ethernet switches, external hard drives) use it, though sometimes they want 9V instead of 12.
Yep, but if he was still around he'd still have to have articles about how he has rooms full of little dongly things and doesn't want any more.
He was one of us. Believed problems like these could be solved. It turned out that the problem of having to own a collection of dongly things cannot be solved. It turns out that they are intrinsic to human nature.
The article misses my biggest gripe with USB-C - cables can come in both 2.0 and 3.0 in addition to Thunderbolt, with absolutely no way to distinguish the link speed by looking at the cable itself. I have 10 or so USB-C cables littered about the house in different lengths, I had to mark the only two that support 3.0 speeds.
It also doesn't mention the issues we see in USB-A to USB-C cables, where cheaper cables often 'forget' the pullup resistor required to prevent device damage[0].
I actually thought of another one similar to my first gripe - they need to label the link speed and the amount of power the cable can sustain. I found another couple of cables I had marked (and very rarely used) because they won't give anything more than 5V3A. Some are only rated at 60W.
The big problem with Apple is the mentality of "it just works, so you don't need any info".
This means that when I plug a cable into the USB-C port on the MacBookPro, I can't get any info about what kind of cable it is. I can't get "this cable is for power only" information.
And there is no standard for markings on cables and power supplies that tell this.
There's a simpler but similar problem with HDMI cables now. Over the years new versions of HDMI keep coming out with higher bandwidth to support higher resolutions. But there's no way to look at a cable and tell what HDMI version it supports. These days HDMI 2.0 is minimal but you want HDMI 2.1 if you want to support HDR10 or anything over 4K@60. There's also a bunch of side features in HDMI (like CEC) that are not reliably implemented.
I think one solution to the USB-C hell is to color them like USB 3.0 is colored blue. Color based on intended usage. If your phones port doesn't match the color there's a chance your phone's port will blow up. Otherwise, how the heck do you really know which cable is compatible with which device?
I'm loving USB-C. I travel a lot and invested a few new devices and even upgraded a few devices to USB-C (you can find small boards on aliexpress which provide a usb-c port and output 5, 9, 12, 15 or 20V). Even my shaver charges by USB-C.
However it takes some research, and I wish the spec was pared down more. Others mentioned that Nintendo switch can be damaged by a bad charger. They also chose to implement HDMI out using displayport converted to HDMI, so very few HDMI adapters are compatible.
Thunderbolt vs USB is confusing.
Hubs are confusing. USB-C hubs are basically impossible. USB2 or 3 hubs work well but share the speed and power with multiple devices. Easy to understand. USB-C (3.2) can supply up to 100W and 20Gbps. But one device can use up to 100W, and one 4k@60fps HDMI signal can use up to 20Gbps (even more in fact). So it's not possible to make a usb-c hub without a lot of limitations. Not to mention it's not trivial to set each device as a power sink or source. That's why hubs generally have usb-c on one side and usb-a 2.0 or 3.1 on the other side.
I don't know what the solution could be, you can't keep the versatility without removing functionality.
USB-C is the dumbest thing ever and case in proof the foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
We went from a situation where no plug fits but if it does it works to a situation where every plug fits but none of them works.
All USB-C cables appear identical but can be different. For example:
- Does it carry power? If so, how much power?
- Will it charge my device? Not all USB-C chargers charge all USB-C devices.
- Does this cable carry data? If so, what speed?
- Does it carry a Thunderbolt 3 signal?
On Macbooks we lost utility when we lost Magsafe but "gained" the ability to plug power into any of the 2/4 ports. Frankly I'd rather have Magsafe. I'm sure that every port supporting power must increase cost. It has issues too as using ports on one side can lead to overheating, for example.
And of course no cable can really do everything. The only cables that can are necessarily short (<0.5m) and expensive. I know. I use them for my Thunderbolt dock to my MBP.
Where before I had the right ports on my MBP. Now? It's almost unusable without a dock or adapter. It's so dumb.
Let's not pretend that this is some new issue that has arisen from USB-C. There were plenty of identical connectors (or ones that would fit together at least) in the past that were absolutely incompatible to the point of risking frying your electronics. At least with USB-C, if a capability can't be matched between the connected devices and the cable, it just doesn't work. Nothing will go up in a puff of smoke.
And for anyone complaining about needing different chargers for your phone and laptop, how is that any worse than before? You needed to do the same before USB-C. Now at least you have the option to plug your phone into your laptop charger. (Though if your complaint about USB-C for laptop charging is in regards to fragility, then I agree. I'm afraid I'm going to break them. Never had that thought about a barrel plug)
- All the same problems: not all USB micro are created equal, some are supposed to be used at different voltages
- But some cables for peripherals didn't use micro they used normal USB, which was hard to put in because you always got which way was up mixed up, that's gone now :)
- What's worse, all the USB micro cables eventually bent because they were so flimsy. 6 months shelf life, maximum.
- And they weren't symmetrical either
So now we have a cable that's symmetrical, that you can use for peripherals and power. Yes, different power cables disguised as the same is still a problem, but this is a step in the right direction if you ask me.
The only thing I don't like is that now peripherals are smaller and easier to get unplugged, like my HDMI to USB-C that I'm using right now for one of my monitors.
Usb micro was such a garbage cable. After 6 months of using my phone, the connector action felt completely smooth, and you could pull the cable out with no force. usb-c has been much better, feels much more consistent and has a satisfying click.
We used to have multiple incompatible chargers that looked different so you could tell them apart. Now you have multiple incompatible chargers that look the same, so you need to use trial and error to figure out what can charge what. It's a mess.
The most important thing the Gen-X'ers did for widespread adoption of technology was making things 'shapes and colours' easy. The rectangle peg goes in the rectangle hole. The red wire goes into the red socket. Any kindergarten graduate could plug their peripherals into their PC with little or no expertise because the only way they could connect was the right way. Before this, everything was DB9 or DB25, and a complete mess of electrical compatibility despite common connectors. Now, we find ourselves in the same position, the same connectors everywhere but inexplicable incompatibility.
