I used to think of myself as one as well but that's changing as of late.
Looking back 15 years or so, I remember the old ThinkPad and Dell Latitude/Precision docking stations functioned reliably for as long as I can remember.
Today I have a variety of USB-C and thunderbolt 3/4 docking stations, all of which have been affected by various issues. The the manufacturers of these things don't care.
The latest casualty is a Pluggable TBT4-UDZ, which randomly decided one day that I should only have one working monitor instead of two. Doesn't matter if I use Windows, Mac or Linux. Meanwhile, the same monitors & cables work fine with my desktop.
I appreciate USB-C as a means to charge my stuff, but from now on, I'm going to try and use other ports and cables for everything else. Every laptop's settings will assume only the main screen will ever be used. I've no time to get used to a nice multi-monitor setup just to have it taken away when the USB-C dock starts acting up.
I'm reminded of one my favorite south park bits, where Cartman freezes himself to wake up in a future that has a nintendo wii, only to discover the technology of that time doesn't support the plug-in format for the wii.
I too am a USB-C maximalist, but with a handful of differences from OP:
- You lose me at "toothbrush." I don't want personal care items that have internal batteries at all, because they'll eventually die on me while the device itself (brush heads notwithstanding) is otherwise perfectly functional. I'd much rather keep rechargeable AA(A)s on hand for that kind of stuff. (I still haven't found a good electric razor for this purpose, though, and have actually just gone back to manual for the foreseeable future.)
- I don't think I could live off just one charging port, but would rather just ditch USB-A entirely.
- I'm using wired earbuds, with a standard headphone jack, but with the number of full-sized cans that are using USB-C in some way it baffles me that there aren't more or them (or any, that I've been able to find) that also support using it for audio input, so you you can play them while charging.
But in practice, I greatly prefer devices with integrated batteries, because they're more likely to be able to give me useful feedback about the battery level (e.g. a reliable low-battery indicator), rather than just winding down, or having a low-battery indicator with only a passing correlation to reality.
I'm aware these aren't mutually exclusive. To me, the bigger benefit of not integrating them is that I can just rotate in freshly charged batteries anytime they die, and don't have to care about being within proximity of a charger.
(I also find this important for gamepads, to the extent that I don't just opt to play wired.)
Just recently acquired a set from "Philips" that is an 8-pack of lithium-ion AAs with a charging-case that connects to USB-C (Note: the case itself doesn't have its own battery, like an earbuds case would -- it's just a normal charger that doubles as a case). Sounds like this would be great for your toothbrushes and such!
Re. toothbrush, I have to take the opportunity to give Philips credit for the Sonicare electric toothbrushes they made ~15 years ago. That thing just keeps trucking, it’s incredible. I go on 2 week trips and don’t even bring the charger, and have no worries about it dying.
It must have been crazy overspecced, I expected it to be a 5-year disposable piece of non-serviceable tech.
They are good, although my wife manages to kill hers, I don't think I've ever actually had one die.
I've found that one can buy just new handles on ebay though, without the head and chargers, for only like half the super high retail prices or less, even for the "higher end" models, so I do that every 5-8 years or so if one gets too bad.
Part of the reason is that they used NiMH for the batteries in those (I have 3 that are 20-30 years old some predating the Phillips logo). All of mine still work. The NiMH is good for 1000s of deep cycles. The one from the mid 90s is only good for about 15x 2min brushings. Luckily, you can still get new heads for them!
Yeah I was going to say, I'm at 20 years on a Sonicare (pushing 25 now that I remember it is 2026, damn...) and it still works fine. Holds a charge long enough that I've never run out on vacation.
Counterpoint, mine died after a few years to the point where it would only go a few days between charges. Maybe the BMS wasn't good, because this started happening after it completely died on me on a trip once.
I bought a cheap electric toothbrush from a no-name Chinese company. The battery lasts 6 months on one charge with daily use. It cost about $20. I wouldn't be surprised if it's manufactured by the same factories that make Philips' toothbrushes.
