I agree on the fact that it’s confusing. There isn’t a great way to tell what a charger, cable, or device supports by eye.
However, there is a reason that vendors don’t just all do 240W 20Gbps — because it would make chargers, cables, and devices cost more.
I’d personally rather just have two color-coded labels, one for maximum power supported and one for data rate (including no data support), and require that to be on cables and devices and chargers.
Require that chargers support all power levels up to the maximum they’re rated for. That’ll add some charger cost, but simplify things.
Some devices require a minimum power. While I find that obnoxious for devices that just charge a battery, some devices that are directly powered by USB have to do that. Put that on the device by its port as well, as a third label.
Also, many chargers with multiple ports have limits on the overall power they can provide, will reduce the PD power profiles on one port if devices are plugged in on others. I’d like to have a standard way of indicating this.
EDIT: I’d also kind of like to have ratings for how clean power provided by a given source is guaranteed to be. USB power can be very dirty, and I’ve run into issues where audio amplifiers use USB power and audibly leak that noise into the output signal.
Tbh, I don’t get what the author wants.
USB C means that I can have one cable and one charger that does it all. It also means that whatever cable or charger I have, it will do most things decently enough.
That’s by far better than in the before times, where no matter what I do, an HDMI cable wouldn’t charge my phone, and a barrel plug cable won’t transfer data between two devices.
Yes, when buying chargers, devices, or cables, you have to check their capabilities, but you had to do the same before. If you bought a DP cable for your HDMI-only laptop, you’d be in the same mess.
USB-C is much better than anything that came before it, hands down.
I think that’s a teething problem. Producing high quality cables with high bandwidth or power will get cheaper, as production gets more efficient.
How much cheaper do you want it? I can find 40GBit/s USB 4 240W cables for €10 on Amazon.
What I meant is that even low end usb is going to be capable of these speeds and power. Atm you’ll find lots of really cheap USB C cables not capable of that. Often using 2.0 as a standard. And: even if they claim they do 240W doesn’t mean they really do.
The cheaper it gets, the less it’ll be relevant to look up the specs of the cables.
Minimum spec USB C cables will always remain relevant no matter the price. They are thinner, lighter, more flexible and more durable due to having far fewer and thinner conductors within them, together with less shielding.
The price isn’t the issue. Right now you can find minimum spec USB C cables that are more expensive than the cheapest maximum spec cables.
A max spec cable costs maybe 10-20 cents more to make than a min spec cable. The only reason they are sold with a significant markup is because people pay for it.