That's my hot take: USB-C is just Millennial DB-9.
The solution, I believe, is rather simple. The standards group should require any cable/device with USB 3 support to include a label on its packaging detailing which capabilities of USB 3 are supported.
Think of the nutrition labels on food packaging, instead showing what the device does and does not support, something like this:
Some of these values are determined only after hooking the devices together. The devices may support 5V/5A (25W) but cable may only support 3A (but it can do 36W at 12V/3A), after connecting the devices you'll get max 15W.
A device using 5V/5A is nonstandard to an ugly extent but that's fine, because the actual spec of the cable is amps and there are only two options: 3 amps and 5 amps.
And we could fold the thunderbolt/bandwidth/video into one single speed rating without much trouble, if the desire was there...
That's not going to stop the cheap cables on Amazon from mislabeling their products. This happens all the time today. Off brand HDMI cables pretty much always state specs they don't really support.
But that's not a USB-C problem, that's a consumer protection issue. I'm surprised that we don't have a bunch of class action lawsuits against Amazon for misleading advertising through their marketplace. (yes, I know many of the vendors are the ones to blame, but Amazon facilitates the transaction and is a large target to go after).
Agreed. Pick a set of standards all cables/monitors/chargers/etc. must have and a set of optional standards they can have. So any and all devices you get, all will be at least able to do A, B, and C, and if you need something to do X, Y, or Z, you can clearly see which devices and cables support those more niche needs.
Deciding what is a must have is the more tricky part. I personally think power is a must have. I think every charger and every cable should be able to charge every device. I think having a USB C charger, cable, and device, that it should not even be possible to plug it in and have it not charge because one of those three things does not support the other two.
The problem with that is most people don't keep USB cables in their original packaging. How am I going to know the specs of a particular cable when it's sitting loosely in a drawer with 20 other USB cables?
Fair point, add a QR code tag to the cable that contains the specs. The general point here is that the industry could, and should, be doing something to address consumer confusion.
Much like nutrition labels, this will probably be confusing to the masses to the point of near uselessness, and will mostly be ignored. How many people know the difference between USB 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, superspeed and superspeed+, etc? Furthermore, how will a person know what a cable supports after it is removed from its packaging? You can't fit a table on a cable.
SD cards is a good example, each card lists Generation, Capacity, Sequential writing speed (Speed Class / UHS Speed Class / Video Speed Class), Bus Speed.
Very much not my experience. In fact USB-C is one of those technical advances like adaptive cruise control that I just can't imagine going back from. My only pain point has been the dongles needed to connect older USB devices to my MacBook Air that doesn't have the ports -- but I would rather deal with that than not having USB-C at all.
My friend and I ran into this mess over the last few weeks.
I’m trying to find a longer cable for my MacBook. Right now the 2m cable that came with it is too short. So I started looking. I couldn’t find one that was at least 3m long from Apple and I couldn’t understand why. I had to look on Amazon and only these cheaper manufacturers made them. Except they are fully USB C, they are USB C 2.0 to USB C 3.0 or some nonsense like this. My friend went ahead and bought that and then it turned out that cable didn’t work for one of his laptops.
Then he also wanted a USB C cable for his new external hard drive but in order to support it, it has a max length of 1m. If he chose a cable longer than that it would silently be slower.
I previously ran into this issue last year with a usb c to usb 2 cable I had. It wouldn’t charge my Switch properly and I didn’t understand why until I read up on how the Switch needed a certain type of USB C cable and the cheaper cables weren’t compatible.
The entire thing is a mess. There are some advantages definitely. My family has different laptops but they all support usb c, so now we only need to bring 1 charger on trips (when we eventually get to go on trips). The USB charger will also charge the Switch. That is a huge convenience. If you have top notch charger like the MacBook charger and top notch cables then it will probably work. But the operative word is “probably” and when it does it’s a huge hassle.
I don't know about the higher wattage ones for the 87W or 96W chargers, but for the 60W adapter there are tons of 3m cable options including companies like Anker that make better cables than Apple does. For example: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0832DC7W8/
And anyway, compare this to before USB-C. "My MacBook's magsafe cable isn't long enough, can I get a longer one?"
No, it's soldered to the power brick, comes in only one length, costs $80 to replace the whole thing if the cable frays, and no reputable 3rd party options exist because it was Apple's special sauce patented power connector.
I bought the original USB-C-only Macbook and I loved it. Now I have a Macbook Pro at home and another Macbook Pro at work, four Thunderbolt ports on each.
I think the big problem is the fact that it's still very implementation dependent and, as the author said, it's easy to get peripherals (particularly power-related) that don't do what you expected them to do. Then again, I have the same problem with USB1&2. How many times have you bought a cable and found that it only carries power, not data, because it only has two wires inside? That has happened to me dozens of times over the past decade. Still happens today. But when you get peripherals that work, USB-C and Thunderbolt3 are terrific. I don't use and peripherals at home. I have a dock on my desk at work that gives me gigabit ethernet, external keyboard and mouse, external hard drive, two displays, power, and headphones all through one Thunderbolt cable that takes one second to plug or unplug. It's terrific.
I remember old men ranting when the iMac didn't have a floppy drive, how it needed more serial ports, parallel ports, and fewer USB ports because no one uses USB, it's too expensive and it's never going to be practical. Those arguments didn't age well. USB-C is rolling out more slowly than previous options, but it is rolling out and it's terrific.
Is it? I guess it's nice that I can charge my phone with my laptop charger, but it has the same issue as usb-c data where everything physically fits but are incompatible. eg. having to worry about whether a aftermarket charger provides enough voltage/current to charge your laptop.
