Personally I hate the trend of only charging over type-c. It's an order of magnitude less robust and far more prone to falling out than, say, a ThinkPad connector. Having the option is nice but I despise having to babysit my $100 Asus charger lest I stomp it flat by accident.
The USB-C connector is a lot easier to break than a normal power connector, it's also pretty fidgety to get right when you fix the connection on the laptop side. The fixability can be done better than normal charging ports, I've done a USB-C daughter board swap in about 2 hours of total time (research, ordering, mounting). The normal way though is doing soldering surface mounted USB-C connectors which is not something I like to do.
Other than Apple's old magsafe connectors, I remember every power connector I've ever had on a laptop to have been pretty easily breakable using angular force, and I know of both myself and a handful of other people who have broken the power connector on our laptops, and yet I haven't seen or experienced such with my USB-C laptops yet (quite possibly as they are lighter weight), so I am surprised you say the USB-C is more easily broken. I do miss magsafe, though: that's the one non-USB-C power connector I think would be worth supporting. (That said I have some memory of magsafe connectors destroying themselves due to the slapping of metal at power, though I never hadn't one die myself.)
For example my framework laptop USB C ports are replaceable (for the laptop side).
Also you can buy magsafe like connectors for USB C if you have a regular laptop.
Having one USB C charger for my phone, my laptop, my earbuds, my battery and my remarkable is such a life improvement on trip vs the old barrel connectors. It just doesn't even compare. And we just talk about charging here, one of the multiple uses of USB C.
I've done replacements of barrel plugs and also USBC ports and the barrel plugs are significantly easier to replace.
Now my USBC charging ports haven't failed me yet, i think that's probably because i have 4 of them on my laptop, and i charge from different ones depending on multiple factors. So I'm spreading the wear around.
That said. When one goes more than likely the others will go shortly there after.
Sure. But didn't we just agreed that the power adapter doesn't live that long? I better buy a new USB cable every year, that covers power, data and more than a power cable that covers power only for three times the price - if not more - every two years. Not to mention all the other advantages.
> I have two laptops. One with a old school barrel plug and the other with USBC, and the USBC charges faster as it has more wattage.
This is not a limitation of the barrel plug, it's a limitation of your laptop or charging brick not being able to use or provide a higher rate. I have a barrel plug laptop with a 170W adapter. USB-C chargers above 100W move into 'exotic' range and none go above 100W at 20V, the cables can't move that much current without heating up.
I didn't call it orders of magnitude worse. I called it orders of magnitude more delicate and prone to falling out than a bespoke laptop charger like a ThinkPad Slim Tip connector. Why bother misquoting me when my comment is right there?
Ports take up space on the outside and inside of the computer. If we're going to add an extra port for some proprietary charger, why not just make it an extra usb-c port instead?
I don't know what you mean. I plug my USB-C dock with dual monitors into my laptop, I don't even have the option to not charge my laptop while I'm using it at work.
I thought about and perhaps should have mentioned USB-C.
Overall, yeah, where USB-C can be applied, I like it, and it definitely helps turn the charger into a bit more of a commodity, and for whatever reason, USB-C chargers seem to not suffer the design flaw I mentioned above as much: the cables tend to detach at the converter. The two big issues I have is that a. chargers are terrible at listing the max wattage they can supply (and laptops their draw), so it's hard to impossible to know if a given charger will be able to supply enough power. My work desk had built in power & USB-C charging, for example, and I now comically charge my USB-C work laptop off the desk's AC plug (a MBP¹, so that's thankfully USB-C). USB-C never really charger, and eventually we figured out that the desk (and this was hard to find) was a USB PD of like 15 W. And MBPs need 87 W or so.
And b., my current laptop alleges to have a max draw of 135 W, which is above the max for USB-C. (Which is why I suspect it has a custom adapter… but who knows.)
¹I am glad Apple switched to USB-C, and they allievated the design flaw I mention in their chargers when they did so, for which they should be praised. But there is so much else wrong — completely unservicable design, the butterfly keyboard problems, cable-gate, battery recalls, ergo fails, heat dissipation issues, macOS, crap warranty — with their laptops that it isn't sufficient to tip the scales to me buying.
I'm seriously thinking about getting a Framework as my next laptop.
...if they would sell me one.
The tipping point was an LTT vid where he changed the motherboard on his laptop to a 12th gen one AND used the old motherboard with a 3D printed case to make a tiny desktop computer.
I have a food thermometer with a builtin rechargeable battery. It charges via usb-c, but so far I have not managed to charge it from a usb-c charger. It will only charge with the supplied usb-a to usb-c cable. I would love to understand why. But at least, they had the good sense to not supply their own charger.
USB-A ports output 5V as long as the device is on. But with most USB-C ports, to save power no power is supplied until the device requests what voltage it wants. Requesting 5V is very simple, just two resistors which cost fractions of a cent, but somehow a lot of cheap devices forget to include them.
Doesn't USB-C have a "basic mode"? As in, if it's unable to negotiate some kind of high-power PD mode, it will just deliver the basic USB2 5V/0.5A?
I can charge my Sony headphones with anything from an old USB2 only PC, old Samsung USB-A phone charger to my 65 W HP USB-C power adapter.
I don't think they have any kind of PD mode, I think they just expect regular 5V. The specs on the site say "USB charge" and the charging duration is 3 hours. They come with a USB-A to C cable.
usbc chargers are not supposed to even have 5V output until a device requests it. For 5V at various currents, “charge configuration” resistors can be used at the device. For higher voltages an active negotiation is required. Cheap devices based on old products often omit the 2 resistors (literally worth under $0.01 each) and this only charge when connected to a usb-a charger, which always has 5v output. Depending on the device, it can be anywhere from easy to impossible to hack in your own resistors.
> usbc chargers are not supposed to even have 5V output until a device requests it.
I did not know that, thanks. I was expecting USB-C chargers to work in "dumb 5V mode" by default. I guess that could be to avoid problems if you connect two chargers together?
I think that is why usb-a (male) to usb-c (female) adapters are not supposed to exist. They might let you connect two usb-a chargers together using a usb-c cable, and they are not designed to tolerate that.
Have you tried a different USB-A charger? Some smaller devices have problems with USB-C to USB-C. I don't know why this is the case, though. It's just something I have observed with different devices.
That's why my current laptop is a https://frame.work
- USB-C to USB-C adapters means that the part that will fail is changeable
- All four USB-C are able to charge the laptop.
And the power brick also has detachable USB-C AND power cord cable.
(And just for fun I ordered an upgrade to the motherboard, will use the old motherboard as always on PC in my home)