Ha I thought mine was on the verge of dying after a good few years of use (amazon reviews were all like, yeah it only lasted a two years), so I ordered a new one, but the old one keeps going so I keep the new one in reserve looming over it menacingly, and it just refuses to kick it lol.
I break about 1 USB-C plug a week. They are simply not designed well for real people who do real things in the world, including physical work, exercise, hiking, woodworking, biking, and the like. They are designed by someone in a corporate office who just never gets out to see the real world.
Here's how the last few broke:
* Phone with typical inadequate battery + external portable battery pack plugged in, shoved in together in pocket running Google Maps navigation via bluetooth, and biking. My thigh bent the USB connector.
* USB-C got mangled by office chair. If I had been a USB designer in an office, this would have been the FIRST thing I would have stress tested for
* USB-C plugged into phone and sat on while on car seat. Another thing any half-competent design intern would have listed on their stress test scenario list but it seems the senior designers missed
* Laptop plugged in on the edge of standing desk, USB cable got jammed in gap between adjacent desks.
I much preferred real, sturdy mechanical connections. They should just miniatureize the IEC power connectors and put straight up 19VDC through them.
> I break about 1 USB-C plug a week. They are simply not designed well for real people who do real things in the world, including physical work, exercise, hiking, woodworking, biking, and the like. They are designed by someone in a corporate office who just never gets out to see the real world.
I do everything on your list. I also have young children who grab and play with things. Our household breaks 1 USB-C plug per year, if that.
I don't know if you were embellishing for effect, but anyone breaking 50 connectors a year probably isn't going to have success with anything short of a fully ruggedized connector solution, which is not something you're going to get on affordable consumer devices.
Perhaps you are just not careful with things, I’ve been an early adopter and never broken one ( I probably have at least 40 different ones, some of which get plugged/unplugged multiple times a day).
My kids haven’t broken a single one either and they destroyed plenty of lightning cables.
Is IEC really the gold standard for connectors to you? I always thought they feel terrible to plug in. There's no snap or solid bottom-out indication to when it's "connected." And it just sits in the socket from friction that doesn't feel particularly solid. It's the kind of connection where if it gets yanked a little bit and the connection fails, it's not obvious because it's half-seated in the socket.
> They are designed by someone in a corporate office who just never gets out to see the real world.
> USB-C got mangled by office chair. If I had been a USB designer in an office, this would have been the FIRST thing I would have stress tested for
Seems like you managed to break one even though it was in the environment that you're saying they're designed for. Maybe you're the problem and USB-C, the technology that billions of people manage to use just fine without breaking on a daily basis, is perfectly fine.
I had a pair of sennheiser urbanite headphones that used USB (micro :( ) for digital audio input, and you could use them while charging. Was shocked and disappointed when i eventually replaced them with Audio Technica ones that could only charge via USB but didn't do audio via USB, only bluetooth or analog.
I agree (and am sad) that it's not a ubiquitous feature, but headphones with a built-in dac do exist
Why haven't phones just moved to have two USB ports?
A slight convenience when you want to charge it in that you don't have to turn it around, you can have USB headphones and also charge, you could use more accessories...
Because space inside a phone is at an extreme premium. And this problem is solved by either using magsafe to charge or using an external hub for more ports.
I've needed 2 USB-C ports on one-port devices (phone, Steam Deck) a few times so I got this tiny 2-port hub with micro SD card reader (also has option for 3.5mm audio port instead of card reader): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DKV7JSHC?th=1 "Satechi USB C Mobile Hub, 4-in-1 USB C Multiport Adapter, 4K HDMI, 100W Pass-Through Charging, 10Gbps Data"
Because the use case and demand versus the cost of engineering and manufacturing isn’t there. The market for USB headphones is minuscule compared to Bluetooth headphones.
See, I agree with this too. You wouldn't have to worry nearly as much about the random little things that are specific to just one device or another (IR blasters, the DAC on old LG phones, etc) if you could just plug in a second USB peripheral.
But what I'm more getting at is the other way around: that wireless headphones will already have USB-C for charging anyway. And that, particularly for larger ones (that have that port directly on the device, and not in a separate charging cradle), it really seems like a waste that more of them don't leverage that -- so that, again, you could use the headphones while you charge them.
