I scan the emarker on every USB C that comes into the house and add a p-touch label. I chuck out power-only and ultra baseline (60 W/USB 2 cables) with no marker or resistors.

Power-only cables could be handy when traveling as they are essentially a condom, but they can only charge slowly and I always have a better cable with me. I wouldn’t mind a PD aware charge-only device but inquire require some MITM circuitry and I’m too lazy to make one.

Someone shared this with me the other day. Haven't used it much yet but it seems like it will easily beat my previous strategy of plugging things in randomly and getting aggravated: https://www.whatcable.uk

HDMI and display port are in a similar boat. Putting the spec on the connector would be so much help.

Even purchasing them is a nightmare these days because everything says ultra super duper fast supreme and then the fine print says it's actually just 3.0 (or doesn't say at all sometimes on online storefronts). Multiple time's I've found myself in the store flipping around the box like a rubics cube trying to find the little fine print that tells me if the cable is more expensive because it's gold plated snake oil or actually matches the higher spec I need.

The problem is certification. I've had lots is USB cables over the years from cheap to expensive. The only ones that reliably did what was on the tin where the USB-IF certified ones.

At this point I have a switched pretty much everything to Club3d. They used to make GPUs but are now firmly connectors only. In the past 5 years no issues with any of the cables I bought from them.

Wasn't there a push at some point to enforce some sort of spec labeling for USB-C cables? Or was that a fantasy in my head?

The last part is a bigger issue for me. I can use my usb to charge most of my tech but when it comes to the exact cable that my interface needs to use I now have like 30 cables I have to try before I know which one was the correct one.

My MacBook Air is plugged in via MagSafe at home but I'd consider traveling by air with just USB-C. Probably need to throw a hub in there at that point.

I went down the rabbit hole of cable testers, and concluded that that thicker and stiffer almost always meant ‘better’ support for higher speed and charge rates.

Anything braided is almost always junk.

I don’t have a requirement for anything over 90w though, so I can generally get away with using whatever I have lying around.

The labeling is already standard, but since it's an awful standard, we aren't golden

Why not buy only 100W power and data cables?

If you’ve got one of the older style Mac chargers, the part which plugs into the wall physically separates from the rest of the charger. You can connect different plugs for all the different countries. There is a plastic seam where the charger separates. It’s easy to miss.

I’ve slowly acquired all the global adaptors for Mac chargers. I just bring a usbc Mac charger when I travel with the destination country plug attached.

I wish Apple made gan chargers though. Those look great

I think your suggestion and also the author's are too big for my taste. I carry a US-style 45W GaN charger, a couple of usb-c cables, and an EU adapter (which, off the record, also works for UK outlets so it covers anywhere I normally travel to). I carry this daily and for travel even though I live in Europe as this combination is the same size as the EU version of my charger by itself.

For devices I have a work laptop, work phone, personal laptop, personal phone, headphones, usually a couple other small devices, and a mobile battery. I usually only heavily use my work laptop and personal phone. For phones and smaller stuff, I can charge them from the laptop while the laptop charges overnight so I don't typically wish for a second charger. If your laptop has decent battery life, charging at less than max speed is no big deal (I have two 16 inch MacBook Pros).

Additionally, I've converted most of my old favourite micro-usb devices like mouses to usb-c. A search for "usb-c 4.7kohm 5v female" will give you some options for replacing micro-usb with usb-c, with hobbyist soldering skills.

For a beard trimmer, I got an Enchen boost usb-c model for $10 for travel. It works well and even has ceramic blades but I had to add 4.7k resistors to work with a c-c cable[1].

[1] Cheap devices often omit some 4.7k resistors that tell a usb-c charger to output 5V, so it outputs nothing. This is why some devices work only with usb a to c cables, as usb-a outputs 5V by default. If you can manage to add the resistors to the correct pins or replace the connector with one that has them built-in, you can fix this problem. The difficulty of doing this varies a lot by device.

