Your USB-C Cable probably SUCKS! Sooo is that Bad?
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- Опубліковано 30 тра 2024
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In this video we will be having a closer look at USB-C cables and find out why most of them are actually not that great. We will be focusing on 100W power transfer so very fast charging. I will show you how much power loss 13 different USB-C cables produce and why most of them do not meet the standard specs. Let's get started!
Websites which were shown/used during the video:
www.usb.org/usb-charger-pd
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www.usb.org/document-library/...
satechi.net/blogs/news/pd-3-1...
Thanks to Keysight for sponsoring this video.
0:00 The Problem with USB-C Cables
1:49 Intro
2:26 60W/100W cables?
3:14 E-Marker Chip?
5:04 Test Setup
6:42 The Worst Performing Cable
7:43 Test Results
9:50 Verdict - Наука та технологія
Lot of the bad (not necessarily cheap!) cables use either completely inadequate wire gauges, with only a few strands of copper - or don't use copper wire at all but copper coated aluminium (CCA) wire instead. Which is a lot cheaper compared to copper - and also much worse conductor.
My bet is that the "seat heater" cable is actually CCA and not copper at all.
Thanks for the feedback and good guess ;-)
interesting. i had a cable that was attracted by a magnet. what is it made if? steel?
@@Gameplayer55055 Steel balls even, if it had the courage to stand up and declare its love to the magnet.
@@Gameplayer55055 It was most probably a shielded cable in which the shield around the internal wires was magnetic. Never heard of iron/steel cables for commercial electrical usage
@@Gameplayer55055 I have a few of these, including a Dell USB keyboard cable
I love your presentation method in all your videos. The hand drawing is always extremely clear and pleasantly done.
Thank you! Cheers!
赞同！ Very agree
I love the drawings, but I get triggered by the textmarker highlighter smearing the fineliner writing in the videos. 😂
I would totally send you a box of STAEDTLER classic Inkjet safe that smear less :P
@@greatscottlab PS: and the one fineliner that uses pigment ink that is indestructible by textmarker highlighters is the Copic Multiliner (available at least in 6 colors maybe more).
@@kwinzman yeah same, love the videos, but that always kills me
also him drawing the same line with the fineliner 5 times, soaking the paper for no good reason
It's quite common these days to find out that almost nothing you want to purchase, from a kitchen appliance to a car to a USB cable is perfect or even close. Now that customer comments or comparative videos such as yours are everywhere, you can easily find out that most commercial products have known issues that are never really fixed, or new issues arise after fixing some old ones.
I would have trust issue if it was not for higher branded things usually keeping to their names. But you go for cheap, you get what you pay for.
@@monad_tcp Perhaps, but that shouldn't be the way. Inflation has been hitting us all in the figurative sack for decades. I should be able to buy a cable that works the same as every other cable for $5.
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@@monad_tcp This is true for cables and other cheap "crap".
God damn. Apple products break down, when you look at the wrong and are built in a way, that you won't be able to fix them. Cars get locked down - can't fucking repair your 50k vehicle anymore. Subscription models on cars. So much SHIT is going on.
If you buy a brand today, all that is actually certain is, that you spend more money on the product! If it is ANY better remains to be seen.
If we continue as we have, you'll soon pay a fucking subscription to be able to use cables at all...
That's fine, these products are usually cheap enough that it really doesnr matter. If it breaks just toss ir and but a new
Wow, 11W dissipation from a USB cable is crazy. Most of the lightbulbs in my house use/dissipate less.
EU should be looking @ standards for charging cables, too.
If they want to push-standardize connections and mandate min. efficiencies, then the entire ecosystem needs to be examined; not just the charger and device.
Great idea to do the testing and use actual data. However, I was disappointed to not see a clear recommendation, since, most people are watching hoping to find a good cable after noticing that so many really suck. I find that one cable that charges my phone in an hour and others that take 4. Can you clarify or give a brand recommendation? Thanks for the video - very professionally done :)
If I understood the video properly, then get This One. It's much better than the rest. But whatever you do, don't get This One. It's awful.
From my understanding UGREEN is one of the best among these cables.
