Does anyone else question USB-C as an “improvement”?

I like the more rugged connection than the previously dominant connector for small devices, microusb. Those connectors just aren't meant for the duty cycle they are regularly subjected to, and trashing a small electronic thing because the friggin' port got bent or ripped out or desoldered while the rest of it works perfectly fine is intensely frustrating.

I feel like 80% of my frustration with USB C would be gone if I could know, for any device, "is this charging as fast as it could"? Ideally that's a question that'd be answered by the software UI, but shockingly none of the many USB C devices I own displays that information.

I have a USB C cable that has a small screen built in to the connector that will display wattage, it's a really nifty product (search Amazon, there are a bunch of random brands selling them). I hope to see more screens/visual indicators built in to cables to communicate what's happening over the connection, that'd help with the problems you've outlined to an extent.

The fact that I can successfully plug in a USB-C cable on the first try as opposed to the 3-7th time is a strict improvement.

Perhaps I've been lucky, but I've only had good experience with external monitors et al.

Using laptops the last decade, charging was such a pain: it’s a special charger in the first place, you can’t just borrow another brand’s cable lying around.

Depending on the brick it won’t charge at the same speed, you can check the wattage on the brick, but buying another one is more than 60+ dollars. Fraying a cable is the same cost, you replace the whole thing.

Even just for that USB-C is a boon, and paying an expensive cable is still cheaper than what we had before.

From the perspective of user with slightly advanced knowledge of tech, I totally understand your reasoning and agree. Never knowing what devices will be able to work together in an efficient manner kinda drives me nuts thinking about USB-C.

On the other hand though, from the perspective of a person who just buys and uses tech without thinking too much about it, USB-C is actually kind of great. The device will work perfectly with the included peripherals (unless the manufacturer screwed up massively) and whenever I connect things differently, I'll at least get some use out of it. In a pinch, I can charge my phone on my laptop charger, my laptop on the charger for my wireless headphones and my wireless headphones on the charger for my phone. Neither of them charge as quickly as if they were attached to their original chargers, because they all have incompatible fast charging protocols, but it still works.

USB-C Solved one very simple problem. We used to have lots of different devices that did lots of different things and didn't work together and they all had different cables that wouldn't physically plug in to each other. USB-C now solves that problem. I can plug my webcam directly into my headphones if I want. It won't work, it's clearly a nonsensical thing to do, but I can.

Before USB-C if I forgot or lost my laptop charger I was totally screwed.

After USB-C I can even charge my MacBook with my Nintendo Switch charger, and I can always find someone that’s got one spare in the office. I’m so done with those incompatible circle-pin chargers!

Classic HN: New thing bad. upvotes furiously

USB C is a great improvement, I am currently plugged into my monitor which is providing power + USB. I didn't have to try three times to plug it in.

Sure there are rough edges, but overall this was not easily achievable without proprietary technology just ~6 years ago.

I figure give it 5 more years to mature, and we will take it all for granted.

Maybe it's just me but coming home and plugging my macbook into my dell monitor with a single cable for charging, ethernet, video, audio, camera, etc is worth all the smaller incompatibility foibles I've had. I also love traveling with just 1 type of charger.

I just wish they printed the max wattage on cables and chargers.

90% of the problems with USB-C I had went away once I started really overpaying for USB-C cables (I'm talking genuine cable from the Apple store kind of thing). https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MN713AM/A/thunderbolt-4-p... is expensive as hell, but it's actually a Thunderbolt 4 cable and not something else, and so it does what it needs to.

Right. We need to go back to parallel ports. Simple, 25 pins on one ends, 25 or 36 pins on the other, only a few handshake lines and data lines that were data lines not some polymorphic "who knows what you're gonna get" portal to RICH CHUNKY AMPS.

Of course there was the same variety of standards and connectors and in some instances even incompatible electrical implementations there too; just without the advertising of "everything is supposed to work together".

maybe our progress has been limited to the propaganda side alone.

I couldn't disagree more - I've had FAR more problems with HDMI than with USB C/Thunderbolt. Sticking with quality cables and not the bargain basement specials off of Amazon (or hell, anything remotely related to electronics on Amazon) is probably the single greatest critical success factor here.

As for the charging - as others point out I put that as more a software problem. That devices don't more clearly and prominently display this kind of information is definitely an issue - but once again, make sure the physical layer (your chargers and cables) are high quality and just about everything you complain about is a non-issue. I can't wait for non-USB C stuff to slowly die out. Will be nice to finally have one physical connection (that doesn't suck!) for pretty much everything I need to do.