Well, I tried, and I could charge my Thinkpad using a 5V/2A phone charger and an A->C cable. Very slowly of course, but it worked. If I was somewhere and I had forgotten my laptop charger, I could worry about whether a phone charger will work, but without USB-C, I could be sure that it won't work.
You can also charge your phone from your laptop and vice versa. Or one phone from other phone. Or just link two phones with a wired data connection with no power exchange.
There's a lot more flexibility than there was prior to USB-C.
Revolutionary? It's a hot mess. Some usb will charge my phone very slowly, maybe at 3w. Some will charge what I call 'medium', at around 15w, and some at 30w. And the charger that came with it is its own special usb-c thing that isn't standards compliant. I noticed that cord doesn't even attempt to charge my Stadia controller. Sure, they all do plugin and most do charge. But have fun guessing which ones charge at which speed.
There are multiple aspects of USB-C. There's the charging standard USB-PD and data transfer standards (display, audio, data, etc).
As far as charger spec goes, I am very happy. There are adapters that can supply multiple voltages, practically powering all my mobile devices. For all the other devices that come with barrel jacks, I made my own module to convert them to USB-C [1].
All I know is my 2018 15" MBP is flaky as heck plugging in docks, monitors, keyboards, etc.. through the various USB-C dongles & docks. It almost never just plugs in and everything works. Sometimes you have to plug/unplug more than once, sometimes you have to wake/sleep the laptop, sometimes the Mac kernel panics.
I have 2 docks at home and have gone through 2 at work that cost as much as $300-400 (OWC and similar) and it's just flaky no matter what.
How do you blame the adapters, docks, whatever when some of them cost as much as a chromebook or a cheap windows laptop? All these dongles and adapters used to not even be required, something's really wrong when they cost as much as another machine and you still can't get things working as well as they worked in the past. Realistically I had less trouble docking my Windows laptop in the late 90s than I do with this MBP. That would have been with 1 monitor instead of 2 but otherwise all the same peripherals.
The only other USB-C device we have is a switch.. we've never tried to use it with anything but the nintendo chargers/devices so I guess we've just been lucky.
While it's a mess, my limited understanding is that as long as cables actually do what's advertised, the following three types should cover all scenarios (until TB4 is a real thing at least):
* USB-C PD: For charging/PSUs
* TB 3: TB stuff (displays/network/GPUs/etc)
* USB 3.2 data: other data stuff
I really like interoperability and ubiquity of USB-C, but I think the part that I find frustrating is that the actual cables themselves are not standardized around data transfer rates.
I recently bought a small USB-C hub that allowed you to connect to it with your own cable, and it has an HDMI port. I also decided to buy a longer, but cheaper USB-C cable to connect it to my machine, thinking it would work. Well the HDMI port wouldn't work at all. Everything else was fine. I actually ordered a replacement because I thought the hub was defective.
Come to find out, it will only work with USB-C cables with e-marker that allows a higher data rate. This info wasn't clearly stated anywhere, it was only listed deep in a support post. So that was a fun discovery...
It's a consequence of consolidating on a single connector format.
It doesn't make economic sense for every cable with the same connector to support the same power or data rates. Sometimes you just need a phone charging cable, sometimes you want to charge and drive a laptop at over 100w, and sometimes you need to carry 4k60hz hdr video over 10ft which is pretty dang hard.
So now we're in a world where the cables have different functionality, but you can't tell them apart. So you have to keep the cable with the device it came with and you lose the benefit of having the single connnector format entirely!
We're in a world where if you have a high speed cable designed for 4k60p HDR, in a pinch you can also use it to charge your phone. In a pinch you can also use it for a data transfer. In a pinch, you can also use your charging cable to transmit 720p video.
The cables should be marked, if they are not marked with their capability then buy them from another vendor that does mark them.
It's no different than ethernet cables, they all look the same, they could be cat5, cat5e, cat6, etc.
Key thing is in all three cases, the same cables work.
The end nodes vary in capability, but it's nice I don't have to fish out my crescent-ended connector to differentiate from my flat-ended connector because I needed a higher transfer rate.
One stack of USB-C cables lets me connect all my devices together. Whether they make sense connected together is up to me.
Except the same cables do not work. Cables frequently lack PD capabilities. Cables often lack video pass-through capabilities, especially for alt-modes. The data rate is completely unpredictable. It may or may not support hub passthrough. All of this is dependent on the cable, so if you solely buy TB3 USB3.2 PD cables you're fine, but if you try to actually use a cable included with one device with another device, it might not work due to lack of any of the above, with no obvious indication as to why.
If you have one of the expensive "supports everything" cables (100w charging, Thunderbolt 3 @ 40mbps) then yeah, the same cable will work. I couldn't even find a 10' one on Amazon with a cursory look. Some of the 6' ones were in excess of $70.
Both 100w charging and high speed data transfer are problems that get harder over long distances, and trying to do them both in the same cable requires many non-trivial feats of engineering, quality materials, and manufacturing.
No one ever said USBC was going to bring these features to cheap $5 cables you buy in the checkout at the corner bodega.
But the EXISTENCE of those $5 cables with extremely limited capability muddle the entire market. I'd call them counterfeits, except for some reason they're spec compliant!
Apple MacBooks with USB-C are standard issue for everyone at our company. You know what else is standard issue? A f$#%ing dongle so you can actually plug anything into said laptop. I can't help but think that all these folks saying, "oh it's so nice, everything I've ever wanted to plug in runs on USB-C" represent a tiny minority of the real world.
The only two cables I own that can plug into my laptop connect it to:
1) the charger that came with it and
2) the aforementioned dongle
That's it. And no, I'm not going to drop a bunch of cash upgrading monitors, phone cables, keyboards, and mice to get rid of the dongle. Especially when the "USB-C compatible" ones all cost twice as much.