> It’s important that the charger accepts an IEC C7 cable. This is an international standard, so you’ll be able to find local mains cables at office supply stores or borrow them from nearby appliances, and it’s a two-pin design. Having a two-pin mains lead means you don’t have to worry about finding three-pin (earthed) power outlets in areas where they are not yet universal. It also means that an ultra-compact travel adapter like the Road Warrior can serve as a backup option if you don’t have a local cable.

An earthed-to-unearthed adapter (preferably with some alternate path to ground) seems like a better solution there than restricting oneself to C7 and its 2.5A max current. And when the ground prong is available in the outlet, it's often a useful mitigation against the looseness of worn-out sockets (since it adds another area of support).

> USB-C maximalism is great for travel

It's honestly bliss when you get even close to it at home. I'm close, having only one Lightning device left (Apple TV remote) and a couple of USB-A and micro-USB devices I'll probably be stuck with for a while (avalanche pack, cat tracker, et cetera).

Yes! I've been doing this for years!

Figure-8 cable is usually easy to find in some old media player in someone's house.

That said usb-c chargers are quite ubiquitous now that you'll likely to find one anyway.

Also 6ft usb-c cables are very neat. IDK why Apple even ships that 3ft e-waste.

short, dumb one or two plug extension cords are great for travel. They're light on the wall side, so the travel adapter on that side generally stays in. Plus it's nice if you need a little extra reach occasionally

That sounds less janky than my solution: US wall wart charger -> 6ft extension cord -> international adapter.

(If you want to overvolt an extension cord, make sure it's completely passive: no light, switch, or surge protector.)

C7 is great advice.

But also pack a short length of cat5 twisted pair just in case. When all else fails, it allows to rig up most anything.

ABSOLUTELY DO NOT DO THIS BECAUSE IT IS INSANELY DANGEROUS buuuut...

... if you're hopelessly stuck without your cloverleaf charging cable you can kind of batter a figure-8 power lead over the phase and neutral pins, and you can probably find a figure-8 power lead more easily than a cloverleaf one.

Don't leave it unattended or where non-hackers can get at it.

Don't make a habit of it.

This will get you out of a hole.

I have spent some time on this too.

I really wanted your approach to work and went down that pathway with this [1], but its one weakness if you have multiple destinations with multiple socket types. It's not uncommon that I have to go between countries with China/Aus, EU, India (kinda-sorta EU but not), and UK plugs. That's a lot of those C7 cables. Also, having 1-2m of cable lets you put the charger on a bedside table when the only wall socket is buried under the bed for some reason, so that adds up.

I then considered one with the swappable ends, like this [2], but the advantage of the cable is that you don't get the 'this room's only socket is against the desk and fuck you if you want to plug a big wall wart into it' problem, plus as above the cable lets the charger ports be much more easily accessible. Also, many models also only have US/EU/UK adapters, without covering e.g. CN/AU style plugs.

And at that point, you're basically using of those old-style universal adapters with the universal AC input and the sliders to change the output, especially given you can now get them with integrated 65W GaN USB ports [3], so why would you fiddle with attachments you could lose?

So then there's this [4] which is so close to my ideal but isn't quite there. It has the cable advantages, minimises additional swappable weight to get different socket types, and you can even put the adapters straight on the charger if you want to omit the cable. But then I read about abysmal reliability performance and I'd rather not burn down my hotel room in a third-world country. It does have the ends that I, personally, would like but with all of these you're at the mercy of them designing them for the specific wall socket types you need. And at least with this one, the UK one doesn't include a fuse as it's supposed to, whereas IEC C7 plugs do. Further burnination possibilities.

Really, if a reputable manufacturer made [4] but sank an extra ~50% product price into proper reliability and standards compliance, as well as making a whole plethora of swappable ends for all types of wall sockets that fit both the cable and directly onto the device, I'd probably buy it and never look again. I'd even accept a proprietary swappable end form factor with the vendor lock-in risks just because it's basically the utopian ideal of what I want.