To be honest, USB 3 was already a loss in some aspects: USB 2 allowed for extremely thin USB drives (as thick as the inner part of the plug); several keyboards had plugs, cables were thin, all sorts of gadgets were made. With USB 3, the extra pins required extra thickness; the beefier requirements made many cables shorter and thicker, and connectors diminished in number (due to more expensive constraints). The extra pins introduced new failure modes (I had a pen drive with internal bent pins, very hard to see, impossible to repair), but at least most people respected the color conventions (blue).

If only color coding was used to help disambiguate some USB C features, that might help somewhat. When buying USB-C cables, I have between $5 and $125 for the same length; the vendor lists all kinds of features (power delivery, Thunderbolt 3, what else) but things simply do not work in the end.

Overall, the whimsical Cambrian explosion of USB 2 and all sorts of funny pen drives and gadgets started dying with USB 3, and I'm not expecting to see it return with USB-C. With increasing power demands and what not, maybe we'll soon see wall plugs with USB-C instead of ordinary plugs. At least international travelers won't need adapters anymore...

> Even when I thought I found the right one my laptop would occasionally end up in some weird state between discharging and charging - taking power but not acknowledging it in software and slowly discharging but not as much without power...

This is actually pretty common in new macs. The computer can consume more power than the power bricks that came with them can provide, so they use the battery to augment it. Not a big issue if it's a relatively intermittent load, but a silly PITA if the load is constant. This is also somewhat related to the limits of PD at 100w (20V 5A)

IMO, what you're missing is... nothing. The pros are the lack of polarity (usually) of the plug and the ubiquity of USB-C ports is nice for the basics. But anything remotely specialized (non-trivial power supply, thunderbolt, DP, etc.) and it becomes a crapshoot of "does this cable support this" and "does this specific port support this" - both of which are "no" far too often.

My favorite example is a bluetooth headphone adapter with a USB-C port that won't charge unless the other end of the cable is a USB-A adapter.

I'm waiting for reports of a fire from a cheap cable that tells its users and connected devices "sure, I can support 100w of power delivery."

> my laptop would occasionally end up in some weird state between discharging and charging

Are you sure you can blame this on your USB-C charger and not your laptop's battery management firmware ?

Its possibly just that your laptop GUI is not showing you what's going on it the background.

It is quite likely that the laptop lets the battery drain a bit and then intermittently trickle charges.

USB C is just the connector. The functionality is subject to the cable itself.

Sounds stupid, but it is what it is.

There should be a tiny symbol on the connector, giving you exactly this information. Looking through my USB C cable some of them actually have it. Most have no information on them.

I can not look up the IEC norm at the moment, but I'm sure they forgot about that little detail.

I think a major change was to improve the physical connection and be rid of polarity; old port was fragile and prone to being forced in backward.

Personally, as someone who gets a lot of crud in the port, I can say cleaning out USB-C is far easier than B micro, and less risk of pin damage.

Though I agree with much of what you are saying, particularly the compatibility aspect

The issue I've been having is that for whatever reason the USB-C design seems to have a problem with twisting/tension near the ends in a way the USB-A and any of the USB-B varieties ever did. I've gone through more USB-C cables then I have replaced USB-A/USB-B cables from wear and tear then anything else. I'm not sure if it is the compact nature of the shroud to fit the spec but there seems to be no strain relief in the nature of the design and I'm usually breaking through the insulation in the matter of months and breaking the connector entirely to make it stop working a few months after that. Having to go buy replacement USB cables for things that were not my fault (misplacing or accidents) is just alien to me and premium OEM or the cheapest things seem to fail the same way at the same rate. With the increased actual power being sent through these new connectors and wires it just seems like I'm going to get an unfortunate jolt one of these days.

I would also say that the USB-C ports seem to get dirty in ways that end up affecting how the cable seats for a hours or years it always seemed to be reliable positive connection way more than I've had with other USB types. I haven't really looked at the mechanics of it but the number of times I feel like I've plugged in and gotten positive connection only to find out the connection was loose is way higher than I had with USB-A. With USB-A if you got it into the connector whether it was for an hours or years it always seemed to be reliable and not something to worry about.

A good majority of these issues could have happened without USB-C.

USB-C is great, I don't see any problem with it. Some crappy cables that don't follow spec aren't capable of carrying the full signal, but that's what you get for cheaping out on cables. HDMI and DisplayPort cables have the same issue, but graphics cards and monitors are compensating for that.

