Techies hailed USB-C as the future of cables when it hit the mainstream market with Apple’s single-port MacBook in 2015. It was a huge improvement over the previous generation of USB, allowing for many different types of functionality — charging, connecting to an external display, etc. — in one simple cord, all without having a “right side up” like its predecessor.
Five years later, USB-C is near-ubiquitous: Almost every modern laptop and smartphone has at least one USB-C port, with the exception of the iPhone, which still uses Apple’s proprietary Lightning port. For all its improvements, USB-C has become a mess of tangled standards — a nightmare for consumers to navigate despite the initial promise of simplicity.
Especially the charging situation with USB-C can be a nightmare. I honestly have no clue which of my U SB-C devices can fast-charge with which charger and which cable, and I just keep plugging stuff in until it works. Add in all my fiancée’s devices, and it’s… Messy.
It works as long as you avoid cheaper stuff.
Some (random) recommendations:
Charger:
Apple Type-C Laptop Charger: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MX0J2AM/A/96w-usb-c-power-adapter
At 96W, this should be compatible with most phones and laptops, including Windows ones.
Dock:
Dell 190W Type-C Dock: https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Docking-Station-Delivery-DisplayPort/dp/B07S3XHMP1
Provides enough power for high end laptops, and can also hook up your keyboard, mouse, monitor, and ethernet devices. The only issue is lack of 4K@60Hz due to technical limitations
Thunderbolt:
Can’t make a direct recommendation, because I don’t use one. The difference would be being able to drive multiple 4K monitors at high refresh rates.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=thunderbolt+dock&ref=nb_sb_noss_2
But this one (Lenovo) seems to be highly rated:
https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkPad-Thunderbolt-40AN0135US-Capability/dp/B07M6S81CM
Overall you get what you pay for.
That’s your perspective as someone that is highly knowledgeable and only has to deal with your own stuff. even then the lack of 4k at 60hz is a deal breaker. Here’s the issue I face, again dealing with just high end devices I bought, The first device I bought came with a black charger. The second device came with a black charger. The third device came with a black charger. The fourth device came with a black charger. The first one can be charged by any of the chargers. The second can only be slowly charged by the first, or fast charged with the second, third and forth. The third only works with the third and the fourth charger. The fourth only works with the forth charger.
You can imagine the difficulty I have. Sure I could throw the first, second, third away and replace them with new chargers. But man, then I’ll just get another device that comes with a crappy black charger equivalent to the first. Its kind of expensive and silly to buy those premium chargers for every device. Its kind of hell. There are also a lot of device communication issues where certain devices need certain cords to transfer data with the pc. I can’t figure out why. They are all highly rated cords, all devices using the same usb 3 standard. But I guess different controllers on each device? its bewildering. I just plug things in until they work, or discover hours later that the device never changed because it was the wrong black usb c charger.
Crappy chargers were an issue before type-C, and I don’t think any standard can fix it:
Raspberry PI works with non-standard charger only:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/07/raspberry-pi-4-uses-incorrect-usb-c-design-wont-work-with-some-chargers/
OnePlus came with non-standard cables:
https://www.theverge.com/2015/11/16/9742360/oneplus-usb-type-c-cable-adapter
These are well known instances. Random devices from unknown manufacturers will definitely have even more issues.
So, just throw away those “black” chargers, and get one (or two) good ones. In terms of broken “devices”, frankly there is no easy solution.
The chargers aren’t crappy, its the standard. Devices that require a higher current to charge don’t charge on the low current devices. My ipad doesn’t charge on the usb charger that came with my cheapo wireless headphones, or any of the phone chargers I have. The chargers are compliant doing exactly what the standard says. So is the ipad. If you ask me part of the standard should have been a number on each cable and port that specified the min charging standard. If the charger has a one on it and the device has a 3, it won’t charge. But if the charger has a 3 it can charge any device up to a 3. There were ux ways to make everything much easier to understand and use, but they didn’t either think of them or they cared more about appearance than ease of use…
I have one of those Lenovo docks – very nice device, compatible with everything. Charges my phone when the computer is not plugged in, etc.
Well, except 4k monitors…. I also had one.