@@Cappadociatourguidei just got 6 ugreen cables of different types, and the fitment of the plugs and sockets, and the cables is top notch.👌
Yeah this video is pretty much useless. Godd why is it so hard to find
I am a cell phone technician, I noticed that problem with the quality of the cables, mainly for fast charges, very generic cables affect the charge, it also happens with micro usb. Another thing is also poorly filtered generic chargers, which put electrical noise in the devices, in the case of cell phones they generate a malfunction of the touch! by static and noise from the power source;
Many times I have cut the cables to expose the copper filaments, and yes, they are bad, some do not even have the mesh to cover the cables, and others have very thin cables that do not support the amperage
Thanks for the feedback :-)
Petition for you to create a course explaining Electricity from the beginning with this detailed and elegant way . Your explanation is so clear you are so much better than my university professor ever was .
Great video! However it would nice to have some sort of list/spreadsheet with the tested cables so we don't need to open every product link to check for the manufacturer.
ua-cam.com/video/PDN9DU-l2oM/v-deo.html
Also, the links are incorrect! Not good reference! And the links may vanishes tomorrow!
first time viewer here and vid is clickbait as far as I'm concerned
@@htopherollem649 You are clickbait
Then how would he shill his affiliate links?
That cable with the built-in power meter looks handy! Sometimes the devices settle on a tiny current for some reason, and simply disconnecting and reconnecting fixes it, but normally you don't easily notice the issue.
It has to do with that voltage drop! I found this out when experimenting with solar panels with direct USB output.
Things like cell phones are "smart", they slowly ramp up the power draw while watching the voltage. Once the voltage drops too much, they stick there. If the voltage drops any time during charging, they assume a fault condition and default to a "safe" low power state. Good ones will then ramp back up after a delay, but bad ones are stuck.
Some other "dumb" devices do similar, but they only have two levels, high port or low power.
That's why I have AccuBattery App !
@@arthurmoore9488 so they don't trust what the cable says, that's a nice feature for the user, which are probably going to plug stupid dumb cables that lie.
@@monad_tcp I think that's the old fast-charge methodology. The newer stuff negotiates. Though it would be nice if they were smart about it as well.
@@JaredConnell Amazing, only $8 for a cable with the wattage display (toocki 6' one w/ coupon). Ordered!
It would have been nice if you at least summed up the five cables that were better than the rest. Even if they were roughly equivalent to each other, I'd like to know what they were, so I can choose those cables.
8:50 Tho it'd be E or B if picking the one that passed the certification.
But also at the end he said it doesn't really matter.
And the cables are linked in the video's description.
yeah no kidding. what was the point
@@clashwithkeen He made graphs about the cables at 8:50. Just look at the price and performance comparison, then find the link to it in the video description.
The chief lesson i drew, is not to buy a longer cable than you need, especially if it will be carrying high power. And if you really need a 1-m cable, expect to pay more.
Then how would he peddle his affiliate li is without giving any useful buying information?
It would be interesting to see you disassemble worst cables and see why they are bad, is it always just because of the thin wire or there can be other reasons
the two main reasons are thin wire and aluminum wire instead of copper
and crappy connector can have high resistance
one cable I dismantled was STEEL conductor - it was 1000mm length and charging took ages
ua-cam.com/video/PDN9DU-l2oM/v-deo.html
@@rogerbeck3018wait, if you’re gonna use a cheap conductor, why go for steel lol
This is a very much needed video in this ever growing chaos of information about the USB-C as a connector vs as a power delivery mode.
Also, now I'm even happier with my UGREEN cables :D
ua-cam.com/video/PDN9DU-l2oM/v-deo.html
I can vouch for the UGREEN cables, I've used them for years and not one has died on me, great quality!
Same, and cable matters is also very good. They're actually vesa certified. I have ugreen USB cables and cablematters dp cable.
Thanks for the feedback. Good to know :-)
I also used a lot of Ugreen chargers and cables and surprisingly, are the best I ever had in all of my collection... So I can only think that it's a great manufacturer and my #1 option nowadays.
Indeed! The chargers are quite pricey, but totally worth it (and still cheaper than the "original" stuff).