There are still wired options, though, right? I don't really miss them, the nostalgia is not strong enough to forget how often the damn cable would catch on something and try to rip the headphones off my head. Or the cord noise. I get that people do not like having to eventually replace a battery, but high quality wireless headphones are a nice upgrade IMO.
My XReal Beam Pro¹ has two USB-C ports: one for charging, one for Thunderbolt video output (both support data transfer IIRC).
My other phones (Samsung Galaxy A23 etc) have a USB-C and a 3.5mm headphone jack as Lord intended, so I don't have the idiotic problem of choosing between charging or using headphones / aux cable / etc.
There's no reason to not have two USB-C ports and a 3.5mmm headphone jack too in a device that already costs hundreds of dollars and is, on average, brick-sized, other than fuck you, that's why (aka being "brave").
I.e., same reason that some phones (not mine) don't have a microSD card slot. Particularly those shipped with atrociously little internal memory at a time when a 1TB memory card costs a few dozen dollars.
Anyways, unless the EU rolls out new legislation (like the one that forced Apple to include USB-C on their phones), looks like it's not going to change any time soon.
Apple has enough money to bravely get away with whatever anti-consumer BS they want, paving the way for others to copy them for fashion and profit.
Sure there are exceptions (which is what I buy). But they're not the norm, as evidenced by comments here. Voting with one's wallet buys very little in terms of impact.
People still decry the loss of the 3.5mm TRRS headphone jack, which didn't really go away and never had to.
____
¹ It's an "AR processor", i.e. an Android phone without the phone plus 3D camera and special sauce
For the vast majority of things I need to power or charge, dumb USB charging is fine, and I have a 10-port Anker “IQ” charger that works great for most of those things. Why doesn’t the equivalent USB-C charger exist? I don’t need 65W on each port. I just needs lots of ports for gadgets that can trickle charge for hours at night (4 kids, lots of devices). I mostly want to standardize on USB-C host cables, but no one makes a cheap device for doing that more than a decade after USB-C became a thing.
The reason is because while you want to use the low end the general public does not understand that USB-C is the connector only and that various levels of power and data depend on the cable and the device at both ends.
If you sell a 10 port USB-C charged someone is going to plug 10 MacBooks into it and complain it doesnt work.
I've seen 1000W (or so they claim) 10 port USB-C chargers on Amazon. Not Anker, just a no name Chinese brand I am not going to trust. But they do seem to exist. Like the sibling comment says, I assume it's because people expect USB-C charging capabilities to be a lot higher.
I don't like USB-C because they all look the same on the outside, but they're not all the same on the inside. Especially my cheap consumer electronics. Sometimes they will charge, sometimes they won't charge, but all the cables look the same, and you don't tend to know in advance.
This is really only a problem if you buy cheap cables. Pick the baseline spec you want your USB cables to meet, and throw out all the ones that don’t. Problem solved.
It’s still a minor frustration if you have to borrow a cable, but that’s solved by packing a cable, and by encouraging as many other people as possible to also throw out their cheap cables.
Sometimes it's not the cable. Sometimes it's the sodding device. I have some IP60-something speakers for the shower. Write up says USB-C power. Brilliant says I, I've got plenty of good ones I use for charging laptops and other USB-C form factor accepting devices.
Sodding things only charge with their special USB-A to USB-C cable. They're in the bag labeled "cursed usb-c charge cables".
It's because they are straight up defective. The USB-C spec is pretty clear in that the power pins have 0v until you signal for a voltage. This isn't a failure of USB-C, you should just return defective devices to the OEM.
Thankfully this defect is becoming less common outside of temu junk.
Change the device? It works fine. The cable is labeled. I know where to find it. I'm not throwing away perfectly otherwise-good hardware because of that.
40gbps is an insane data rate that requires shielding, precision, and testing. There is no way you are getting that for $2. That said, outside of connecting a laptop to your monitor, you don't need a 40gbps cable.