But in the meantime, I'm back to using [1] with generic basic adapters for EU and CN/AU on the end of the UK IEC C7 cable. I'll build a collection of C7 cables for each destination and when I travel to only one I'll take the appropriate cable, but when it's multiple destinations I haven't found a better solution.

[1]: Ugreen Nexode 100W GaN 4-port charger: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0B6MZYKTF?psc=1

[2]: Ugreen travel charger: https://www.amazon.co.uk/UGREEN-65W-Fast-Charger-Ports/dp/B0...

[3]: Any permutation of this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/MOMAX-Universal-Adapter-Internation...

[4]: SlimQ 100W Charger w/ extension cable and swappable ends: https://slimq.life/products/100w-3c1a-usb-c-charger

An electric toothbrush can never break: it can only become a toothbrush. You should never see an “Electric Toothbrush Temporarily Out of Order” sign, just “Electric Toothbrush Temporarily Manual.” Sorry for the exercise.

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.

> I'd much rather keep rechargeable AA(A)s on hand for that kind of stuff.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=rechargeable+aa+batteries+usb+c

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.

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...

I find Philips Sonicare toothbrushes break after about a year, long before the battery gives up. Which i guess is another reason not having integrated batteries would be nice. But then they might not make as much money whenever I buy a new one so they probably wouldn't do that

A electric toothbrush does a much better job at cleaning your teeth though. I have a basic oral B one that I can get new heads for cheaply and easily and it has a usb-c charger. It’s great honestly. I’m sure it’ll die one day but so do normal toothbrushes. I’ll crack the shell open and recycle the battery it’s not a big deal. I had a random Amazon one before that broke after a few months but the very basic “old” style electric brushes seem to last some years. The more “UI” and features it has the less it’ll last

You're probably missing out on the feeling of really, really clean teeth. Regular brushing never gave me the feeling of ALL biofilm getting stripped from the enamels.

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.

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

> 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.)

My solution to this was to get an electric razor that doesn't use batteries. My 20-year-old no-battery electric Norelco razor was bought in a chain pharmacy. I've looked in recent years, and I don't see them any more in brick-and-mortar stores, but they're still made, and available online.

The (minor, IME) downside is that electric razors without batteries are generally on the low-end of the spectrum, rarely including the fancy (even non-battery-related) features found on the high end electric razors.

> 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 thought the same, but that'll happen with devices that use AA batteries too.

I was using a cheap Panasonic EW-DJ10 water flosser that uses AA batteries, but the battery compartment contacts would corrode after some time.

I then switched to one of those China USB-C water flossers, but I think the built-in lithium battery's nearing the end of its life since it'll cut off randomly now. I also used to worry about charging it, since the USB-C port would need to be dried out before I plugged the charging cable in.

No idea what's a happy medium for electronics that need to work near water.

> - 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've had an Oral B electric brush for around 3 years now and it hasn't skipped a beat. I'd hate to have to change batteries when I can just pop it on a inductive charging dock every night.

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!

For what an anecdote’s worth, I have the same rechargeable Norelco razor that I’ve had going on 17 years. Same nicd battery it came with; gets recharged about once every three weeks. I think it’ll relive me.

My Sonicare worked for almost 15 years. I don't worry about the reliable brands dying on me.

[dead]

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.

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…

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.

  Especially my cheap consumer electronics. Sometimes they will charge, sometimes they won't charge

> Especially my cheap consumer electronics. Sometimes they will charge, sometimes they won't charge

You can fix that by buying USB-C to USB-C adapters with 5.1 kiloohm resistors.

It should have taken the manufacturer less than one cent to include the resistors, but as a consumer product they will unfortunately cost at least a dollar each.

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.

> 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.

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 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!

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.

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).

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.

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.

> And yes, USB as main connection standard was driven by Apple. But USB as main charging standard was set by the EU.

Hard disagree. Yes, they were quick to say that if you want to connect a device to their computers, you'd better be prepared for it to be USB. But their computer market share simply wasn't there to drive anything. More of a "lead by example" deal.