Same here. I've been using UGreen USB-C 3A Magnetic Charging cables for a few years (at least 3+) and have no problems so far. It's able to efficiently charge the 33W Redmi Note 10 Pro even though it doesn't support Xiaomi's proprietary cable tech (which has a 5th pin on the USB-A end). I get basically the same performance (50% charge in 30 mins) as the phone's original cable.
This presentation of the test data and the test methodology are very clear and helpful. It reminds me of Project Farm's videos but with more engineering focus. Love this content!
ua-cam.com/video/PDN9DU-l2oM/v-deo.html
Interesting to note this video was a recommendation under a project firm video. The algorithm brought me here and I can't complain
Yes, but on Project Farm, he would also test the breaking strength of the cable and how much force it would take to remove from a device.
I have the same USB meter (FNB48S). It has a built in PD trigger function. It can also trigger QC Quick Charge and a bunch of other quick charge protocols. You don't have to use a separate PD trigger board.
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Not only cables, USB-C charges are complex as hell also. Some charges not work on some devices :/
That's mainly when the device lacks the proper signalling resistors on the USB C socket, or the charger is not good and won't supply even 5v without a full PD negotiation.
Louis Rossmann posted about that recently, how he has several chargers and devices, with only some combinations working.
@@rpavlik1 I think early revision of Raspberry Pi 4 had this issue as well.
That's true. I had brand name chargers (I think Lenovo) and brand name phone (HTC) which would not charge at all even when it had simple USB-A output. Instead it was slowly draining the phone's battery while it was showing charging indicator. Very annoying.
@@jan.tichavsky I had that once. Come back an hour later and the phone is drained more even though it was on the charger. Do I get credits from the power company for the energy I fed back into the grid? LOL
Amazing video as usual!
I only have one small note: you can't just simply multiply/divide to get a resistance/meter value, because - as you mentioned it - a lot depends on the connectors too. So x length of cable will not necessarily have double resistance compared to x/2 with the same internals and connectors, because depending on the quality, the connectors might give a higher fraction of the resistance. For example if you have a 2x resistance, where 1x is from the 2 connectors, and 1x from the cable, by having double length, you will have just 3x resistance. But that's all theoretical, we could get more accurate results only by fully disassembling them, and measuring separately the connector and the cable.
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true, to rule out the Connectors you'd be left with no choice other than to destroy one(s) and test the Wiring itself separately after testing with the Connectors. and compare to estimate the difference.
As if we all have this USB-C particulate kit for cleaning and evaluating the contact condition and alignment! Yeah that's in the room with the electron microscopes and dry nitrogen.
Very interesting. I had no idea about the E-marker chip. I assumed that the load was negotiated between the usb device and the power supply. Well done!
Well, it is, but the chip also is part of the negotiation if 5A is requested, or attempted to be drawn.
Cable is part of the electric system too. Most of electrical safety devices in your house are there to protec wires and pluggs only, in order to avoid fires.
@@AtlantisArch 'course, if you're in the USA, the breakers don't do anything if your extension cord is rated at less than the 15 or 20A circuit...
@@radellaf it was an analogy to make understand the fact that the chip, by negociating the power also acts as a safety device to ensure the cable don't overwhelm its ability. In a house the protection is choosen accordinly with the wire behind. A usb c cable without a chip is like a house without intensity protection (or close to) and thus maybe someday prone to fire.
(I'm not is the US, hope they have something like that, a long time I didn't check their practices)
@@AtlantisArch It's a good idea to have a chip, never disagreed with that. Just saying that there are 3 components: load, power supply, cable. Ideally the system could measure the cable resistance. But, a chip is better than blindly trying to draw 5 amps. The loads don't usually seem to slam up to full current, anyway; they ramp up and monitor voltage. So then the bad situation is a 5A chip cable, an incautious load, and a power supply that goes from full voltage to failure without any voltage reduction as a signal.
House wiring has overcurrent protection. Many people assume that prevents a fire when putting a 15A load on a 18awg cord set. There should be a fuse in any cord that can't take the full 15 (or 20A, these days) that the outlet will provide.
I believe part of the reason why some of those cables are over the expected voltage drop is because _you are misreading the USB spec._
The spec specifies a maximum of 500mV drop *for the Vbus line,* but it also allows *250mV drop for GND.* Measured together as a round-trip voltage drop (as your approach based on input/output voltage does) that means an allowed maximum of *750mV for the cable as a whole.*
So cables G and L actually do appear to pass as well (and C and J are within the same "extra" range for measurement error which you afforded to cable F in your own analysis).
