USB-C has such a loud hate-mob after it. And it's really just not bad. It really mostly is great.
1). If I have 4 USBC devices, and 1 USBC port, how do I connect them? With previous versions I buy a $10 hub. There are literally zero options to accomplish this with Usbc ( if I am wrong I would love to know about it, this is actually a problem I have)
2). The cables. Some cables support certain data. Some certain power. There are no markings to give me any of this information at all.
...albeit it'll only do data, and won't let you do P/D or video.
My impression is that the cheap-hub product got a lot harder to make because of how much more USB-C supports, such that you need to caveat any cheap product (as I had to there), and the products that do support all the USB-C features wind up being full dock-type hubs that start at around $70.
It has its own power supply. I have a USBC 14 inch monitor and a webcam plugged into the hub, and the hub plugs into my MacBook. The hub can power my external monitor, webcam and the MacBook.
Even chargers from ALLCAPS manufacturers on amazon?
It's just absurdly epic, in my book. Pick a completely random no-name brand it and there's like 98% chance it'll do the job fine, if you want a $30 100w charger for ex. In most cases, I would not be afraid to plug it in and find out. I expect some cheap chargers indeed probably won't be able to sustain full load, but I also expect they'll shutdown fine & not harm anything. It just seems unfair to try to reach into the absolute bottom-most reaches we can find to judge, and even if we do, I think most people would be impressed & shocked how little harm is done here.
But more so, there's so many perfectly fine all-caps brands that do have thousands of reviews that seem either quite legit or mostly legit. Nekteck has a 100w gan charger you absolutely can do fine with for $40. PPS and multiport capabilities abundantly available at under $50? Can we not be impressed a bit here?
Making 20V 5A & not messing causing damage is not the worlds wildest problem, even if you are cutting every corner you can.
I was trying to consolidate my chargers into a single charging station and I didn't realize started a saga. Eventually I had to give up. While I was getting down the rabbit hole, I tested dozens of different chargers and the results were quite unexpected. Though I didn't use an oscilloscope, the usb power meters used gave almost the same results, thus I would say the results were good. The best of those were a few ~$7 ones bought from Amazon, good/fair ones were either came with mobile devices or from popular brands such as A*r or B**n(I hid the names here deliberately to avoid being taken as ads). The worst were also among the two aforementioned popular brands. For A brand, its voltage dropped to 4.8V when under load ~1.8A but it caused significant interference that the USB light's switch stopped working after powered on. B brand were even worse, voltage dropped to 4.5V when under ~1.7A load.
So literally I gave up and continue to use what I have right now, at least for now.
I have no idea why a brand new cable would behave like this but after several scary interactions on the road I stopped trusting the standard and bought a better cable.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/poorly-designed-usb-c-cable-kills...
> Leung, who has been testing USB-C cables and posting about them on Amazon(Opens in a new window), posted a one-star review(Opens in a new window) of Surjtech's 3M USB A-to-C cable. Why did it earn such low marks? It "seriously damaged the laptop computer I am using for these reviews, a Chromebook Pixel 2015, and two USB PD Sniffer devices (Twinkie)," he said.
https://www.destructoid.com/after-the-mass-bricked-switch-si...
> To further quell that fear Nintendo has provided a landing page that explains what’s safe — and it basically boils down to USB-A to USB-C with 56K OHM resistors. Bottom line? Don’t get cheap bargain bin cables and you “should” be okay according to Nintendo. Or you can just opt for USB-C to USB-C to be safe.
Everyone is still going to have to re-buy 4x $60-100 power adapters, a $50 headphone jack for usb-c, and most anything else the want to connect to it. If you share a household with (gasp!) android, then you still gotta keep a bin for the apple vs android/everyone else crap and/or label them.
Belkin 65W 2-port PPS is like $50, and that is not going to fry your devices.
> a $50 headphone jack for usb-c
Even the Apple one is $10, and audiophiles have said the DAC in it is quite good.
> If you share a household with (gasp!) android, then you still gotta keep a bin for the apple vs android/everyone else crap and/or label them.
Not as of this fall.
This is untrue assuming you mean people switching from a Lightning iPhone to a USB C iPhone. Existing iPhones already charge over USB C PD (to Lightning) using the same USB C power adapters as a typical modern Android device or laptop, for example.
You should still by from a trusted or well reviewed source/manufacturer. My issue is the cheaper long cables I have all work but charging is not fast, just normal speed.
Yikes. I've never worried about that until reading this comment.