With phones OTOH, they COULD have driven it, but in the end they had to be whipped by Brussels to adopt standard USB(c).

Yeah, the GBA SP would have been a much better example. What an odd connector. I really need to get around to modding a USB-C port on to mine.

I still prefer to buy things that use AA batteries than in built rechargeable ones. Li batteries are almost always the first thing to go.

Yeah, or you can just get a cheap retro handheld with similar stylings that will charge via -- you guessed it -- USB-C.

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.

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.

The USB-C and Thunderbolt docks are annoying! It basically boils down to the fact that they come in two variants, with and without Displaylink.

Both have their advantages and disadvantages, depending on your port configuration, number of monitors and OS (the Displaylink docks require drive installation).

FWIW, on Linux, the best choice for me was a non-Displaylink one from Lenovo.

I've always been a thinkpad fan but their docks were clunky huge uncomfortable things for me.

I had a hp nc2400 that had a very nice little dock where you'd set the laptop on top of two guide poles an then slide the dock connector in from the side. A very compact design.

The thinkpad docks just always used so much space on my desk.

+1 on the toothbrush. It's how I use up all the non-electric toothbrushes I get at the dentist (who always tells me to use an electric toothbrush).

The only thing that perpetually annoys me for charging is the Apple Watch, which requires the dumb little puck charger and doesn't have enough battery life to make it even one extra day without being charged. I wish it had gotten the inelegant "flip it over a shove a cable in" like the Magic Mouse did.

I’m a cold-dead-hands 13 Mini owner, but even I’ll admit to the temptation of replacing the last device I have that doesn’t use USB-C with something that does.

My Kindle Oasis might be the last micro usb device I own. I always said I’d buy the usb-c version the day they released one. Instead they discontinued it :(

This is how I feel with my Airpods. Just break already!

With a soldering iron and USB-CD PD trigger boards, I've successfully converted a few of this kind of thing.

The step I've taken is just purchasing USB-C to barrel in various voltages and labeling them appropriately.

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.

Wait till you enter the world of more advanced RC stuff, that's when the Cambrian explosion of connector types really happens.

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.

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.

Because I can put it next to my bed at night and have it cool me. Not all of us travel with a punkah-wallah.

Sort of. USB-C cables have an emarker chip inside them which reports the capabilities of the cable. The USB controller on your laptop reads this chip and makes use of the info, but as of today there is no standardized way for the controller chip to pass this info up to the OS. I assume most of them don't even provide an interface at all for the OS to request it.

I vaguely recall someone from Google working on this issue for Chromebooks. I'm surprised Apple hasn't solved this since they control the OS and hardware. For now you can buy tester devices which read the emarker info and show it on a small display. There's also more advanced testers which test the actual signal integrity and error rates, but these are very expensive and made for the cable manufacturers.

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.

The USB spec does have labeling standards that are pretty clear. But uncertified temu junk obviously doesn't use them. There shouldn't even be such a thing as a 20w cable, the minimum with no emarker chip is 60w.

Any USB-C cable that isn't defective can handle enough power for anything up to a light duty laptop.

Have you checked the port for lint? I have found those disposable flossing sticks are an excellently sized, non-conductive edge of plastic you can use to dig in there and remove the bits preventing the cable from getting a good connection.

Are you sure it's not the cable? Theoretically, USB-C is designed in a way to prevent this exact thing from happening, where the springs that help retain the cable are in the _cable_, not the device.

(This is a frequently toted-out argument about USB-C superiority over Lightning.)

Sure you can, the fancy tester is just geekery at this point. Any cheap Amazon Basics cable from the last few years will do 100w PD just fine.

The average consumer is never going to find most of the weird configurations that cause problems with USB-C cables (i.e. shit like wanting DP-altmode at 4K120hz over the same cable you are running 100w PD)

The "cost" they're cutting of course being 2 simple resistors, that cost absolutely nothing. So less of a executive decision and more a case of whoever designed the board didn't do a quick google search to figure out how the connector works.