Are you sure you had the same model?
Thunderbolt 3 can drive 2 4K monitors at 60hz. It is essentially DisplayPort pass-thru.
Or are you sure your system supports that resolution?
You can check the reviews on that product page. Many people report success with dual 4K displays (and some others complain about Lenovo quality control issues).
My fairly new (couple of months) Motorola One Hyper came with a USB-C Power Delivery charger, with an odd cable sporting two small USB-C connectors. Unfortunately, negotiation between the charger and the phone regularly fails (or so I assume), and the phone fails to charge. My wife has an Older Moto G6 Plus, also with a power charger, with a normal USB-C cable. When I use it, my phone charges fine (haven’t noticed any difference in charging speed), and when my wife uses the charger coming with my phone, she also has no problems charging. Welcome in the wonderful world of USB-C…
People seem to forget that older USB cables had the same problem. Some charged faster, some charged slower. My advice is simply to throw away crappy cables.
I like the fact that I can have a single charger for my phone and both my laptops. I like the fact that I can have a single cable with a standard port connected from my screen to my laptop that drives power, screen, USB, etc. I like the fact that I don’t have to guess which side I should turn the USB cable when connecting.
USB-C is not perfect, or course, but it’s objectively better than previous USB standards by any measure.
That’s more to do with the charger than the cable.
Same charger, different cables, different charging speeds. Don’t get me wrong, of course charges have a huge part to play, I’m just saying that cables are a part of the equation as well.
I’ve had the same issues with USB 3 with the A type connector. The cable matters. A lot of cheap cables don’t seem able to fast charge. Despite the issues USB-C has it’s still a huge simplification over the previous USB standard mess.
Indeed. Everything is a mess when a new USB spec gets implemented. With some time, everything gets worked out, and people forget about the chaos.
This time next year the penny cables on Amazon will work well enough with only a 20% chance of catching something on fire.
A single standard is super underrated. I remember stuff coming with proprietary cables, and having to move addin cards between machines.
And the external enclosures with multiple ports on them. USB, eSATA, and Firewire. I want to say there was a fourth port which was common, but I can’t think of what it could be.
Yes, but older USB standards didn’t define half a dozen alternate communication modes. That’s where the main issue with USB-C lies, it’s rare for a device to support all of them, the _cable_ has to support them too, almost nothing documents what alternate modes it supports, and literally nothing reports to the user if it can’t communicate with the device on the other end in one of the required modes for that device’s functionality so you’re left guessing where the issue is when things don’t work.
It’s only marginally better than the old microcomputer-era standard of using DE-9 connectors for damn near everything, and that’s only because connecting incompatible USB-C devices is not likely to risk destroying hardware.
Seriously, I’m tried to this “new”. People who says that is plainly put stupid.
USB-C simplify our lives. The ignorant cheapo guys who guys crap hardware are the total mess. FULL STOP.
As a computer engineer… USB-C simplified nothing the driver side is ultra complex, and introduced a weaker host connector than USB-A and more prone to shell rip out than USB-MicroB
The ripping problem isn’t inherent to USB-C or USB Micro for that matter, it is down to the design that vendors have adopted. I have securely anchored USB Micro connectors to my PCB designs with large solder pad “wings” on either side of the connector. And there are/have been micro connectors that have through hole anchors, or larger pads.
I am not sure what you mean by the driver side. If you mean device drivers, they are fairly straightforward in most OSs. If you are talking the low level OS driver, sure it is a bit more complicated. However if you are talking about what it takes to make the interface driver IC then yes I agree that is very complicated. Which level are you talking about?
Well, whatever is the cause of the ripping problem, it’s the first port I’ve ever had break on all of the mobile devices I’ve had over the years. Every night is a struggle to try to get the cable to make a connection with what’s left of my phone’s USB-C port. Luckily I believe my phone supports wireless charging, so I’m going to order a wireless charger and use that instead.
Regarding the driver, I’ve heard that they’re a huge pain to write for USB 3.0. It’s reportedly due to the fact that it supports so many different types of charging as well as different versions of DisplayPort. I believe the driver has to determine the maximum charging power after negotiating with the full signal path of charging source, charging cable, and charging destination. The situation is similar for DisplayPort since the amount of bandwidth among all peripherals will determine the resolutions and refresh rates that can be transmitted.