What's wrong with that, though? Of course there's going to be a while where we have to deal with both standards, but that's true of everything. I have a USB A-to-C hub sitting on my desk. It's plugged into my Mac Mini's USB-C port, and all the legacy stuff plugs into it. That's not such a terrible situation.
1) You have to select them (not an easy task when trying to make sure it has all the compatible ports and power requirements)
2) Increases the number of things you can forget to bring that can make your laptop unusable/less useable
3) They detract from the clean Apple aesthetic
4) They increase the cost of your setup, sometimes significantly if you want to match the Apple quality. MacBooks certainly didn't get cheaper when they switched to USB-C only.
I did not have any dongles before Apple moved to USB-C, so I didn't have to deal with any of the above. Also, none of these things needed to happen! Apple could have done what they usually do - gradually transition. Add 1-2 USB-C and then only eliminate the other ports when most folks could do without.
EDIT: One more thing to add - this "transition period" is probably going to last 10+ years for me because I bought a $350 Kinesis Advantage keyboard with a USB Type A connector. It's a solid keyboard that I expect will live at least 10 years.
The problem is everyone is trying to make USB-C everything while completely ignoring price points. Nobody wants a fucking $100 cable that's going to wear out for basic fuck-it purposes. So you start to create production segmentation. Then it couples into directly shit like Microsoft refusing to implement PD in Surface Books because they do not trust on the market cables to safely handle the 100W they need without catching fire and there's no way to verify.
Or do you what other vendors do and "fork" PD so that you can make sure both devices are yours strictly.
Sadly it seems there is a march to making cables even more expensive to duck tape on more solutions.
USB-C as a connector in certain situations is pretty awesome. A single USB-C TB3 connection between a Macbook Pro and a USB-C dock has allowed me (since COVID19 work from home lockdown started) to:
* charge the laptop
* drive 2 1440p @ 60 monitors
* connect 6 USB2 peripherals
* have 1Gbit wired ethernet connection to my router (for low latency and stable connectivity for all that remote desktop work)
One of the monitors connects over USB-C to the dock and that carries video signal and USB upstream so I could plug even more USB-A devices in the monitor if I wanted to. Imagine how many cables and what a mess would be to get this many peripherals connected to a laptop without TB3, now I just plug one cable to the laptop, very impressive.
I will leave Apple products out of the equation, because I think they're a mess in terms of changing ports with every generation. Maybe that's what the OP is worried about.
USB-C has really simplified a lot of things:
- Which way do I plug in? Any way.
- Can I charge my new Ultrabook laptop with the same cable as my phone? Most certainly.
- Is the port easy to recognize? Yes, just give it a quick look
- Forget the Micro USB from now on? Yes
I'd say we're still at 70% along the transition, but compared to other solutions the C is way better and more convenient.
I have an LG 4K monitor, a MacBook Pro, and Sony headphones that charge over USB-C, so in that scenario USB=C has been bliss.
But with older machines/monitors, I need a pile of adapters. Still, I like it-for the most part.
The worst thing about USB-C is the dock situation for laptops. None of them are perfect, and most of them are garbage. $200-300 is a bit hard to swallow when I've been buying Lenovo docks for $50 for the longest time, but today's laptops don't have the docking port on the bottom.
I have an Anker hub/dock (HDMI, ethernet, USB-A), and it works fairly well. A bit noisy for a lower quality (i.e. poor power filtering) USB sound card. It does not provide USB-C power pass-through, however.
I'm not, but we have Lenovo USB-C docks at the office, as we have Lenovo laptops. They're all buggy. I'm still using a traditional dock as mine hasn't been upgraded yet so I still have the port.
In practice, the consumer-facing names of USB standards are dark patterns that allow manufacturers to scam customers without needing to make many (or any) product improvements.
For instance, take the fact that USB 3 and USB 3.1 Gen 1 are functionally equivalent and Gen 2 support (which brings with it the only actual improvements in USB 3.1) is an optional part of the USB 3.1 standard. The functional impact of this arrangement is that manufacturers could take USB 3.0 products, slap a 'USB 3.1' label on them, and market them as New and Improved for only the cost of new markings and marketing material.
Nice money if you can get it.
USB-C is even worse because every feature that end users actually want is optional and, in some cases (such as DP alternate mode lane support), isn't even listed in the fine print. Customers who don't have the awareness to spend many hours doing detailed research will very easily find themselves stuck in an expensive game of trial and error to buy USB-C devices that will actually work together.
Nice money if you can get it.
Like most modern tech products, the entire USB ecosystem reeks of the distinct smell of extractive scam.
USB-C felt like it forgot the entire design intention of previous cable standards: That connectors had a direct relationship to functionality.
When you build a PC, generally parts and cables only fit in places that they will function. When plugging devices into a computer, historically if you plug them in where they fit, it works.
USB-C's decision to buck this behavior made it more confusing for users, not less.
Q1: would it be possible to make a dongle that when plugged into a USB-C port negotiates for maximum power and tells you what the port can do?
Q2: can it also do this for speed? (I'm not sure if there is a speed negotiation like there is for power, and even if there is I'm not sure if it would depend on the use--e.g., maybe a particular port supports a different maximum speed for network devices than it does for mass storage devices)
Q3: Can a similar thing be done for cables? A box you plug both ends of a cable into, and it tells you how much power you can put over the cable, and how fast it can go?
Q4: could these things be made small enough and cheap enough that it would be reasonable to expect nearly everyone to get them?
The above devices, plus readily available USB-C one to many hubs [1], would fix most problems people have with USB-C.
[1] Most USB-C hubs connect one USB-C port on your computer to many non-USB-C ports. Most that do have a USB-C port on the other side only have one (and sometimes that one is power only, not data).
The biggest problem is Apple. They've removed USB-A from their laptops close to 5 years ago, because USB-C is the future.