8:07
I think you should have added % or W/100W on the Y axis and not Power loss/W under the x axis.
Minor thing though. But it takes a little longer to understand the graph.
Thanks for the feedback :-)
@@greatscottlab np. thanks for the videos, I learn a lot.
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To be fair to the cable that claims 6A charge in xiaomi, this protocol is not meant to carry them throught a single wire. I haven't looked into it in detailt, but just like my OnePlus phone, they are using one of the usb 3.0 wires to carry 3 amps each. So, unless you are tricking the power supply to work at PD 100W, this cable would not be dissipating such a high power and thus wouldn't heat to badly
yeah its probably some propritary thing that wasnt supposed to carry PD100W, and instead a propritary current and voltage via non standard pins
As always, very educational. I love your videos
Highly informative. I learned at least three things I didn't know previously within the first 4 minutes. Strong work! Many thanks!
Found this video while looking for more info on the newer FNIRSI FNB58. Just the fact that you said the Fnirsi model in the video is a useful device makes me order a FNIRSI FNB58 (which has PD triggering built-in AFAIK).
Thanks for another great video you're Great, Scott 😁
The Silicon Chip magazine published a design and made a kit for a usb cable tester about a year ago. This passes up to 1A through the power lines of the cable and measures the voltage drop across it as well as checking what pins are connected to which. I don't have any high power usb c devices, but it has been good for creating a system of tagging known good and bad cables around the home so I know they are reliable / charging only or can do higher currents.
What a great magazine! 😉
Thank you!
About the fridge, they need to draw like 5x power they rated to run at first, so 200w won’t be enough
I was thinking the same thing. The startup draw would be much higher than this battery pack.
@@ImBradCrites recently tried to run 78W rated fridge with 200W (400 peak) Power Station and got nothing. The same thing with the microwave, as it is drawing more than the mode (200\300\400 W and so on), it draws 1200 but then drops to 90~
Truly needed to know this. Thank you for creating it
Another excellent video on something that I have been curious about but didn't have time to look into.
Thanks
Many suck, yes. But from seeing opinions, testing myself, Baseus and Ugreen are great. I don't know about their lowest tier cables, but from mid-priced to higher priced are great! And by that they do what they say, have those specifications, good build quality, good connectors.
Great Scott! it's a Great Video! (always impressed by your penmanship as well - best on UA-cam)
Thanks :-)
Excellent video! There's also a connector issue usually when buying cheap cables. Microns, but enough to make the charging port/usb-c slot wiggle and get damaged in a while..
Very surprising! Thank you Scott
Remember... voltagedrop is dependent on the amperage.. if you draw 100w the drop is much higher than when you draw 50w. So according to the usb specs, You should test each cable for what they are rated for. But very interresting test!! I was always wondering what the resistances were.
Guess why high-voltage direct current (HVDC) power transmission uses a high voltage? Because for a wire running direct current, voltage drop is only proportional to resistance * current, not voltage (Ohm's law).
Please do a similar review on USB c cables bought from AliExpress, for both 1m and 2m USB C cables in the future. You have done a great job so far. Keep it up.
Is there any point in reviewing anything off of AliExpress? I don't get the feeling that you'll ever get the same item twice from there, you'll get whatever's cheap in Shenzhen that week.
Klasse! Danke , dass Du das für uns einmal ordentlich durchgetestet hast.
Great testing. I almost exclusively use Ugreen cables which I was glad to see was one you tested and that it performed quite well.
One issue I found with the cheaper (generally white plastic) cables is they tend to deform due to heat and can allow the power pins to move. Resulting in a damaged connector and/or device.
Wtf man
What? The pins are on the connector. Either way things are going wrong w. power negotiation...
Current draw. If you are charging and running some power hungry app, the cable end will start to warm up. These warm toso much the plastic melts and connectors short out.
@@viewerfrom1984 Yeah, the connector has to meet spec, not just the wire in the cable. That's pretty bad. Never seen it, hope I don't.