As far as being user-friendly, it’s certainly not. If you don’t get the desired transfer speeds, charging speeds, or display resolutions or refresh rates, you have to undergo a bunch of troubleshooting to determine if the problem is with the source, destination, or cable. This is determined by all of the devices in the signal chain supporting the same minimum version of USB3 (USB 3.1 Gen 1, USB 3.1 Gen 2, USB 3.2 Gen 1×1, USB 3.2 Gen 2×1, USB 3.2 Gen 1×2, or USB 3.2 Gen 2×2) as well as DisplayPort (1.3, 1.4, 1.4a, 2.0, etc). And since the ports and cables are so small, there’s pretty much no way to realistically label all of the features and versions that the device or cable supports. This problem will hopefully sort itself out after we max out bandwidth and charging for all reasonable use cases but in the meantime it seems like a circus.
Disclaimer: am not going to address your third paragraph, as it isn’t something I brought up
My point about the “ripping problem” is that it is solvable, and we should demand that it is solved by our vendors, but that it isn’t a problem that is inherent to USB.
Most of what you described aren’t driver issues, they are chipset issues. Yes it is hard to implement USB at the chipset level, but once it is done it is done. The interface to the hardware isn’t much different between USB 1 and USB-C. You are talking hardware not software (and yes I know the hardware has firmware on it, but it isn’t something that the OS is generally concerned with, or often can touch)
jockm,
For many people I think there were inherent issues with micro-USB. Most of the criticism USB gets for that standard is well deserved. Unfortunately the device side connector would often fail rendering the whole device useless. Despite the official specs claiming the opposite, micro-USB was significantly flimsier than the previous mini-USB. To this day I still try to find arduinos with more robust mini-USB connectors because micro-USB is junk. So far USB-C is proving to be much better than micro-USB, I really appreciate how it can be inserted either way, although I still need more time to judge how robust this new standard will be over time.
https://www.cablestogo.com/learning/connector-guides/usb
USB-B was pretty robust, and I still see it alot in larger devices like printers/UPS connectors. I’m glad it’s there because it’s much stronger against cables getting tugged around, but admittedly it’s rather large, haha – still there are times when that’s desirable for more rugged environments. To be honest, I wouldn’t mind the USB-B (or USB3 B type) connector instead of USB-C for a monitor, IMHO in this case making it more robust is more important than making it small.
This could have all been avoided by requiring clear labeling on USB-C ports and cables. Instead we’ve got “identical” ports that don’t all support the same things (thank you Apple and your quest for completely blank devices), and “identical” cables that behave differently (4k @ 30Hz HDMI cables vs 4k @ 60Hz HDMI cables for example). And that’s ignoring the USB-C dongle collections… does this one support “enough” power delivery? Does that one support 4k @ 60Hz for displays? Can you use both display ports at the same time? USB-A 3 ports working while you’re using Ethernet?
And then there are the $500-ish uber-dongles from the likes of Dell and Lenovo that somehow only work properly in Windows and that require more firmware updates than the computer they’re connected to. And that seem to be about as good as $50 generic USB-C dongles with random company branding on them.
Just. Label. Things, dammit.
I’m no expert on USB-C, but it seems better than anything we’ve had before.
Yes, there are different charging speeds… but some charging is better than no charging. This all seems pretty safe as well, as no matter what I plug in, nothing blows up or overheats 🙂 This is actually a great achievement. I have a nice USB hub from Amazon and it has a few ports which are fast charging and the rest regular charging.
It doesn’t matter which way you plug it in. Another great achievement.
I don’t have a lot of experience with USB-C displays or anything like that, but I’m assuming if you buy *the best* cable, it will work. And that ‘the best’ cable will also work with the ‘the best’ charging. Seems okay.
And yes, I do wish sometimes a simply label might help people.
