USB Cables

USB-C is a connector shape and nothing more, and treating it as a specification is the most expensive mistake available in this category. Two cables with identical plugs on both ends can differ by a factor of twenty in data rate and by a factor of four in the power they may legally carry, and neither difference is visible from the outside. That is why length in metres, connector type, data rate in gigabits per second and rated wattage are separate structured fields here rather than words in a title. Two rules govern the rest. Anything carrying more than three amps needs an electronically marked chip in the plug to negotiate it, so a sixty-watt claim with no e-marker is a claim about copper and not about what a laptop will actually draw. And speed falls off with length: the fastest passive cables are short as a matter of physics, so a three-metre cable advertised at the highest data rate deserves a question before it deserves an order.