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Google Engineer Warns Against Perils of Buying Cheap, Third-Party USB-C Cables (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: A USB-C cable is just a cable. Or is it? Google engineer Benson Leung noted today that it's definitely not the case. Leung and his teammates at Google work inside of the Chromebook ecosystem, and as such, they've had lots of hands-on experience with USB-C cables. The Chromebook Pixel remains one of the very few notebooks on the market that directly supports USB-C. Nonetheless, in his experience, not all cables are built alike, and in some cases, cheap out-of-spec cables could potentially cause damage to your device. It's such a big problem, in fact, that Leung began buying cables off of Amazon and leaving his feedback on each one. Ultimately, what the problem boils down to is that some of the specifications in a cable may be not well controlled. He notes that in some bad cables, resistor values are incorrect, throwing off power specs wildly — 3A vs 2A in one example.
which is why i only buy Gold plated, oxygen free, twisted pair, sheathed Monster cables for $99.99 each. I can see the difference
I bought a few packs of USB-C male and female connectors from China (to use for a non-USB application) and they were really junk. Looked like USB-C but the tolerances were terrible. Too soon for competitive quality forces to have kicked in, I suppose, but they didn't just make these bad connectors to annoy me - they must be out there in the wild too.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Like health inspectors checking restaurants for bad food or procedures, isn't there an independent company that can randomly test and certify USB cables?
The answer to this is: They have. I'm sure that you'll find sources if you google.
I'm not so sure about cables, but exploit devices have been found in usb chargers in airports.
I don't read AC A human right
The problem is that the average Joe has no way to judge true quality at the time of purchase. It seems the best he can do is perhaps not buy the absolute cheapest. But what about one step up in price from that? Is that "good enough", or still junk? This is a basic flaw in capitalism: for it to work "best", the consumer must know what he is buying. In a world with unknowable and constantly changing suppliers for components, what was a "good" quality product one year could easily become "junk" next year.
Known "quality" brands that cost more would seem to be the answer to this problem, but they face pressure to lower costs in order to increase profits, so this doesn't seem to be a permanent answer either...
In the face of this, people just buy cheap, since they can't judge quality, hope it doesn't break, and when it does, just buy another cheap one. Explained in this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
USB-C could have been such an awesome standard. But when I read about all the possible feature variations (http://www.kitguru.net/desktop-pc/anton-shilov/not-all-usb-type-c-ports-are-equal-nine-implementations-of-usb-c-incoming/), I can only shake my head. While it's very cool, especially with integrated thunderbolt support, the idea of splitting it into different versions is just gonna cause nightmares.
We're going to enter an age where people tear their hair out because everyone has the same port, but one person can do one thing with it but another person cannot. The whole HDMI versions confusion is gonna look tame compared to the confusion USB C will cause.
why is it that your libruls answer to everything is always more big government interference with jerb creators ?!!
If people don't like getting salmonella poisoning, they'll post bad reviews on Yelp. Another win for the invisibul holy ghost hand of the market !!!
I took a picture of my USB cable and showed it to an expert and he just said "I'll show you later". I don't get it.
Benson is a pretty fantastic engineer. He dots the i's and crosses the t's, which is somewhat rare these days.
I hope Puneet (if Puneet is still his manager, as he was Benson's and mine, when I worked with Benson) is having Google pay for the cables he's buying, instead of Benson paying for them out of pocket.
In any case, definitely take his Amazon reviews to heart: he knows what the hell he is doing, and he knows which end is the probe and which end goes in the meter. If he says a cable sucks, it sucks, and if he says it's good, it's good.
Seems to me that it would be a faulty design that requires a 'cable' to need any electronics at all.
Just like anything with a jack, you can't really trust anything that may get plugged into it.
Wires, wrapping, and shielding, sure. Electronics (caps, resistors, etc.) should be in the devices themselves, and devices when encountering bad cables should always fail 'safe'.
I worked on the first usb 3.0's for Apple. Same problem. We ended up buying nearly every different cable we could find and doing a tolerance study. Things varied so widely that the mouse i was using on my workstation was out of spec! The standards are CRAP. INTENTIONALLY. The mechanical tolerance standards read: for example the height of the internal spring contacts like 3mm max. no...minimum? pretty sure this thing ain't gonna work if the contacts don't...you know...touch anything. I had an internew w/ some asshat at Tyco - (they also make connectors) When i mentioned that the USB standards are crap, he said "oh yeah. we do that too. intentionally. We spend a lot of time developing the connectors to work properly and then because we HAVE to open source the standard, we'll obfuscate things such that we can gain a competitive advantage. Our cables and connectors work out of the box, or other companies are going to have to spend a couple months figuring things out w/ reliability testing before they can release a quality package. I about walked out of the interview at that point. Who signs their name to something that is intentionally a POS?? Speaking w/ the EE's at Apple, the signal integrity was written just as bad as the mechanical. Components of the signal integrity that would be controlled separately by the receptacle were lumped in with the cable. Just all junk. According to one guy Intel outsourced the design of the standard to india/china and just accepted the crap they gave them (because intel doesn't have like ... any mechanical engineers working there)
J
What's the difference between Joe's blog and Amazon.com customer reviews?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Gods no. The important thing is that the cable be capable of carrying the current the device requests. If the resistors were just in the device, then it would have no idea if the cable you've used to connect it to the hub is thick enough to carry the current it is about to draw.
well, we wouldnt have to buy third party cables if google actually gave us cables with the products we buy. i got myself a nexus 5x when it came out. it came with 1 3 ft usb-c to usb-c cable and no adapter to normal usb. i couldnt even plug the damned thing into my computer until the cables i ordered off amazon got here.
I mentioned them in a comment to this post yesterday:
Benson Leung Yesterday 8:27 AM
I have it on good authority that Monoprice's cables and accessories are compliant. I need to write a review though, maybe in a few days.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Here's the list of cables that he tested, from the TFA. There are ten of them
http://amzn.to/1MlG3g3
A decade or so ago the company I worked at had to repeatedly advise customers to use FTDI or Silicon Labs based USB-serial converters with our products. It got to the point that it was the first question on the tech support script. The cheaper converters based on Prolific chipsets were incredibly unreliable but customers kept buying them because on ebay one converter appears much the same as another.
Actually, I think he's saying the person who can afford to work only 8 hours x 5 days is less tired and less likely to make mistakes than someone who must work 14 x 7. I don't think location had anything to do with his comment.
A decade or so ago the company I worked at had to repeatedly advise customers to use FTDI or Silicon Labs based USB-serial converters with our products. It got to the point that it was the first question on the tech support script. The cheaper converters based on Prolific chipsets were incredibly unreliable but customers kept buying them because on ebay one converter appears much the same as another.
There were a lot of counterfeit prolifics out there, so it isn't specifically a prolific problem. It's kind of like blaming Apple for the cheap fake iphone chargers.
But yeah, if you can get a USB-Serial converter for 3 bucks, it might not be too good.
I use FTDI mostly now, but have a few of the real prolifics setting around and in use. Including an ancient one that was used for a palm device, and still works in Linux even though Windows doesn't support it at all any more.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Name brands don't mean nearly as much as they used to.