They've also removed the headphone jack from iPhone; however, the USB-C is still nowhere to be found. Why?!
The end result is that we can charge a MacBook with a ThinkPad power adapter, but no longer have MagSafe; have been using ugly adapters on MacBooks for close to 5 years now -- with no end in sight, yet still cannot use the same headset for both a MacBook and an iPhone.
Ironically, from this perspective, Android is now more compatible with a MacBook than an iPhone is -- my USB-A headphones with the USB-A-to-USB-C adapter can be plugged directly into either my Android or my MacBook, without any extra adapters, other than the permanently-attached USB-A-to-USB-C one. (Of course, the opposite isn't true -- and the USB-C adapter for the headsets from my phone doesn't work in a MacBook, but at least the opposite way everything works.)
Dell laptops at my old job used a WD15 dock for peripherals and power. All over a frail USB-C connector that often failed, or the dock failed. I don't know what to fault Dell's design or USB-C or both but it made for busy days. But a three inch long connector sticking out from the side of a laptop is a lever and bound to go crunch!
I like that with USB-C my wife and I can share a hotdesk office with monitor and peripherals connected by a USB-C hub, despite her using a windows laptop and I a Macbook. No more dongle hell.
On the other hand I was incredibly meticulous about vetting this hub before I purchased it because I know the positive experience is not universal.
I am literally a senior programmer and I still cannot wrap my head around USB-C.
Is this a PD cable? Is this Thunderbolt 3? Is this DisplayPort-over-USB? Is this cable too long to be fast? Oh, this cable doesn't work for power. Oh that's actually not a power-equipped USB-C slot. Does this hub work? Oh, it only works for ports, not video. Etc etc etc.
I've literally taken to color-coding cables to know which ones I can use where, and if I just stuck to macs and high-end cables, sure, fine, but I have about 10 other devices that have "things" that plug into USB-C slots, but what those things can do and what they need to do them...
It's not helpful that Amazon has become a sludge of crappy products with fake reviews. Even I've ended up lulled in a few times and picked up something that just didn't work as specified at all.
Most of the rest of the issue is buying cheap adaptors and cheap cables. Get a name brand cable and verify what they are capable of. If you buy a $3 "MOKiN" brand USB-C cable and it won't charge your device, you've basically self-owned. Likewise any number of random cables on Amazon.
Lots of decent brands out there who make cables that do what they say they will do: Belkin, Monoprice, Anker, etc.
Another tip I got which is worth it's weight in cable in this case: If you need both USB-C and Thunderbolt cables, get different colors of cable and be consistent about it. I know a guy who buys all his cables in specific colors (even when the adaptor is different) so he can reach into his gear bag and get the right thing every time.
Funny, I was hoping the article would address one of my main gripes with USB-C, but it didn't: the ports and plugs are dust magnets! Sometimes fluff in the port causes the plug to losely attach, making the cable fall off or simply not charging a phone overnight even when apparently connected. A lot of my friends have this issue with their phones, the port is too deep and rounds dirt up from fabric in your pocket. USB-C requires cleaning like no other plug I ever owned.
And in general, dust or no dust, it feels like a flimsy plug. Even the shorter micro USB typically snapped vigorously at their ports.
I think these physical design flaws are also quite an oversight for something that wants to be the plug-to-end-all-plugs.
Don't worry. USB-C and associated standards are five+ years old now. Some new standards will be along soon enough. Then we will all have to buy new chargers/cables/devices again, continuing the cycle of chasing the universal bus nirvana.
>> The USB 4 specification was published in late 2019 and will probably appear in devices in late 2020 or early 2021 - it usually takes around 18 months for devices to come to market once a new standard is published for the first time.
No. I'm planning on keeping the stuff I have and leapfrogging the current pile of USB-C standards. Once they settle down, probably the week before the USB-D connector comes out, then I'll consider buying all new devices.
Wouldn't it be even smarter to wait for USB-E, or USB-F?
People need connectivity today, not some arbitrary time in the future. If you don't need the performance of USB 3/4, then why don't you just continue using your USB 2 equipment that still works perfectly fine?
You seem to be implying that eliminating backwards compatibility from USB would make things easier for you, but it sounds like it would actually just make things harder for you.
Not really. My phone is work a few hundred. My laptops say a few thousand. And all the other devices at least a thousand more. Getting rid of all that ever few years for something as minor as charging time is wasteful. So I don't chase latest standards.
USB C power delivery chargers will work the same as before, but if something wants to claim USB 4 compatibility they're required to support power delivery charging (it's an optional part of USB 3). So if you want to make sure chargers all work USB 4 ought to be a good opportunity for you.
So, are you saying that USB 4 should have purposely used a different connector to avoid confusion? Or are you saying that new devices should just be forced to charge and operate at the same speed as last-generation devices to make things more convenient for users?
Both of those seem like much worse options than the current way of doing things
We need to go back to labelling our cables. A USB "SS" imprint meant something. Current cables have no imprint, so it's going to be impossible to tell whether something's a USB 2.0 or 3.0 or 4.0 or 3.2 2x2 cable or what capabilities it supports without plugging it in -- and the capability matrix is simply too complex to currently imprint, so that also needs to be solved, with only a few available capabilities listed (even if this means your 3m cable for computer->speakers costs $30 for capabilities you don't need). It's the only way to solve this mess while holding the connector constant.
Tell that to switch owners who have had thier devices fried by incomparable chargers. Tell that to the devices that claim "not charging" unless plugged into chargers with specific features. Usb c is a compatability mess. I would not assume backwards compatability to be universal.
USB 4 is USB-C connector only and Power Delivery is a mandatory part of the spec instead of being optional. This won't stop Nintendo or somebody else from fucking it up, but it does mean everything marketed as being USB 4 is required to support standard chargers.