The apple usb c charging cable is like $30, it is well worth the money of you are into software defined radio I can report. Not sure what magic they pulled of, but all the tricks in the book it seems!
I have some Thunderbolt cables that are like $80 apiece because they're like 3 meters long. I have like five or six of them because each one only carries one video signal.
(I used Thunderbolt so that touch and pen inputs could go over the one cable. These days though I just use a MacBook Pro, and hook up a capture card when I need to access the Windows)
> encouraging as many other people as possible to also throw out their cheap cables
One of the main advantages of a single standardized plug is reducing e-waste. This just sounds irresponsible. Having a single tool that covers every possible use case is rarely a good solution.
Device makers need to stop including these garbage 4 cm A to C cables. I have enough USB cables and bricks to last my whole life. I don't need to collect a million more spec violating ones in a drawer I will never use.
Things are shifting though. Ikea ships their USB-C stuff without cables now.
If switching to a type-A charger fixes it, it’s probably the device manufacturer’s fault, not the cable. Many manufacturers that need the 5v standard you’d normally get from an old type-A charger screw this up.
For universal USB-C power support that works with modern power bricks, you need to tie 5k resistors to two pins of the port on the device. This tells the charger to use 5v. I can’t tell you how much cheap stuff out there omits these. They cost almost nothing but they still screw this up over and over, and people blame the standard or the cable…
I read about this so often, yet it's a problem I just never encountered. If I need super high bandwidth like connecting a display, I pick one of those annoyingly unlflexible fat cables. Easy. They even tend to feature the TB4 flash icon. Surely I would not expect any of the light and nimble ones to do that trick. When I need strong PD, it's also either one of those or one of the far more flexible but still quite thick braided ones. Often they have some hinge gimmick connector to prevent any hope for bandwidth one might be tempted to have. All other cables, I expect nothing but legacy USB. Yeah, and some of those won't do data at all (curiosly those are never the lightest cables in my stable, the lightest ones tend to do the legacy USB "gear not, some bits will eventually get through!" just fine)
> I don't like USB-C because they all look the same on the outside, but they're not all the same on the inside.
Many people don't realize that USB-C (USB Type-C) just refers to the physical connector. At minimum, speed and power ratings should have been required for any cable using USB-C at one or both ends. It's almost breathtaking to consider how the USB Implementers Forum has fumbled these kinds of basic issues over the years.
Buy yourself a handful of good cable for charging. (I quite like the silicone anker 643) And throw everything else away in a box.
For data transfer you can just pick up one or two thunderbolt 5 rated cables, they will do max transfer for USB4, or any other spec in the near future. The LTT true spec cables are fairly priced but there are other big brands that sell the same thing.
Keep a shitty USB-A to C for those devices that do not have the correct pulldown resistor to support 5v 2a charging.
This is an acceptable failure mode. I'd be nice if there was a standardized LED flash or color that you could get so if your relative said something isn't working, you could ask, "Is it flashing three times?" or whatever.
The alternative is barrel connectors. If you plug in the wrong one, there's a decent chance that it a) won't work, or b) never work again.
The thickness / durability of the cable is a pretty good indicator, if it's thin and flexible it'll only do basic charging if it's thick and durable it's because it's packing enough wiring to do power delivery, video etc, everything except probably Thunderbolt.
Yeah I have some devices that expect the manufacturer charger (I guess it's pre-negotiated to 19V or something) and I'm not even sure what was the point in giving it a USB C connector.
I have a couple of devices that are 12V over usb-c. The devices themselves are fine, but the wallwarts the mffr provided are just that - 12v over usb-c. No PD. If a device is expecting 5V, there's a healthy chance it'll .. stop expecting 5V.
We blame usb-c for all this, but it does feel like some mffrs are going out of their way to screw it up.
Yeah maybe USB-D will get it right. But probably not. I had such high hopes for USB-C. Now I keep a couple USB-C to USB-A adapters lying around to force the charger (which is just a normal home outlet with a couple built-in USB-C ports) to speak old school USB-A charging instead of trying to negotiate PD with a shitty device that did not implement USB-C correctly.