It fascinates me how everyone likes to fixate on the charging speed thing. That’s been an issue since USB started to be used for charging things, it’s not new to USB-C and it’s not ever going away. And despite that USB-C _has_ improved some things there (for example, I can use my USB-C capable phone as a power-bank to charge my headset if I absolutely need to, which was pretty much never possible before USB-C).
The real issue that nobody ever seems to want to mention in news articles is the alternate-mode handling., namely:
* Just about nothing documents (even in the user manual) what alternate modes it supports. This would be bad enough on single-port devices, but it’s compounded by the fact that many devices with multiple ports support a different set of alternate-modes on at least one port than they do on the others.
* The cable you use has to support everything you care about, and the cables are _never_ labeled. It was bad enough with HDMI where you might just get lower quality video because you used a (similarly unlabeled) cable that can only support a lower refresh rate or resolution than your source and sink devices, but with USB-C if the cable doesn’t support what you need, things just don’t work at all.
* Almost nothing properly notifies the user if it can’t negotiate the type of connection it needs. If I use a cable that’s only wired for USB 2.0 to try and connect my laptop to a monitor, I should damn well be notified that it can’t negotiate a DP or HDMI alternate mode instead of it just not working at all (especially because the devices _know_ this, they will have tried to negotiate it and found that the cable can’t handle it).
IMHO, the charging speed isn’t so much an issue as that some devices will only charge/power on with technically standards compliant but rare power supplies over USB-C. If those devices failed back to standard 5V whatever Amp charging over USB-C where their custom voltage wasn’t available that’d help a lot.
Alternate modes you covered quite well.
Evergreening prior standard revisions is a problem too tho, with results intertwined with the alternate mode stuff.
When USB 1.1 came out, it replaced 1.0. When USB 2 came out, it replaced 1.1. USB 3, when it came out, did technically replace USB 2 (though in the micro space especially USB 2 persisted because the connectors were atrocious – but it was understood it was an older, slower technology).
With USB 3, every revision retains and rebrands the previous USB 3 speeds as “current” and just adds new ones. This seems to just be to keep device vendors’ marketing teams happy. It means that if you get, for example, a USB 3.2 device (or cable), it can in fact be SLOWER than a USB 3.1 device (or cable), because they rebranded 3.0 as USB 3.2 Gen 1.
This article only has bad arguments:
“Anyone going all-in on USB-C will run into problems with an optional standard called Power Delivery.”
Only USB2.0 is mandated on USB-C. Everything else is optional. If you did mandate more you would increase the price of every device with USB-C which is dumb.
“If you buy a USB-C charger that doesn’t support Power Delivery and try to use it with a Microsoft Surface, for example, the laptop will complain that it’s “not charging” despite receiving some power.”
Normal consumers will use the cable and charger that you bought with the device. If they want another they go to the store and say: “I want a charger for the Microsoft Surface.”
“Then there’s DisplayPort and Thunderbolt, another set of standards supported by some USB-C devices. DisplayPort allows the use of an external display, such as a 4K monitor, but only supports one at a time at full resolution.”
Like every other display cable.
“Thunderbolt, yet another optional standard, is a much faster layer on top of USB-C that allows additional possibilities, like the use of multiple displays daisy-chained from a single port”
Displayport supports daisy chaining. Not Thunderbolt.
“While DisplayPort is relatively universal on devices with USB-C ports, Thunderbolt support is a patchwork and requires both devices being plugged in to support it.”
Most USB-C ports are USB2.0. After that USB3.0. Every standard requires both devices to support it.
“Despite working in the tech industry and having a deep interest in gadgets, I tripped over this recently when trying to buy a new monitor: I wanted to be able to chain two of them off a single port and discovered that I’d not only need to buy a specific screen to achieve this”
You wanted to use a new and unproven technology and found out that new stuff still has problems. If daisy chaining ever becomes more mainstream it will just be a sticker on the box telling you that it has that feature.
“it feels like spinning the wheel every time I plug something in: Will it behave the way I expect?”
Well you can choose from 3 cables: cheap, power, data/display
And you can choose which device you connect it to: cheap charger, original charger, high end charger
The only good argument is that it could be slighty simpler:
when you plug in a usb-c connector the system should popup a message saying what you plugged in and what it supports.