Another problem of USB type C cables, arguably a more important one, is that C cables are divided between data rate or power delivery. It is difficult to find a cable that is capable of both high speed communication and high speed charging.
Thunderbolt cables lmao
Thank you for subtitles! ♥
I don't know that it matters, but the noise level is clearly much lower on the scope. I don't know what you expected.
It doesn't, but there's definitely some difference
Yeah, it would not matter, 100mV at 20V is only 0.5% noise, up to 1-10% on power is certainly fine
Whats sad is everyone buying those 10ft cables not knowing it increases charging time.
Good information as expected from great Scott👍👍👌
Glad you enjoyed it
Thanks for clearing things up !
👏
Why didn't you show which cables you used and made a list Worst - Best within each lenght category?
Comparing a 30cm cable with a 2 meter cable doesn't matter if you want the best possible 2 meter cable. Most understand that a longer cable will give you a longer charging time, but if you need a long cable you still want the one that gives you the least charing time.
Besides this, I liked the video.👍
They’re all in the description though?
Doesn't help when you don't know how long he used.
Without a conclusion and recommendation, the video has limited value.
Did you check the usb-c cable that comes with MacBook Pro? I’m really curious to see how it compares with cheap Chinese ones
My god, you got some good hand writing! 😅😆👌🏻 amazing technical and informative breakdown! Been looking to get a new cable, but been researching them for a bit first.
Great measurement and analysis!
Assuming otherwise similar construction, shorter cables will be at a disadvantage in the resistance/length test.
personally i think its an advantage since the shorter a cable is the less resistance its going to get overall even if you include it's not like the other longer cables magically lose there connectors.
@@DatBoiOrly I'm not sure what you mean. The resistance/length of a non-faulty section in the middle of a cable will be less than the resistance/length of the entire cable + any connections included in the measurement.
@@davidlapierre4058 it should be around the same given the larger cables also have the connectors and if they were the same gauge wire then the results would be the same no matter the length if they were made identically just differing so its equal at worse. the reason i said the short cables have an advantage is the longer a cable is the more resistance it gets the more it loses to heat esc esc so the problems are compounded more than what the division takes off making it seem worse than it actually is compared to short cables which have lower amounts of these issues and are divided by a lower amount. i can't really see it being unfair to the shorter cables only equal or an advantage
@@DatBoiOrly I think you have some misunderstandings here. Imagine two cables of identical construction, except that the one is 1 meter long, and the other is 2 meters. In almost any case, the resistance/length of the connector itself (plus the additional resistance to the probe points) will be higher than the resistance/length of the wire, therefore the resistance of the 2 m cable will be LESS than twice the resistance of the 1 m cable, and the longer cable will have a better overall resistance/length value.
It is of course possible that a very good connector is used with extremely undersized power wires, but that should rarely happen, if ever.
This was good. Nice work. USB-C manufacturing has been an absolute mess for years. Really hope it gets better.
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USB c cables might as well be seen as disposable as alkaline batteries, they are found everywhere, just about every grocery store has a gazillion of these things, obviously the companies who sell them know that people break them all the time which they are designed and manufactured to do. If i were buying such a cable i would get the cheapest one cause the more expensive ones isn't going to be any different in terms of longevity.
@@HansensUniverseT-A The better cables (price is an imperfect indicator of quality) most DEFINITELY do last longer than the mediocre ones.
Hey Scott. I love your videos, I already follow you couple of years. Always valuable content, very usefull as well. Keep going and I'll go for patreon you.
The schematic that shows how they're measuring it shows it as 500mV drop *at 5V* supply.
The text shown doesn't specify what voltage they're using which is kind of weird because the voltage drop should be linear with the supply voltage, but USB does use 5V as the base voltage except when specifically triggered into a higher voltage so it make sense that this would be the default. So I expect pretty much all measurements are at 5V.
If that's the requirement we can extrapolate that it correspond to a 2V drop at 20V, which only one cable exceeded and two got somewhat close (~1.5V) and 10 was well below the limit.
It is the current you should consider as that is what causes the delta V. Since usb specifies 5v at 3A with a 500mV for the 20v at 5A that would imply 833mV is the requirement.
@@Turbochargedtwelve Yep, checks out. 500mV at 3A would be 0.17 ohms, times 5A = 833mV.