My Belkin power bank has that defect. Didn't believe it when I brought it home and discovered it

5 years ago it was really hard to find usb-c shaver. I could only find cheap ones; I got an Enchen boost for about $10 and it has served me well.

Braun is the Boeing of appliances. A once great company that's now been hollowed out by beancounters.

I get trouble with the female ports too

I have had a failed port on my laptop - fortunately the laptop can charge on two of its ports but it sucks to have lost one.

I have had a failed port on an iPad, and on my phone. Again I was fortunate to have a fairphone, so I just replaced the port.

I also find that I'm constantly stressed that the plug is going to snap.

That being said, in ten plus years of using USB-c.. this has never happened to me or anyone that I know.

It's actually kind of impressive, all things considered.

> actually there are a few out there

Because the usecase of charging many (think 5 or more) devices at the same time for hours is pretty rare.

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?")

Or you can insert a cheap USB-C adapter that converts the game boy socket to USB-C: https://aliexpress.com/item/1005008985278704.html

Yeah, but you need to know where to buy it, how to get it delivered etc. Getting a Gameboy Advance cable in Denmark is $18.5 and delivery might take a week or so.

Anyway, the exact charger for a GameBoy Colour doesn't exist as the GBC takes AA batteries and can't charge them even if you connect the power brick to it.

I recently got the Anker 140W. I bought a MacBook, and apparently they come without a charger these days. So instead of buying an expensive Mac charger, I figured the widely recommended Anker 140W offers a lot more functionality for less money.

Gan chargers also die really fast.

Try a different cable and make sure the ports aren't full of rubbish. A good cable and clean port makes a fairly good connection with a solid click. Lot of time I've used a sewing needle to fish incredible amounts of pocket lint out of peoples phone ports and cables connect so much better.

What solution are you proposing though? As long as people can buy USB-C connectors on the open market, they're going to be able to create devices that horribly deviate from the spec in terrible ways. But it's better that they are available for people who do follow the spec in their designs, instead of, say, trying to tightly control parts availability.

A compliant device has quite a lot of protection against all sorts of faults (short to VBUS etc.) but if the device was non-compliant then all bets are off.

Who knows, the charger might have been so non-compliant that it could have somehow got mains onto the connector, which is potentially deadly so probably good if it's stopped working...

But at the end of the day you shouldn't judge a standard by dodgy and possibly dangerous electronics that completely fail to comply to that specification!

How funny, I also have the Xiaomi shaver, also bought while in BGC Manila. It's great, but does have a tendency to turn itself on in a packed bag

Well, the issue is USB-PD:

- 12 V × 5 A = 60 W

- 20 V × 5 A = 100 W

- 28 V × 5 A = 140 W

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'm curious, what amp is this? Is it for charging something? The end is TRRS, is there a DAC/ADC molded in the plug for audio interface purposes?

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.

https://www.meridiangrooming.com/collections/trimmers

more of a trimmer but this had an alright replaceable blade set up and has USB c. if you need the rotating heads I haven't seen one just yet though

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"

Shaver: I purchased this in-person at a Xiaomi store in Manila, very happy with it especially for the price ($20-ish): https://www.mi.com/global/product/xiaomi-electric-shaver-s20...; Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Xiaomi-Electric-Skin-Touch-Waterproof... "Xiaomi Electric Shaver S200"

>feels flimsy and has some slop/play in a way that lightning did not

No end to the official Apple lighting cables that died on me over the years, and across iphones and ipads.

For video input or power supply? I doubt we would ever see it for power supply.

For video input it seems almost deliberate since the TV brands all benefit from licensing out HDMI and forcing it to be the only way to connect to a TV.

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.

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  
  

As an aside, the specified extraction force for USB A is:

  10 N minimum when new  
  8 N minimum after durability cycling  
  

I don't have problems with USB-C connectors per se. I think HDMI is worse in terms of durability.

It's because your port or cable are filled with pocket lint. Get a sewing needle and fish it out and it will connect again.