The real issue is the devices that USB-C cables plug into. Special USB ports that do more than others are just a dumb design. If you're going to support a feature, support that feature on all ports or don't support it at all. There's no rule that says you can't have a HDMI or DisplayPort connector if you install a USB-C port, so if you're only going to support DP on only one side, just put the physical port there.

My phone can hook up to a keyboard, mouse and ethernet connector through the charging port just like my laptop and that's just great. No more messing with OTG adapters and voltage injection, it Just Works.

Laptop manufacturers that are cheaping out on their USB designs, especially on premium models, should not be tolerated. If I plug something into the left USB-C port, it should do the exact same thing as when I would plug it into the right USB-C port, or your laptop is broken. We should start returning these defective machines instead of tolerating these terrible business decisions.

Both C ports on my laptop do the exact same thing and support the same features. I haven't had any trouble with USB-C at all, despite the shitty support many enterprise systems have (those stupid DisplayLink docks are a pain to get working in Linux regardless of what connector they use).

If you just stop assuming anything it works pretty well. High grade pricey cables or TB cables with PD in the backpack, always. That's half the problem.

The fact that I can charge 90% of the devices in my house with my PD charger is worth any ambiguity in other features.

But I do seem to have an issue with dirt getting into ports and some low grade cables seemingly being out-of-spec when it comes to the physical connection. They don't feel properly seated and jiggle. Not a great feeling.

This is somewhat true of all modern cables and ports. They are all overloaded to some degree. It's hard to tell just by looking what resolutions and refresh rates a DisplayPort or HDMI device can handle on both the display and output side. For example my monitor will do 144Hz with FreeSync on over DisplayPort and can do 144Hz over HDMI but not with FreeSync on, then it's capped to 100Hz. Not even the manual lists that. Hard to tell what a GPU supports without memorizing model info. We have USB 3 ports where some can do 10Gb/s, most do 5 (My mobo has 1 10Gb/s A port) that are hard to distinguish if at all, some computers don't even bother color coding USB 3 ports either.

Standard small connector for device-device communication: Check

Standard power connector for everything: Check

High speed communications that are capable of even video: Check

Is it perfect? No. Is it plagued by committee design? Sure.

Does it solve 80% of the problems? Yes.

The connector itself I love - microUSB was just awful, mini USB was the weird ugly cousin, and that abomination of a connector that was USB3 (the microUSB combined with the long skinny one) was the worst of the bunch. USB-A still remains a good option and I do not see it going away anytime soon.

As to what you are describing above I think that does lend itself to a ton of confusion. Thunderbolt can be done over what looks like USB-C. Tons of different power specs. For the non tech people it must be confusing as hell.

Then again I would take the confusion with a single connector over many multiples of connectors if that is the alternative. What might have been a good idea would be to create a series of USB-C connectors that are slightly different but compatible in a downward fashion. For example if you bought a Thunderbolt compatible USB-C connector that could also do high current PD it could have a small notch in it that matched up to a lightning compatible port. This same cable could be used in a regular lowly USB-C port for regular power and USB3 but a normal USB-C cable could not be connected to the Thunderbolt port of the laptop.

That would also introduce additional confusion however as most lightning ports can also act as regular USB3 ports, etc etc. I guess this is the price we pay for universal compatibility. Maybe a color coded system (like the blue with USB3-A ports) could help this - Thunderbolt ports and cables could require a yellow marker somehow - USB3 a blue marker - HDMI over USB-C could be red.

Having a cable that's the same on both ends and also in both orientations is kind of nice. Having a standard with decent power delivery is even nicer. I no longer have to pack special power adapters and cables for multiple devices, and worry about those devices becoming unusable if I lose either. I can just pack a generic charger and know that it will work well enough for everything I have. I might pack two kinds of cables (micro and C) but I can also get those just about anywhere so that's not a worry. Definitely an improvement there.

OTOH, the fact that different identical-looking cables will support different charging rates, data rates, and even functionality is insane. USB-IF really messed up by not requiring clear standardized labeling of these things on every cable and adapter. Besides the fact that the ambiguity is inconvenient, it enables outright fraud. The market is full of cables which don't actually do what the one that came with your device did, which might even claim to do it, but you never know until you actually open the package and try to use it ... which is too late.

Also, not USB-IF's fault, but why are there so damn few chargers with more than one USB-C port? I understand that it would be unreasonable to expect much power through more than one, but it's also annoying that I need to have A-to-C cables because I have more C devices than I have ports.

