This will tell you the charging capacity of your current cable+charger combo. In other words, a 100W charger + 100w cable will return "Wattage (W): 100". A 100W charger + 15W cable will return "Wattage (W): 15". A 15W charger + 100W cable will return "Wattage (W): 15".
So, you kinda need a charger that meets or exceeds the power delivery of the cable you're testing. And I believe this relies on the cable's self-identified capacity via the e-chip or whatever, so it could be fraudulent if you have some dodgy cable from an unknown manufacturer? But it's better than nothing.
There is a lot of info in `/usr/sbin/system_profile`, not sure if there's other bits related to identifying USB-C cable capacity. I'm sure there has to be something.
You can get this information from the "System Information" app in macOS as well. (At least, that's what it's called in Ventura...)
It should be under Hardware -> Power, in the section titled "AC Charger Information".
You should also be able to see connected USB-C cable capacity under Hardware -> USB. For example, mine says the following:
USB 3.1 Bus:
Host Controller Driver: AppleT8112USBXHCI
USB3.0 Hub:
Product ID: 0x0813
Vendor ID: 0x2109 (VIA Labs, Inc.)
Version: 90.11
Speed: Up to 5 Gb/s
Manufacturer: VIA Labs, Inc.
Location ID: 0x01200000 / 2
Current Available (mA): 900
Current Required (mA): 0
Extra Operating Current (mA): 0
USB2.0 Hub:
Product ID: 0x2813
Vendor ID: 0x2109 (VIA Labs, Inc.)
Version: 90.11
Speed: Up to 480 Mb/s
Manufacturer: VIA Labs, Inc.
Location ID: 0x01100000 / 1
Current Available (mA): 500
Current Required (mA): 0
Extra Operating Current (mA): 0
Any way to do similar for DP/HDMI? I've thrown away multiple cables cause I couldn't tell if the cable was just old and didn't support what I needed vs somehow broken. Looking at system report I only see `Graphics/Displays` which show's monitor capabilities but not cable. (I'm not actually sure if DP/HDMI advertise their capabilities in the same manner as USB 3).
Much like GP I've taken to labeling newly bought cables with a label maker to avoid wasting them in the future due to being unknown.
There should be no such thing as a 15 watt cable, by the way.
Every cable is a 60 watt cable by default. 20 volts, 3 amps.
Cables designed for 5 amps have a marker chip in them. If they follow the old spec they support 20 volts, and if they follow the new spec they support 48 volts. There's not much incentive to fake these because you still have to put a chip into it and 60 watts is fine most of the time.
Apparently, USB-C cables are supposed to contain an “e-marker” chip that can tell you its bandwidth, wattage, and other specs. It would be nice if this information showed up somewhere when you plugged in an empty cable into your Mac.
I’ve also tried to get that information on macOS before, but annoyingly all promising (i.e. related to the SOP protocol which is how the computer talks to the chip in the cable) log lines seem to be redacted.
This is doubly frustrating in that it shows that it’s clearly available to the OS (and not handled by a lower layer controller), but also leaves the faint hope that Apple might implement just such a feature in the future.
My suspicion is that this is security related. I'm on the lookout for a brand-name quality Thunderbolt-capable cable with an LCD showing current power.
> So, you kinda need a charger that meets or exceeds the power delivery of the cable you're testing. And I believe this relies on the cable's self-identified capacity via the e-chip or whatever, so it could be fraudulent? But it's better than nothing.
These can be useful, but ultimately a watt meter tells you what the device is actually using at the moment, which is not only limited by the cable and source capabilities, but also by the power sink device's current needs.
Looks like PD spec varies voltage all the way up to +48V which supports 240W of power, so 5A@48V.
Using a calculator like at https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/wire-size a 1m cable with a relatively user friendly max wire temp of 40c asks for a diameter of 0.6mm. Looks like there is 4 VBUS pins and even tho it's reversible I imagine for full power it requires all 4 (or all 4 must be connected to "support" the spec).
In theory you could have reduced wire diameter and spread current across the 4 VBUS wires, or have a single wire of the correct diameter and then connect to all 4 VBUS at the connector but everything is stranded wire in those cables anyway and I assume there's some complex maths to do to figure out the best for it.
It is super freaking cool, though. It makes me wonder if many household appliances can't just use usb c. I don't know how much further they can raise the voltage beyond that though seeing as there's all the electrical safety rules on conductor spacing etc to avoid arcing/flash over.