Yes that's the fault of the manufacturer. But the wildly flexible spec for USB-C let it happen.
It's not a flexible specification, its straight up bad engineering. The specification literally says if you do not want negotiation, you must add the resistor.
Usually they won't charge because they're not actually USB-C devices but are just broken and only pretend to be one (mostly due to missing resistors on CC lines, but there are other ways a device can be non-compliant too).
I wish there are easy ways to figure out the maximum current and wattage supported by a cable. So many cables don't label themselves except on the box!
Note there is a link at the end of the article to a device which can test cables and determine exactly that! But it's a sign of the problem that you need that thing.
With USB-C cables I tend to throw them out unless they are premium cables that cost upwards of $20, I mean I could keep the cheap ones around to charge this or that but cheap cables have this way of going bad, like they are supposed to work if you plug them in either way except they don't, you plug your cheap device in overnight to charge and it doesn't really charge, etc. No way I could trust my wife to handle it.
Personally I think USB got worse in a lot of ways in the 3.0 generation, like at 1.0 they designed a bus architecture that could enumerate 127 devices on a root hub. USB 3.0 doesn't promise anything and ff you start plugging in hubs to your laptop you will hit undocumented limits and find devices start dropping out randomly when you've plugged in several devices and it gives me the heebie jeebies because a mass storage device could drop out. I know mainstream filesytems today are pretty durable but still...
Even the simplest 3-wire cable with nothing but wires in it will handle 45W charging already, which is enough to power my laptop. It needs to be physically broken to not work. If it doesn't, it's usually the device's fault. There are many cheap devices out there that are just USB-C-shaped and don't actually implement the spec, working with some kinds of cables and not working with others.
Personally I have stopped buying cables that do not disclose this information. There are pretty fine alternatives that do, so I see no reason to take gambles.
My only issues so far come from charging protocols rather than cables anyway.
Moreover, stuff like how many watts a cable supports are issues that happen regardless connector type.
Not saying this device is not cool, but one can also get this info easily in a computer, if you find out what to look for. One had presented a utility here some time ago with a menu bar icon showing this information
These PD testers are cool (I thought about buying one), but honestly, for the price of a tester, one can buy 2, maybe even 3 good quality cables and just throw away the rest.
Fair point, I just have oodles of cables (literally 10-20+ per combo of micro/mini/standard-USB-A/B/C <-> micro/mini/standard-USB-A/B/C each) and I like having them all organized by capability so that when I need one I can grab from right bin.
Before getting the tester I just kept buying new "known good" cables whenever I needed one since my cable drawer was just a huge unknown.
I like my iPhone 13 Pro Max and I don’t want to get rid of it or anything, but I am kind of looking forward to the glorious day that it breaks. Once it breaks, any phone I get (iPhone or Android) will have USB-C, along with my laptop, with One Adapter To Rule Them All when I travel.
That’s the dream, anyway. Life rarely works out quite that cleanly for me.
I go to Europe enough that I ditch the universal adapter and get a European ubs-c wall plug. A little more maximalist at home to store but more minimalist while traveling.
I would like the USB-C connector was more durable. I've literally never killed a USB-A connector, but enough lateral force and USB-C just breaks. I suppose it was made so small due to mobile devices, which is understandable, but came with tradeoffs.
Yep, I will say it’s not as bad a old USB-mini connectors but I’ve soured on USB-C after too many of them have broken on me (among other issues this thread covers well)
Some years ago I may have cheered on the pushes to get iPhones to use USB-C, but at this point I think lightning is a superior connector in that sense. I’ve almost never had one break off.
I agree. Lightning is such a better connector and one of the main reasons I still haven't replaced my phone. If lightning could've just been updated for higher bitrates it would have been so much better.
Try the relatively recent Anker Prime cables, the ones that are both braided and soft. I haven't managed to break one yet, despite breaking several past Anker cables that also claimed to be durable.
I don't have a problem with USB C cables, and even if I did it wouldn't be a big deal. The cables are cheap compared to the devices they charge. It is broken USB-C ports that frustrate me about them, or ones with worn out clips.