The best cable I've gotten to this day came from harbor freight of all places. It's 2m long without the noticable charging slowdown that sometimes comes with extra length, and hasn't had any issues living in a pocket for years. I think the wire gauge they use was right on the package, and I honestly wish that was required
Yes. You can't rely on them saying "fast charge". I had one that specified that but was abysmal. I ended up buying one that specified the wire gauge and it did well until it got damaged.
Nice video mate. Good work
This video is great! I always learn new details watching your videos, if only I could make videos that well, the time and effort is amazing. I felt I had to comment since I have a bunch of these tested (like 150 or so cables) and found that yes some of the USB A to USB C cables can be quite bad while the USB C to C cables generally tend to be okay. Anyways, if you want the data let me know and I'll get a link over somehow, also curious if my method is okay and if any of the data compares.
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Thanks for all the testing. Could you update description with exact model numbers in the description. Preferably from the box. Not just links to the amazon, as it is hard to buy from other sources.
I think it would be best to use cables of the same length for testing.
Because when converting to ohm/m a short cable wil be disadvantaged if that contact resistance is relatively big and long cables will be disadvantaged if the wire resistance is relatively big
If the relevant metric is the voltage drop, a short cable could use a thinner gauge than a long one, and still be within specs.
@@TheSrSunday the relevant spec is impedance. And the plug itself has an impedance as well. And it's entirely possible for it to be quite different from actual cable impedance.
Therefore, for fair testing, test the cable both with and without the plug, or use cables of the same length
I've had some very variable quality cables over the years. I am planning to make a rig so I can throw away the worst. I was thinking of making a video along these lines but you've saved me the bother.
I _wiiish_ you would've included a Tether Tools cable in this comparison.
I'd love to know if photographers and videographers are really just paying for the orange jacket.
Loved this video!
Hello Scott, when you determined which cables do not comply with the specs.. you compared 500mV drop with the voltaje drop you measured between input and output.. but I think you must have included the 250mV allowed for GND.. In other words, cables with a total voltaje drop of 750mV (500+250) or less should have been considered as compliant, shouldn't them?
You are right. Although we don't know if they would pass unless he were to measure the ground voltage drop. The drop there could be a fair bit lower if they have a proper braided copper shield.
Came to say the same thing. Correct way to measure is power adapter positive to cable end connector positive and vice versa for gnd
I've been swearing by UGreen for a while now, good quality and love their angled usb c cables, great for using the phone while charging!
They've been good for me, and I hear they have a good rep in China. Baseus, too.
*Thank you* for this Mode C cable education. It is greatly appreciated.
I already owned an XYZYZ cable and can vouch for them! It's the only cable I've bought that hasn't stopped working or fallen apart after a few months. They are a little stiff but feel nice and sturdy.
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It would be great if you also could test OEM cables like Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei, OnePlus, Apple and so on. I work in a electronics store and get often asked if the original cables are better than Hama or Anker.
Not sure if they are better, but they are very good. (Well, the android ones. Apple uses a bad plastic type which goes brittle after some time).
At least my samsung, acer and xiaomi cables last ages (some are over 10 years old and still work well after almost daily usage). LG seems to bundle shitty cables (or I was just unlucky), my two LG bundled cables broke rather soon.
But in general I wonder how people break their charging cables so fast... Most of mine still work great, even flimsy cheap ones. However the data connection is often unreliable on these.
@@TheRailroad99 My Samsung cables were always the better ones but I'm seeing the plastic sleeve get brittle on one I used a lot.
Fantastic testing, dude! Thanks a bunch! 😃
Stay safe and creative there! 🖖😊
Love your gag on greater power comes with greater responsibility, gave me my laugh of the day, thanks
Nice test. It's something I have been wondering about for a long time. As usual with everything the USB "standard" does, USB-C is a *mess* but it's what we're stuck with so tests like this really help!
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Now it makes sense that my 2m cable charges slower than the 30cm one...
Btw, it's a weird context here, but I have to say that your channel is the best advertisement for those Stabilo fixes... you should be definitely paid by them for influencing souls of youtube viewers. I just saw them in my local Kaufland on a discount, so I bought big pack because I remember seeing them in your every video for years. Well, now I have shitload of colourful fixes, more then I ever used in my entire life. And I thought I'm totally imunne to this kind of subconscious marketing. Sigh. Good job, man, good job.