I've been using a nice Brother labeler for years to label all my power plugs. eg this power plug goes to this router etc. since a lot of them are subtly different.
I once mixed up two different netgear router power plugs - a new version and an older version. I had the newer netgear router hooked up to the old plug - which gave slightly less amperage - and everything worked fine until it would randomly die. It took me a long time to figure out that it was dying when it was under load and trying to pull more power than was available.
I've also started doing this, with USB-C to C cables you might want to get something like the C2C caberQU cable tester as a lot of cheap type c cables don't actually wire all the conductors.
Also I like to note the cable length on the label, measured by myself since manufacturers always count the connectors on the total cable length and on some of them that can add up to almost 10cm
As a techie who understands that there are many different types of USB-C and HDMI cables depending on what you need to use it for, it's an incredible amount of effort to find the right thing to buy.
When you consider that most brick and mortar stores (I'm looking at you, Currys PC World) massively rip you off with £100+ gold plated HDMI cables, and the search results on Amazon are filled with knock-off Nigel rubbish (or worse, listings that out-right lie to you)... it's a total minefield!
Imagine what it's like for the average consumer! A complete disaster!
Especially tedious on Amazon when you have a seller list the same cable in various lengths. The reviews are all commingled, so you'll get plenty of valid five star reviews for the short cables while the long ones don't support the bandwidth.
And who knows how many reviews are from non-techies who are just getting a picture on the screen and leave a five star review without knowing / caring if they actually got HDR or not.
This would be difficult with HDMI cables – unlike USB-C, they’re not electronically marked.
Only HDMI 2.1 introduced link training (before that it was just the source picking a resolution that the sink supports and hoping for the best!), but even that is an end-to-end thing; the cable is not part of the conversation, so you wouldn’t know if the cable is bad or the socket/internal wiring beyond the cable on either side.
I personally prefer the aesthetics of the white Amazon Basics [0] and/or Infinite Cables [1] hdmi 2.1b [2] 48gbps cables, but as long as they're certified and pass the totalphase cable test I guess it doesn't really matter
I hooked up a new monitor and had the hardest time trying to figure out why things weren't working. Finally swapped the HDMI cable and it worked perfectly. Gah.
And where is the list of cables that have passed the compliance test and use the cable logo?
I can't say I've ever seen one of the package logo's, and yes I've been aware of them for a while now.
This is obviously a case of "mistakes were made" but I think the fact that they haven't mandated the logos as part of the license to use the USB specifications says a lot about the companies that run the organization. (or maybe their products).
Edit: There is this, but no actual type-c -> type-c cables, https://www.usb.org/products. Oh maybe they are under "retail -> cable assembly" but I still can't find one with a logo, which is the same problem. Once I buy it, how do I know what it can do in a year or two when I pull it out of a pile of cables.
Or just remember what the U is USB actually stands for.
We've been through the mutually incompatible plug standards. USB was introduced to solve that. Now we're back to mutually incompatible cable standards.
>Now we're back to mutually incompatible cable standards.
Not exactly, we have a single standard with different tier cables for power and speed.
If you buy a USB-C cable with high power delivery, it will work for lower powered devices as well (but the inverse will not). If you buy a USB-C with high speed, it will work for devices will very low throughput rates too.
So buy the most expensive highest power+speed USB-C version, and you don't have to worry, it would support all (or close) lower-level uses.
At this point I'd probably pay ~$100 / year for a subscription service that annually sends me 4-5 cables of the "max rating." I don't want to waste my life keeping on top of the every-changing spec, but would 100% just turn-over my cables once a year to ensure highest performance.
Perhaps change their color every year (red -> green -> blue -> purple) to keep track of which are the latest cables.
I have dozens of almost identical black USB-C cables :|
Just get certified Thunderbolt 4 and be done with it then. Cheaper is TB3. If you stick with the legit ones you're done and it will basically support everything.
That's my solution: I just buy Caldigit TB4 cables and I know they will do everything required.
There's also the Dockcase Smart USB-C Hub 10-in-1 Explorer which exposes what's actually happening across your various connections including USB-C. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to support video passthrough over USB-C, so it isn't perfect.
Certified Thunderbolt cables with a length over 4 feet don't really exist, though. If you need a cable longer than that which can handle 100w+ and video/data, you're going to have a much harder time finding something decent.