I would happily be a USB-C enjoyer if manufactures stopped forgetting the stupid CC resistors meaning that you device will not charge with a C-to-C cable.
It should be considered a defective design and recalled, I have been burned several times by this.
I too jumped on board with USB-C right away. Only downside is some hardware manufacturers use sloppy fitting USB ports. This was a major issue on my Touchbar Macbook Pro. Just slightly bumping the cable would lose sync with my dock.
I imagine whatever replaces USB-C in the future should fix this issue and make a more solid connection like USB-A. However USB-C could be the last wired interface as everything in the future will move to wireless.
I'm the same. Though I still think they could have made USB much neater as a protocol, USB-C now does everything I need for goto-connectivity.
I recently looked at the connector and reflected on how insanely small it is. It's no wonder it took decades to get to this point, and it's a very neat physical design at a great price. 16 pins and 10A in that little thing. Amazing.
It took that long because nothing it does now was ever a requirement. It was created as serial/parallel port replacement (fun fact - max speed parallel port is faster than USB 1.1, at ~2.5MB/s).
If we designed it now it would be up to 48V from the get go, USB-PD only (there is zero reason for static modes aside from fallback 5V for simple gadgets) and be just a PCIe transport . USB to HDMI could just be a single chip that does PCIe framebuffer device.
So many kids toys use custom brick chargers, especially remote control cars. I refuse to buy anything that isn't USB-C, I'm not keeping track of all of those.
I think that's changing too, my son got some cheap radio controlled boat a few weeks ago, the remote uses AA and the boat has USB-C as input (interestingly enough, it has a weird USB-C cable with a built in light to signal when charging is done).
I recently bought a very cheap RC car for my kids, and it was USB-C rechargeable but instead of having a port it just has a USB-C cable that comes out of it and plugs into a power brick. I love that.
I agree with using a single ubiquitous power standard for small electronics and electrics. That’s almost what USB-C is these days. We need better labelling of cable capacities when there are 20w and 120w cables that at a glance look the same.
I was afraid this article was going to say one connector for everything when it said maximalist. If it had said to kill eSATA, SPF+, RJ-45, DisplayPort, HDMI, 3.5mm audio, and a bunch of other ports it would have been far more controversial. I’ve seen people saying we don’t need card formats anymore because everything can just be an external USB-C flash drive. I’m glad this article wasn’t that maximalist.
For many things, though, a barrel jack is sufficient and doesn’t require the additional cost and complexity of USB-C. Barrel jacks have their own problems (is it inner positive or negative, what current is required, what’s the diameter of the inner and outer rings), but after that it’s as simple as it gets, both electrically and mechanically.
There is already a robust market for chargers with a few connectors.
But I would like having a table with a plethora of sockets and cables available.
Lots of times, I come in and want to charge a bunch of things. Charge a few drone batteries + the controller. laptop, camera + camera batteries. charge things for a long drive, or a longer trip.
As to cables, sometimes I need USB-C, but there are lots of things that require other connectors like micro-usb, or a garmin watch. And sometimes cables go to other devices like wireless chargers.
Please, please, please: we NEED a magsafe version of USB C
Yes, you can buy adapters, but you end up w/device warts that don't work w/normal USB-C cords and my understanding that they are for the most part pretty dangerously out of spec
Magnetic coupling is an incredibly underutilized user experience tool
As much as it still pisses me off reading the Surface product head's comment that if you love USB-C then you love dongles -- while shipping a Mini DisplayPort connector -- I also think it's a waste that they didn't contribute their magnetic docking to the upstream spec.
We could have had a USB Type-M. (Or, alternatively, Type-F -- for "magnets, how do they work?")
I think one thing that we have come to think as electronic consumers, or just consumers in general, is to expect the absolute best modern version of everything (plug, AI model, car...). I think it is pure conditioning and we forgot the simplicity and convenience of things just working even with apparent downsides relative to acme version. Could USB-C be better? Probably. Is just settling on a standard so you don't have to think about it preferable? I think so. Consider USB-C standardization as an expression of a specific system of values.