Indeed, the apparent simplicity on the physical layer has moved the complexity onto the logical layer. I love the article, and it made me aware of a lot of things I didn't know.
However, my experience with USB-C is way better. I use the same charger for my laptop, pad and phone. I even use the same screen (with integrated docking station) for both my laptop and my phone (yay Samsung DeX), both at work and at home. This would have been impossible / unimaginable half-a-decade ago. (Anyone remember the "Lenovo-type" docking station vs. the "Dell-type" docking station?)
I agree that USB-C still has challenges to overcome, but I find the direction so-far to be the right one.
Multiply that by millions of people and 10s of millions of devices and it is a pretty big deal. How is advocating for a standard so that every purchase wasn’t a crap shoot a bad thing? Having to sort through reviews just to attempt to determine basic functionality is ridiculous. I don’t read reviews to find out of a table lamp will plug into the wall because the basic standard of delivery power over a power cable is a given because of a set standard.
USB C would be as if we could already plug arbitrary lamps into arbitrary sockets, but then someone decided the same socket that powers lamps should also be able to refuel a car and now you have to plug and pray with five different cables before your lamp will work. Also if you use the wrong one it will spray gas all over your lamp and catch fire.
Spraying gas and catching fire is precisely what it won't do. The spec is conservative about capabilities; assuming devices aren't out-and-out lying about physical capacity (which is out-of-spec), it's designed to err on the side of safe conservatism.
If you plug the lamp into the gas hose plug, it just won't turn on.
I bought a set of cables positively reviewed by Benson Leung for my new phone, and they worked fine.
Recently I bought a new laptop and it doesn't charge with it, or any other USB cable in my place, except the one it came with, which is too short, and only ends in USB-C so I can't use it with any other power adapter I own. I don't know why it doesn't charge with any other cable.
If not even Benson Leung's recommended cable works, what then?
This is the frustration. All USB-C cables should have some bare minimum features that all of them supply, and be clearer about which ones have which features. Labeling it all the same USB-C leads to the frustration so many people are talking about.
The thing is, if it was broken then none of the dozens of people who reviewed it mentioned it was broken at all.
The device itself is everything I expected it to be, and I can still charge it with the included cable. The only issue is that it only charges with the provided cable and nothing else I've tried so far. I don't think this justifies invoking my warranty on it. It isn't a deal breaker, I've paid enough for it and I'm already starting to use it daily. But there seems to have been no way to know it was "broken" in this specific manner, maybe because nobody really felt the need to test with a different cable in their reviews. They probably just declared, "hey, it charges, so no problems there."
There's also the cable between the charger and PC, and the capacity of that matters too. It might not be the charger, it might be a limit on the cable's power capacity.
Couldn't agree more. Will that HDMI dongle work with your device? Is it a Power Delivery port or just half an amp? Who the heck knows when the manufacturer themselves give conflicting information!
It definitely could be better but overall I think it’s a win. The only thing I am missing is that there are no USB-C 4-1 hubs like you can get for USB-A. Some of the cables also seem pretty finicky.
This is silliness. This has gotten worlds better by just making chargers that work with everything and realizing that only some cables work for some needs. If you are a big hardware nut, sure you can run into issues, but 99% of the time, the same cable that charges my Phone charges my Tablet, and my laptop and my headphones and my switch and powers a wireless charger, all from the same brick. This is as opposed to the world 6-7 years ago where that would be a littany of cables and bricks.
I have had the opposite experience; USB-C is working fine for me on my MacBook Pro. I have a few legacy USB-A accessories that I can easily use an adapter for. Never had a problem.
I wish I could just have one port. When at home, the port would go to a hub, and the hub connects a few monitors, a keyboard, a mouse, and power. Out and about, the hub would go to power.
Sadly, on my expensive as hell, powerful work supplied macbook pro, I need to plug three different USB-C dongles in to get multiple monitors, and I have to plug the USB keyboard and USB mouse into separate dongles, and power into a third. Why? I don't know. It's just the only way it works.
Isn't the magic of USB-C Power Delivery that it can negotiate a voltage? Previous iterations of USB only operated at 5V and USB-C can operate anywhere from 5-20V.
It's not magic when step down DC-DC converters take as much space as power negotiation crap and all that's really needed is single 20 volts. Look at new ATX standardization development with proposals to leave only 12 volts, dropping 5 and 3.3 - that's the right way to standardize on power delivery. What USB-C is doing is not standardization, but an attempt to undermine standardization to profit from selling expensive cables and locking people into brands, just as device manufacturers did with non standard ports for mobile phones in the past and were eventually fined for it and forced to use standardized USB power delivery.
ATX isn't comparable. The power supply producers and consumers work together. USB is meant to power a vast array of devices that simply can't all be aligned to a single voltage.
I hate the mess. You look at a type c port and you have no idea what it can do. I have a phone that can use it to move data at USB 2 speeds and supports Display Link video output. I have a phone that can output HDMI and charge while doing it using the proper adapter. I have a tablet that can't charge over it. I have another tablet that can charge over it but only at 400mA and uses a different port to charge at full speed.
Most annoying thing for me is that they just lose their grip over time, just like Micro-USB did. I bought a late 2016 Macbook Pro which was the first to sport USB-C. After a good two years with admittedly heavy usage, both of them were flimsy enough to develop regular dropped connections to monitor and power. This is something which seems to be near impossible to do on a 2015 machine with HDMI/USB-A/Magsafe.
One solution could be to color codes the cables, so you see if it can support thunderbolt, charging or display port. And then different colours for the speed they support.
Same could be done with the connectors on the device you want to put them in. But I guess at least Apple wouldn't adopt them and simply support everything on every port and cable they sell, making their devices and cables more expensive but easier for customers.