Alongside this amazing subscription service, I would love a service that provides a list of tech brands that never do any kind of false advertising, so that I know I can buy from them with confidence. Recently had a bad experience with a spate of SSD external enclosures that all were under-spec, and worked with Ex-Fat but not APFS+ (which requires 100% USB spec compliance to work properly). Ended up finding a brand called "Cable Matters" which was a bit more expensive but was up to spec and well worth the extra cost.
Thanks for that!
Always hard to find the right tools, with a recommendation it is much easier.
(Sometimes, you don't know if it's just you? Or there really are quality differences.)
Exactly what I was thinking yesterday. Why not continue with different colors on the USB plugs, as they sort of did with blue for usb c or was it USB 3? Or. Ah. Can't keep up.3.1? (Some motherboards tried, but there weren't cables in same color.)
You mean USB 3.2 Gen 2x1 aka USB 3.1 Gen 1 aka USB 3.0 aka Super Speed USB?
Or do you mean Thunderbolt 3 which supports USB 3.2 Gen 2×1 aka USB 3.1 Gen 2 which was called SuperSpeed+ USB but is now SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps?
Or the newest USB4 Gen 4, USB4 Gen 3×2, USB4 Gen 3×1, USB4 Gen 2×2 and USB4 Gen 2×1 which supports Thunderbolt 3?
Maybe they could start with the upcoming Thunderbolt 5 which follows the USB4 2.0 spec, not to be confused with USB4 Gen 2(x1/x2).
I'm not sure we have enough colors to enumerate the different type of USBs. Going by the naming schemes it seems like there's already not enough numbers. /s
I just watched a puff piece on Adam tested comparing apple thunderbolt $150 cables to introductory $5-10 usb cables. They seemed more in love with the tech to visualize the cables than actuallu giving meaningful information and like for like comparisons.
Data channel: no is a charging-only cable, *preferred* for dealing with untrusted sources of power. While it might violate spec it has a very valid use case.
better than microUSB that's fair, but far worse than lightning. Engagement is terrible, it collects debris and it's inconsistent (often too tight or too lose).
This has been done for years on HDMI/Cat cables, but instead of on the connector on the cable itself. Why make the connector larger to print very little detail on it, if you have literally a whole meter to write complete sentences.
This is roughly the same solution, but in my opinion more poorly implemented. So please make more USB cables like HDMI or Cat cables, print all the relevant info on the cable.
You jest, but flexibility and endurance is important for consumer cables, and except for LAN parties, Ethernet doesn't get moved much (and is much cheaper to replace).
But what's your solution for braided cables? Because I'll pick braided over "just plastic" any day of the week, and there is no way you're going to cleanly print information on the braid.
I don't know, is this really much more ridiculous than e.g. the various Ethernet standards (I can never remember which one the "normal" Gigabit Ethernet is), mobile data protocols (remember HSDPA, CDMA, 1xRTT and all that?) etc.?
And to the USB-IFs credit, they did eventually come around with the much saner bandwidth-focused names. As far as I know, even "SuperSpeed" and "USB 4" are now gone as speed designators; now it's just "USB xGbps", e.g. USB 5GBps for the case of what used to be "USB 3.2 Gen 1x1".
The good thing here is that they seem to be converging on names that contain the speed itself in plain text. "USB4 40Gbps" is as helpful as a name can get.
It's certainly much less bad now than it used to be, but the existence of "x1" connections (half lane count and bandwidth as its contemporary "x2" sibling) does undermine trust. Is a cable advertised with the number "20" really an x2 cable accurately described according to "Gen 2" metrics, or is it really just an x1 cable, daringly called "20" because that's what a gen 3x1 connection could achieve?
Looking at the Wikipedia page I get the impression that the new naming simply ignores the x1 links.
That's like an invitation for misleading product descriptions. Maybe it would have been helpful to assign slightly off but clearly confusion-resistent numbers to the x1 siblings? Perhaps taking a page from supermarket pricing, "4.99Gbps", "9.99Gbps", "19.99Gbps"?
Readit News
I've resorted to physically labeling them with a Brother label printer.
For MacOS, here's a terminal snippet to determine the current charging capacity of a cable.