In my experience there is really big problem to buy good quality USB cables. I think that power loss is only half of the problem. Data transfers is much worse, because poor quality is more significant with distance to extent that device not work at all! I always buy thickest cable I can find and also with gold plated connectors, but even then only 1 of 3 is as advertised!
Interesting! For reliability, I use high quality Thunderbolt cables which seem to be pretty robust with fatter conductor’s inside the cable. Testing these cables will quickly get expensive though.
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So Great Scott, of the bunch, which cable would you buy if you had to buy a cable today?
I really like the one with the display. The display is very helpful and the resistance was Okay.
@@greatscottlab Thanks.
Thank u for this video ! much luv from Brazil
I love that you write out all of the equations.
I’ve made a few of these measurements myself and find similar results. Certainly helps to measure the voltage differentially across the VBUS rather than 2 separate measurements to GND.
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Who would have guessed without your graph that the quality of these USB-C cables was so impacted by their color? 😁
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such a good videos you make!
Thanks for this well done and informative video.
Good info you should use digital pen so you can draw thicker lines and not waste time double tracing each letter
Those markers are his signature (heh) style!
I like it my way though ;-)
It would be "great Scott", if you could also do this test for transfering data :D
I have big problems to use USB 3.0/1 for my Intel Realsense D145 (master thesis), but i need more than 1,8 meters of cable
As always nice videos!
Yeah, I can understand why he wouldn't test for video and audio, but data transfer speed 100% should have also been tested as that is also a major deal breaker for some people. Many people will want to use the same cable to charge and transfer data, so testing both is kind of important. I have a bunch of Anker cables only to find out they were USB 2.0 and not 3.0 / 3.1 speeds. This is annoying when my phone supports 3.1 but the cable only transfers 2.0.
Now, I will admit, it was my fault for not doing more research and missing it said USB 2.0. I would have gone with USB 3.1 if I had seen it. However, these companies expect people to either not notice or know the difference in speeds, so sell lower quality cables than they should. I do plan to get a 3.0 to 3.1 cable, even if it isn't Anker because transfer speed matters more to me than charging (since all these cables are fast-charge anyway).
E-Markers are part of the USB-PD (Power Delivery) standard, which is a separate standard from USB 2.x/3.x themselves. USB 3.x itself only supports a maximum current of 900 mA (500 mA for USB 2) and only if a device requests that much power. If a device requests nothing, it may only draw 150 mA (100 mA for USB 2) at most. If an USB power plug supports USB-BC (Battery Charging), again a separate standard, which only requires some resistors for detection, they can draw up to 1.5 A. Most plugs do support BC today and most devices still use it for charging (that's because in the EU supporting this standard is required by law for products to be sold there). Only if you need even more, you need to use USB-PD instead. When using PD, the cable must tell plug and device what it is capable of and the device must tell the plug what power it desires (5 V, 12 V, or 20 V and up to 5 A are supported). Starting with PD 3.1, also 28 V, 36 V, and 48 V are possible at 5 A, resulting in up to 240W power delivery.
I have dissembled a few, based on a huch that bad cables were causing faults on some autonomous systems. They were shocking. No sheilding, straight through instead of twisted pair for data, less than minimum copper size. We had to give a full specification to the manufacturer, cut open a few to confirm, and test the cables with HF source and spec analyzer.
Given that the total resistance would be Rconn + Rwire + Rconn, it might be worthwhile trying to organize the cables by length to hopefully compare like for like with only the wire length affecting the comparison in a subgroup. Granted not all connector resistances are equal but I suspect the cable gauge/quality will be the biggest differentiator. You could measure temperature at the junction to see if certain cables heat up more or less at the connector.
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" With great power comes the problem of *great resistivity*". There, I fixed it for ya'.....
Thank you, Scott. This is a really good video.
This information is highly useful for us USB powered soldering users. Like the Pinecil and TS100
I had used a ton of different cables in the past that all seemed to burn out in a couple months. I got an Anker cable and it seemed so superior to all the others I stuck with it. Are there better cables than Anker that arent 2 or 3 times the cost?