Meanwhile, that Xbox roughly needs 12 V at 7.5 A (let's say 90 W, but the internal supply is 165W) . So there is just no easy way to do it with USB-PD. Technically, you can make/buy some sort of USB-PD bench power supply to do this, but I'm unaware of anything on the market right now. One that I use (DPS-150) is limited to 5A output.
You're better off buying some chunky power bank (like Anker Solix) that has your regular wall plug outlets.
I like the fact that we're aligning on one connector but it's hard for me to praise USB-C in and of itself. The connector feels flimsy and has some slop/play in a way that lightning did not, and especially on lower-end devices.
The charging standards, voltages, and data rates, are frustrating because they're almost never labeled. This is especially true on low end, cables, and device devices. The worst offenders will only charge with a USB-A to C cable with low voltage, which is not what I hope for when I see a USB-C port on a device.
This year I grudgingly switched from an iPhone 13 Mini to a Pixel 10, largely to get the full integrated Pebble experience, but having USB-C has been a surprising and delightful upgrade to my home/travel experience.
For sources, I basically have an INUI battery bank and a 100W wall adapter, then everything is a USB-C sink: Lenovo X1, Pixel 10, Nintendo Switch, Sennheiser headphones
I agree. I'm looking at replacing my braun series 7 shaver, and I'd love if the replacement product had usb-c.
what really gets me though is products that support usb-c and then don't support PD, so you end up charging at a glacial pace. The most upsetting incidence of this I've seen is a powerbank charging via usb-c but not supporting PD. So slow!
As far as I could tell the cable is dumb. If you plug the cable into a regular USB-C socket (which I do not recommend) then the tip is +5V and the rest is ground.
In fact it's designed to plug into the plug marked "mobile" on the amp and the 3.5mm end goes into the line out of something else, providing AUX input, which is mixed straight through to the output of the amp (which is thankfully a regular 3.5mm headphone jack).
I guess they over-ordered USB-C sockets and decided to yolo it, or else for some reason only USB-C footprints fit into the space on the PCB. (But they still had to manufacture or were able to obtain these cursed cables ... it doesn't make a lot of sense.)
I draw the line at cheap unbranded rechargeable toothbrush. I’d be too worried about fires with cheap cells. I’m happy to pay the premium for top brands for anything with lithium-ion batteries.
USB-C being "one standard" is a bit of a stretch. It is the Unintuitive Serial Bus, after all. Most will charge. Some faster than others. Some will supply data with 2.0 speeds, others 3.0, yet others will do more. Some will only work with the other devices they came with. Few cables will tell you which is which, unless you have a tester.
There were two major flaws with the rollout of USB-C, none of them technical:
To have unmarked cables. This should have been explicitly forbidden by spec as non-compliant. Today unmarked is the norm, even with premium brands. And the few ones that actually mark their cables have their own markings (which I assume is because the official logos are so incredibly bad). So now instead of wondering if the charger will work, you’re wondering if the cable will work.
Secondly, the USB-C rollout was only successful on the sink (device) side. Almost all cheap gadgets come with an A-to-C cable, and chargers and PC ecosystems are very biased on the A ports for the host side. This created an awfully ugly side effect: devices are not always compliant with even basic charging. Since C-to-C should not have live 5V line active at all times, these devices don’t charge at all. I think they’re missing that resistor that tells a compliant charger to make it live. But in either case they only work with A-to-C.
I'm still driven absolutely mad by how many devices are being released in 2026 that refuse to charge if they're connected to a port that negotiates USB Power Delivery. They don't fall back to 5V, they just don't charge at all.
Devices like this usually come with an A-to-C cable in the box and that's a warning sign, but an even more twisted version of this is when they come with a C-to-C cable and a Type C charger that does not support PD. That's the only combination they tested, and that's your problem now.
I now carry enough adapter cables that I can deliberately take PD out of the equation just to work around these devices.
Keep in mind that you can buy cables that are USB-C on one end and whatever on the other end. I have multiple USB-C to 12V barrel jack cables for this reason specifically. No idea because you still need a special cable, but better than nothing.