This will tell you the charging capacity of your current cable+charger combo. In other words, a 100W charger + 100w cable will return "Wattage (W): 100". A 100W charger + 15W cable will return "Wattage (W): 15". A 15W charger + 100W cable will return "Wattage (W): 15".So, you kinda need a charger that meets or exceeds the power delivery of the cable you're testing. And I believe this relies on the cable's self-identified capacity via the e-chip or whatever, so it could be fraudulent if you have some dodgy cable from an unknown manufacturer? But it's better than nothing.
There is a lot of info in `/usr/sbin/system_profile`, not sure if there's other bits related to identifying USB-C cable capacity. I'm sure there has to be something.
It relies /sys/class/typec: https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-c... which does not always exist https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=274618 https://community.frame.work/t/tracking-controlling-power-di... https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/z92jgf/when_d... etc.
Some things never change haha
It should be under Hardware -> Power, in the section titled "AC Charger Information".
You should also be able to see connected USB-C cable capacity under Hardware -> USB. For example, mine says the following:
Much like GP I've taken to labeling newly bought cables with a label maker to avoid wasting them in the future due to being unknown.
Every cable is a 60 watt cable by default. 20 volts, 3 amps.
Cables designed for 5 amps have a marker chip in them. If they follow the old spec they support 20 volts, and if they follow the new spec they support 48 volts. There's not much incentive to fake these because you still have to put a chip into it and 60 watts is fine most of the time.
This is doubly frustrating in that it shows that it’s clearly available to the OS (and not handled by a lower layer controller), but also leaves the faint hope that Apple might implement just such a feature in the future.
Get a cable with a watt meter display included. I use that on my Fold: https://csdvrx.github.io/ section 0.4 : https://csdvrx.github.io/X1_Fold_(20RL_20RK)_Optimization/pa...
Such cables cost about $10 on amazon, or $2 on aliexpress. Amazon link for the reference: https://www.amazon.com/Charging-Display-Braided-Compatible-G...
Using a calculator like at https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/wire-size a 1m cable with a relatively user friendly max wire temp of 40c asks for a diameter of 0.6mm. Looks like there is 4 VBUS pins and even tho it's reversible I imagine for full power it requires all 4 (or all 4 must be connected to "support" the spec).
In theory you could have reduced wire diameter and spread current across the 4 VBUS wires, or have a single wire of the correct diameter and then connect to all 4 VBUS at the connector but everything is stranded wire in those cables anyway and I assume there's some complex maths to do to figure out the best for it.
It is super freaking cool, though. It makes me wonder if many household appliances can't just use usb c. I don't know how much further they can raise the voltage beyond that though seeing as there's all the electrical safety rules on conductor spacing etc to avoid arcing/flash over.
I once mixed up two different netgear router power plugs - a new version and an older version. I had the newer netgear router hooked up to the old plug - which gave slightly less amperage - and everything worked fine until it would randomly die. It took me a long time to figure out that it was dying when it was under load and trying to pull more power than was available.
Also I like to note the cable length on the label, measured by myself since manufacturers always count the connectors on the total cable length and on some of them that can add up to almost 10cm
To you have a matrix - charging speed and capability.
As a techie who understands that there are many different types of USB-C and HDMI cables depending on what you need to use it for, it's an incredible amount of effort to find the right thing to buy.
When you consider that most brick and mortar stores (I'm looking at you, Currys PC World) massively rip you off with £100+ gold plated HDMI cables, and the search results on Amazon are filled with knock-off Nigel rubbish (or worse, listings that out-right lie to you)... it's a total minefield!
Imagine what it's like for the average consumer! A complete disaster!
And who knows how many reviews are from non-techies who are just getting a picture on the screen and leave a five star review without knowing / caring if they actually got HDR or not.
Only HDMI 2.1 introduced link training (before that it was just the source picking a resolution that the sink supports and hoping for the best!), but even that is an end-to-end thing; the cable is not part of the conversation, so you wouldn’t know if the cable is bad or the socket/internal wiring beyond the cable on either side.
[0]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BS181P2
[1]: https://us.infinitecables.com/products/ultra-high-speed-hdmi...
[2]: https://www.hdmi.org/spec21sub/ultrahighspeedcable
If consumers would stop buying cables that don't have these logos, that would (mostly) solve the problem.
I can't say I've ever seen one of the package logo's, and yes I've been aware of them for a while now.
This is obviously a case of "mistakes were made" but I think the fact that they haven't mandated the logos as part of the license to use the USB specifications says a lot about the companies that run the organization. (or maybe their products).