I actually started to have trouble with Anker a couple of years ago, tried a few others, now I buy only JSAUX off Amazon.
@@John_Ridley I am going to make a somewhat bold claim, there is no such thing as good reliable well made USB c anything cables, neither are made to last, when you remove all that fancy wrapping they're all very fragile pieces.
@@HansensUniverseT-A eh Thunderbolt 4 cables seem to be pretty solid but lets be honest they're in a whole different price class!
Ugreen and Baseus seem to make solid stuff. Aukey, too, though they got booted off the 'zon.
Mrwhosetheboss just released a video yesterday testing the Xiami Redmi Note 12 Discovery's charging. That thing charges at 210W (Yes, two hundred and ten watts, you read that right). If the 100W cable already reaches 40°C, that thing probably melts the insulation off :D
Glowing cable? Why not, its like led strips 🤣
Nice Video!
But I think you misunderstood something with the voltage drop. As the graph at 9:31 shows you got 500mV drop over the positive wire and a maximum of 250mV drop over the GND wire. Combined that would make up to 750mV of voltagedrop. But this rating would only change the outcome of two cables.
Finding a good usb c cable is litteraly hell, so great video!
Yes! Thank you!
Wow! This is really useful information!
Dang, I'm gonna be buying some 10 foot and maybe a 20 foot USB c cables here soon and I've always assumed that there's something that could be better, I was hoping you would be able to at least direct me towards ones to look for but it seems like I'm still kinda on my own.
Best I know to do is buy 100W cables. I have no 5A loads and presume that they handle 20-60W better- no guarantee tho.
You won't get even USB 1 data rates over that. Use a power cable (AC or DC fittings as you like) and have a USB PD converter on the end. Your friends will all try to borrow your USB-C brick then realize it's just a Type A multiple socket converter...
@@Cineenvenordquist Yeah, just looked it up to be sure but 16 ft is the upper limit for USB 2.0, without a repeater cable, if you want any data. And also "yeah", might as well extend the AC power vs the DC end, if you need more than 10-15'
Another USB-C video, nice!
Bad cables could give usb-c a bad reputation, so it's cool that you're adressing this issue.
True. I hope this problem does not get worse in the future :-)
USB-C already has a very bad reputation in my eyes. Especially 'cause it's near-impossible to tell whether a given laptop will support charging via it's USB-C port other than testing it after you've already bought it. My current laptop has Thunderbolt 4 which apparently requires it to be able to charge via USB-C, but mine doesn't. Turns out that only counts if the laptop's normal charger is 100W or less.
Good load test under load.
You could make some Kelvin leads for your Key-sight meter and measure the cable resistance directly.
Heard a few UA-camrs saying they've had a fair voltage drop with the fancy cable with the built in display.
In my tests the display one actually performed among the best. I initially thought it would perform poorly because of the current shunt. But apparently not in my case✌️
@@greatscottlab my apple usb c is just fine and will be for years.
The best compact USB connector in my experience is the USB mini b, it just works, they're very solid and can handle the daily abuse, the we got a step down with the micro USB and now with the none sense of USB c.
Nonsense of USB C? Bruh USB c is the best of everything objectively. From build quality, bidirectionality, ease of use, durability, etc
2:32 would love to see a video for all other three aspects than just power.
Great video! I am still using micro USB as I am still using my phone from 2015. But when it is time to change to USB-C I know how to test my cables now :D
Beware, do not trust people talking about Watts without mentioning the applied Voltage when testing conductors. Amperage is the Industry standard for that. It makes no sense, especially since USB C cables are used with Voltages from 5 to 20 Volts like for Dell laptops. Watts = VoltsxAmps! The proper way to describe the this is using Amps, because the Voltage can be ignored using Amps. That is why fuses and cables are rated in Amps not Watts, a 15Amp breaker will trigger at 15Amp 10Volt =150W, 100Volt = 1,500W or 1,000 Volt = 15,000W. . Halfass education
TLDR: unless you need to power your fridge with a USB cable, they pretty much all do the same thing.
No some do 60+ watt others do only 5 watt, sometimes not working at all
It's all giggles and sebum until James Cameron makes a movie where things are wrong with the cables.
very dense video, learned a lot !! thanks