Even if it's a total mess, I have to say: it blows my mind that I can hook up my Thinkpad to an external GPU over USB-C, and all the necessary data makes a round trip to render an image on the laptop monitor within the frame update time, and it powers the ThinkPad at the same time over the same thin little cable.
And it automatically detects the graphics card when I plug it in and identifies it with no hassle.
I tested all my Micro USB cables and threw away those that wouldn't allow quick charging with >5V.
Now with USB-C I'm reading some reports about problem but so far it's been good. I'm still optimistic that eventually all devices with USB C ports will support the full feature set on every port (nowadays that seems to be Thunderbolt 4, Displayport Alt etc). But that's just me being optimistic :-)
The usb-c pd/non pd compat issues are infuriating for me. I have a lot of devices that act funky when paired with the wrong charger.. plus it is physically inferior to lightning (durability, size, sturdiness). I see people clamoring for usb-c on iPhones. I hope that doesn’t happen. My lightning iDevices seem to be the only things that I can pack one charger for.
I hope we can skip usb-c and get the next thing right.
I didn't have any problems with USB-C other than trying to charge my Momentum 3 with MacBook Pro's charger (which simply doesn't work as apparently Momentum doesn't support PD), which isn't a real annoyance in daily life.
Sure, it's not perfect, but for most of the use cases it "just works", and I honestly believe it solves more problems than it creates even with its flaws.
USB-C is awesome. Quite cheap (40€) 20000 mAh Xiaomi power bank can output 20V/45W so I can use it to charge my T480s.
Also bought cheap usb-c Power Delivery modules (can output 5/9/12/15/20V) which I used to provide power for my TS100 soldering iron. Combined with the power bank it's now a portable soldering iron. TS80 has usb-c even built in, no module needed.
The spec drives the implementation. The greater the complexity of the spec, the fewer implementations will get it right, and those that do will be expensive.
Nobody mentions that USB-C enabled the production of laptop power banks. They are such a help for when you travel and want to work on a long flight or a train ride.
Power rating is a mess, and manufacturers are all trying to mislead the consumer as much as they can about it, so I agree, it's a mess if you don't research it thoroughly.
But I do research it, and my life is much better with it.
My Honda Odyssey has Android Auto support. It only works if I plug the USB-C end of the cable into my Pixel 3 in one orientation. If I rotate it 180º the systems can't connect.
I have yet to figure out why this is the case, but it's supremely frustrating when a reversible cable is not in fact reversible.
USB-C cables are only required to have the basic USB 2.0 differential pair on one side (the "top") of the connector. The mirror pair of pins in the connector are not connected to anything.
USB-C receptacles have the two locations this pair could end up in cross-wired, so that an electrical connection is made whether the cable is plugged in with the data pair on the top side or on the bottom.
This is more complicated than previous versions of USB, where there was exactly one pin that could be connected to D+ and one that could be connected to D-. If a manufacturer designed a USB-C device like this, with only one of two possible data pairs connected, then the cable will only work when plugged in "data-conductor side up". When plugged in "data-conductor side down", the D+ and D- conductors will be in unconnected pins in the receptable, and the unconnected pins in the cable will be in the receptacle's connected pins.
If this is actually what happened in your car, and you're the adventurous sort, you could possibly fix this by soldering two "bodge wires" to your minivan's USB port, one shorting the two D+ pins together, and the other shorting the two D- pins together.
“How any normal person is supposed to grasp this soup of standards, built atop a single port that looks the same, is anyone’s guess.”
How is any normal person gonna buy 3/8” shrink wrap tubing, a heat gun, and strain relief a batch of Lightning cables every 6 months? So they don’t last 3 months.
My wife has a HP laptop from work that charges through USB-C. I have a Dell XPS from work that can charge by USB-C (because I have a dock for it which does that), but if I plug her charger in, it doesn't work. It's a mess.
All these additional standards stem from the simple fact that centralized governing bodies have no chance at making innovations as fast as independent private companies. I wish the USB IF would shift into higher gears.
The only "total mess" is the fact that Apple is having an internal struggle to keep their lightning port on their keyboards and phone. Affects only those who subject themself to the problem.
I'm using an iPad and I can't read the article. When I click on the link I end up on the page message of the day. That's frustrating. It looks like medium is a Total Mess
My problem with USB-C is that the physical connector wears out over about a year of regular use becoming loose and unreliable. Until that is fixed, USB-C will be substandard.
I absolutely loath it. I have a new 16" Macbook Pro, I had a 2014 Macbook Pro.
I now have to buy a crap ton of adapters to get the same functionality as I had in 2014, and sometimes they don't work. I don't know why, they are meant to, but they don't.
Also, Magsafe was a game changer.
If I had a choice between USB-C and ports-o-plenty as I had on my 2014 MBP I would choose the latter.
Agreed. I've been on a macbook pro with USB-C only for about 4 years now, and I am still using a dock to provide 3 USB-A, a HDMI, and an ethernet port, plus power, and plus a dongle to run a USB headset adapter.
it's funny, because for me USB-C is not a thing in my life, everything I use is basically standard usb (mouse, keyboard, stick) - and for headphones i still use the jack.
USB-C isn't a utopia in terms of fixing the USB complexity.
All it truly solved was the connector problem which by itself is HUGE in retrospect and not something I appreciated.
If you thought the transition from ATA -> SATA or PCI, PCI + AGP, PCI-E path was bad, imagine trying to move an industry like USB that has USB1.0, USB2.0, USB3.0, USB3.1 and deals with peripheral components that change at an even slower cadence than internal ones (computers are something like 3-5 years, peripherals are like 3-10). By comparison mobile has had a life span of ~1-3 years (slowing down I think as there's plenty of 3-5 year users now & their numbers grow every year). The 1-3 cycle only happens for as long as you have a growing user-base & the churn is required for rapid change to be possible (the market economics support it).