Edit: There is this, but no actual type-c -> type-c cables, https://www.usb.org/products. Oh maybe they are under "retail -> cable assembly" but I still can't find one with a logo, which is the same problem. Once I buy it, how do I know what it can do in a year or two when I pull it out of a pile of cables.
We've been through the mutually incompatible plug standards. USB was introduced to solve that. Now we're back to mutually incompatible cable standards.
Not exactly, we have a single standard with different tier cables for power and speed.
If you buy a USB-C cable with high power delivery, it will work for lower powered devices as well (but the inverse will not). If you buy a USB-C with high speed, it will work for devices will very low throughput rates too.
So buy the most expensive highest power+speed USB-C version, and you don't have to worry, it would support all (or close) lower-level uses.
Perhaps change their color every year (red -> green -> blue -> purple) to keep track of which are the latest cables.
I have dozens of almost identical black USB-C cables :|
There's also the Dockcase Smart USB-C Hub 10-in-1 Explorer which exposes what's actually happening across your various connections including USB-C. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to support video passthrough over USB-C, so it isn't perfect.
Or do you mean Thunderbolt 3 which supports USB 3.2 Gen 2×1 aka USB 3.1 Gen 2 which was called SuperSpeed+ USB but is now SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps?
Or the newest USB4 Gen 4, USB4 Gen 3×2, USB4 Gen 3×1, USB4 Gen 2×2 and USB4 Gen 2×1 which supports Thunderbolt 3?
Maybe they could start with the upcoming Thunderbolt 5 which follows the USB4 2.0 spec, not to be confused with USB4 Gen 2(x1/x2).
I'm not sure we have enough colors to enumerate the different type of USBs. Going by the naming schemes it seems like there's already not enough numbers. /s
https://www.lumafield.com/article/usb-c-cable-charger-head-t...
Data channel: yes / no
PD support: yes / no
USB version: 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, 3.2
Amperage: 3 amp, 5 amp, 6+ amp
48+ possible varieties of "standard" USB-C cable and no practical way to determine what you have without plugging it in.
What a great "standard"!
"no" is violating the standard.
> PD support: yes / no
"no" is violating the standard.
> USB version: 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, 3.2
Yes, there are a handful of speeds.
But I don't see a good way of avoiding that problem while having backwards compatibility.
> Amperage: 3 amp, 5 amp, 6+ amp
6+ amp does not exist. There are two 5 amp specs, but the new one obsoletes the old one.
Can you remind me how 120watts is achieved? is it 24v x 5 amps? I forget.
Most cables that ship with devices are not standard. There's no way to know it -- and that's the USB-IF's job!
USB-C is a terrible consumer experience.
This is roughly the same solution, but in my opinion more poorly implemented. So please make more USB cables like HDMI or Cat cables, print all the relevant info on the cable.
Even a quick laser etch could be done after the braid. It doesn't need to be super high resolution.
- Low-Speed & Full-Speed
- High-Speed
- SuperSpeed USB 5Gbps (renamed), original: SuperSpeed (Gen 1)
- SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps (renamed), original: SuperSpeed+ (Gen 2)
- SuperSpeed USB 20Gbps (USB 3.2 Gen 2×2)
- USB4 40Gbps (USB4 Gen 3×2)
- USB4 80Gbps (USB4 Gen 4)
Not to mention
- USB 1.0
- USB 2.0
- USB 3.0
then it changes:
- USB 3.1 Gen 1
- USB 3.1 Gen 2
Then it changes again:
- USB4
Then it changes again:
- USB4 Gen 2
- USB4 Gen 2×2
- USB4 Gen 3
- USB4 Gen 3×2
And to the USB-IFs credit, they did eventually come around with the much saner bandwidth-focused names. As far as I know, even "SuperSpeed" and "USB 4" are now gone as speed designators; now it's just "USB xGbps", e.g. USB 5GBps for the case of what used to be "USB 3.2 Gen 1x1".
Looking at the Wikipedia page I get the impression that the new naming simply ignores the x1 links.
That's like an invitation for misleading product descriptions. Maybe it would have been helpful to assign slightly off but clearly confusion-resistent numbers to the x1 siblings? Perhaps taking a page from supermarket pricing, "4.99Gbps", "9.99Gbps", "19.99Gbps"?