Trimmer: I purchased this from Amazon USA for $70 on sale, now listed at $96. I am happy with it, but haven't had it long enough to comment on durability: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BQ1GZY7H "Manscaped Beard Hedger Men's Premium Beard Trimmer, 20 Length Adjustable Blade Wheel, Stainless Steel T-Blade for Precision Facial Hair Trimming, Cordless Waterproof Wet/Dry Clipper"
> What are the chances that I could find the exact charger needed for a GameBoy Colour?
Fairly high. Nitpick time: The Gameboy Color[0] took a standard-size battery that you can still buy today. It did not need to be charged, but you did have to turn the system off to swap batteries unless you had a barrel-jack adapter.
Barrel-jack DC wasn't quite standard, but you might be able to find something compatible if you went to an electronics supply store and paid careful attention to the listed input voltage and polarity on the device. Regardless, most people didn't bother tethering their Gameboy and just fed it batteries since it ran forever on them.
The real proprietary hellhole started with the Gameboy Advance SP, and didn't end until the Switch used Type-C. Hell, the SP is basically a modern smartphone:
1. Proprietary form-fitting battery pack
2. Custom power input connector
3. No separate headphone output
Bonus points: the headphone adapter Nintendo sold for the SP didn't have a power pass-through, so you had to choose between headphones or charging. Though there are third-party ones now that do both headphone output and USB-C power input.
To add insult to the injury, the charging port of Nintendo DS Lite was almost mini-USB, but not quite - with enough force and some metal bending it was apparently possible to make it work with regular mini-USB cable. Absolutely idiotic design, especially since that port was just 5V input anyway, anyone with soldering iron could tweak USB-A cable to work with the proprietary charging connector.
> Tracker What if someone steals my bag? Hopefully the PebbleBee "Find My" device will help me recover it.
In your review (from last year) of the tracker, you wrote it doesn't work with Graphene. [1] From the linked issue, looks like there's partial support now. [2] What's the experience like now on Graphene? Is it good enough for tracking a checked bag or similar?
I personally hate USB-C as it's a poorly designed connector. It's flimsy and can easily broken yet at the same time difficult to insert.
I've had a couple be broken by getting "squashed" because there's no mechanical support because of the rounded edges so the metal easily pancakes.
They also seem to be easily damaged such they stop connecting through a failure mechanism I haven't quite figured out (my macbook air no longer reliably connects to them).
Finally, the ports don't have reliable insertion and they're sharp, so they scratch up whatever device they're on as people repeatedly miss the insertion position resulting in surface scuffing. Phones especially should not be using them because of this issue and should be using something like lightning that did not have any sharp edges which avoided most scratching.
Similar things for video (tiny HDMI male adapter), and even my walkie-talkie (the Chinese market has come up with Motorola programming cable adapters that are just little dongles - https://www.ebay.com/itm/800104798120 - I can reprogram and even reload AES256 keys into my radio!).
PD triggers let my travel CPAP run off of battery (using a Transcend Micro - it only needs a 19V PD trigger and a solid 100W).
And of course... an Ecoflow solar hat and a battery I can shove in my back pocket for when I'm wandering around in the open air.
... and I just realized I can hook my Sony Reon Pocket cooler up to the solar hat...
USB-C connectors are so flimsy compared to USB-A, it feels like a real step backward. It barely takes any pressure on the cable to make my charging cable fall out, or to rotate it just enough that it loses connection.
Not to be that guy, but the USB-C specification requires an extraction force of 8–20 N for a new connector, measured on the sixth unplugging cycle after five conditioning cycles. After 10,000 insertion/removal cycles, the permitted range is 6–20 N.
Equivalent hanging mass:
8 N is 0.82 kg
20 N is 2.04 kg
So the problem you have is likely one of your manufacturer not producing equipment suitable to pass the USB-C spec.
As an aside, the specified extraction force for USB A is:
10 N minimum when new
8 N minimum after durability cycling
So pretty much the same, in some cases even less.
I don't have problems with USB-C connectors per se. I think HDMI is worse in terms of durability.