When I think about the market dynamics, USB-C is a critical backbone you had to land first (which I didn't see when it was first being pushed on us in the consumer electronics industry). USB4 is going to clean some of it up. Without it we were never going to get away from the mess we were in. That being said, USB-C is still a big too big. That's why Apple hasn't moved. The question will be if the next push will be for contactless data transfer or a smaller connector. It'll depend on whether mobile needs the space (& again - even mobile is losing its power to power such a transition) & whether major consumer electronics will identify new small form-factor markets that require a smaller connector. If the Apple Watch/AirPods is any model for how these will work, then no. So we'll get USB5 & USB6, but it'll be "boring" transitions like it is with Ethernet RJ45 cables (Cat 4, Cat 5, Cat 6, Cat 6e, Cat7) etc. Some of the customer complexity will be trickier to navigate if the labelling piece isn't addressed for cables & ports (otherwise you get an alphabet soup of standard names supported by a given cable/port & what the peripheral requires). These are hopefully more manageable problems though (although more tricky than Ethernet). One could imagine where you have different classes to describe power the cable & port can run, a different class of the functionality supported (power only, peripherals, peripherals + displays). Peripheral speeds here would be > than ethernet so we're also potentially going to see USB-C consume the space of ethernet ports. This happened in laptops but it'll be trickier in PC form factors. Everything you'd plug into is RJ45 anyway & ethernet is significantly cheaper on a $/ft basis since it's cheaper. Maybe it'll intercept when consumer ethernet starts to be 10gigabit/s or 100gigabit/s (if USB4/5/6/ supports the speed & lengths needed & the cost is comparable, they'd probably just layer it over that). I remember working with 1gigabit and 10gigabit/s in 2009 at QCOM when the Cat6 standard for Gigabit had just come out & gigabit has only became prevalent in the past few years. You naturally want to consolidate these things as a business to simplify your costs if your sell-through is into a market with very long cycles. Any market that has more iteration. Wireless comms will be that a for a bit until BT & WiFi eat everything they haven't already (& potentially WiFi will eat BT eventually). Proprietary cheap connectors/wireless in the ultra low-cost niches will be the longest holdouts but even then they'll struggle as the customer demand will probably prefer the standard name it sees everywhere else.
Manufacturers treating users as stupid is the problem. USB-C is only one aspect.
If you look at specs from Apple, Nintendo and random-knock of brands from aliba.com, you will see that they only mention the ports. nothing else. Apple will sometime use a vague spec, like the wattage.
Now look at USB-C specs from HP and other more reputable sources. They will specify all the PD profiles, which thunderbolt version is supported, how many lanes, etc.
The same happens with WiFi devices. You will be lucky if lesser brands even mention the protocol, let alone antennae and MIMO details!
Same can be said of Bluetooth (from cars to headsets!) which will not say if they implement a specific profile or not, but will plaster "BLUETOOTH 5.0" on the box.
The irony, is that consumers see Apple and other offenders as having better products. Just look at this thread on how the very top voted comment is someone glad that it is convenient, even though the first reply to it is trying to explain how they can fry their devices, only to be replied by someone saying "i don't care, it worked fine with the one charger i tried".
In my limited experience, I feel the contrary. Since I have my USB-C dock, I actually ditched my desktop. Something that took me until 2019 to actually pull off. One cable for power and all the data transfer I will ever need.
The male adapter is so thin it breaks if you hang even a moderately heavy cable or hub. I have to think about keeping the hub flush with the laptop each time I use it. What a mess.
Each port can accept or give power (at various voltages) potentially or act as data sink/source (determined on connection), or have alt modes.
Such device would be either quite "fun" to use, unless it had type C ports marked with dedicated functionality, so you'd have to be careful what device you plug to what port.
AFAIK there's no protocol to control other ports via PD from the port you'd connect to the "main" device (like your laptop). So the behavior would be all pretty random, or the ports would have to be fixed in function.
My completely unfounded on anything guess is that it might have to do with breaking the chain of "trust" between the different connectors on negotiating how much power an actual downstream device can handle.
I don't know about the power rating thing so much. USB-PD is a lot more complicated than having a dumb brick with a rectifier and regulator. And while I trust my cohort of wall warts not to burn my house down, I spend way more on 3rd party USB C bricks because I have no faith in anything I buy on Amazon.
A few years ago, I had a phone with a micro-USB port, along with a few tablets, portable batteries and other gadgets, all using micro-USB. I had chargers around the house, in my car and at my desk at work. Life was good.
Then I upgraded by phone, to one with a USB-C port.
Most of my chargers had a single USB port, so I would need to detach the cable if I wanted to switch device. That's if I had a cable to hand. I had invested in around 20 good quality micro-USB cables and now I needed more. Some chargers had the port integrated into the plug so that would be useless for the phone.
In the end, I acquired a set of converters so I could put a little dongle on the end of each cable in case I wanted to charge the phone. I silently curse the USB people every time I attach or detach the extra tip.
Frankly, the new connector was completely unasked-for. If the phone manufacturer had offered a choice between micro-USB or USB-C, I'd have gone for micro-USB every time. The ability to plug it in either way around just isn't enough to make it worth switching.
It would have been great to have micro-USB in the shape of USB-C. Without all those new features and extra pins so manufacturer could replace the port just by soldering to the same 5 traces. This could've been over within a year.
I was surprised to find the converters I purchased were so big because of the electronics inside. I had imagined a converter would just need to be a micro-USB socket and a USB-C plug with some wires joining the two together.
The fact that my laptop, Switch, iPad, and several other devices can all share a charge has made my life much easier. I can just sprinkle a few of them throughout the house and never be without power. Before it was always a hunt to find a cable, or I had to be in [x] room to charge [y] device because that's where the charger lived.
Plus, I can charge my MacBook on either side, so that's basically life changing on its own. :)