I feel like USB-C is the moment when USB finally lives up to it's "universal" name. It's great. I can standardize on chargers and cables and be sure everything will just work. I just wish high-quality adapters were available so that I could do away with hubs and semi-permanently plug an adapter into the USB-A end of whatever special cable is needed. More advanced power supplies with more visibility and control would be nice too.

Not a heavy user of USB-C's extended features. For me it has been wonderful. The kids haven't broken a USB-C kindle by being aggressive with the plugs. I used to buy new cables every couple of months, because they would follow a path where they would work for everything, to not charging a kindle but still works in my phone, to not working in anything. I have yet to have a USB-C cord stop working, and need to be replaced with a new cord.

It's not perfect, but it's clearly an improvement.

I have a box full of USB adapters. A to B, A to A-female. Micro to A-female, and on and on and on.

It's not great that your charging speed may be limited by the cable specs, but it charges much faster with the wrong kind of USB-C cable than if you have micro-USB when the device takes mini-USB.

And the fact that even HAS PD is amazing. My laptop, phone, and headphones all charge with the same cable. That's much easier for travelling.

I have basically zero doubt or hesitation about USB-C, but then again I don't have anything that uses Displayport. It can't be worse than cheap micro HDMI adapters falling apart though.

It's not perfect, it's held back by somewhat nasty legacy stuff. but it's reliable and good enough and would be hard to do any better in practice.

I'm a bit disappointed we haven't actually gone a bit further than we have so far with it though. Lots of products seem to have no excuse not to be C, aside fron there just not being cheap chips and modules.

One thing we really need is a cheap way to do daisy chainable USB and more advanced power topologies, and many smart devices should just be dumb devices that use a special protocol for dongles that add the smarts.

Things like light fixtures could be daisy chained USB. We should have power strips that combine two sources for redundancy. We should have linkable solar generators you can chain together as long as you want, that know which way to send power based on who has the sun and who is empty.

If it were up to me, we would ditch 3.5mm completely, right now, and just have another USB-C port for any device still thinking about supporting analog.

Even hobby robotics could use it with alternate modes for i2c and servos.

Since I don't need it for monitors or ethernet, my only concern is fast charging on my phone. So, I find a generic cable brand, keep buying it, and buy lots. I pitch them when they stop fast charging (which always goes first? somehow) or relegate them to a secondary use. And, this is part of why I try to keep black and silver sharpies on me..

I agree with you, but I wanted to add this stupid detail into the conversation:

USB-C doesn’t ensure that you have any of these features. It’s just the style of connector.

You can have best-of-breed USB with any connector type you want, but obviously the most current hardware is using usb-c.

Not really relevant, but I know, now, to not have any expectations based on the fact that I’m using usb-c.

I initially was extremely skeptical that USB-C was an improvement, but after having used it for 6 months I am totally sold. I was able to buy a relatively cheap dock from Dell, plug in my charging cable, 2 external monitors, printer, ethernet, webcam and a host of other USB-A accessories into the dock. Then I am able to simply connect one single USB-C cable to my laptop and everything works seamlessly.

If I want to move my laptop, I just unplug the one cable, instead of my previous 4-5. Further, I can mount the dock under my desk to hide the clutter and just have the single USB-C cable visible. For me, its working great!

Depends on the use case:

Replacing USB-A? Definitely not. There are so many little devices like wireless adapters, hard drives, thumb drives, etc. There hasn't been much of an effort to convert these to USB-C, so they all need dongles.

Replacing micro-usb? Absolutely. It is so much easier to deal with since it's reversible. Especially in the iOS world since it's either lightning or usb-c for devices.

Docking stations? Yes but it's complicated. I connect one little micro-usb cable to connect 2 monitors, a mouse, and keyboard to my laptop. But it's tricky finding one that supports the right resolutions and refresh rates.

I have a bunch of USB-C devices where the card edge connector doesn’t seem securely attached. I haven’t had one fail yet so far.

As I see it USB 3 is already a disaster. USB 1 and USB 2 worked on a tree topology where you could plug a tremendous number of devices into a single port and have it really work.

With USB 3 it seems there is some limit to what you can plug into a root hub and once you go over the limit you plug in a mouse and your keyboard drops out. I looked in the specs to find what the limit is and they don’t say, they also don’t promise that any specific topology of hubs is going to work.

I had several devices with Micro USB ports. Phones, laptops, tablets, gizmos, portable batteries. All with Micro USB. I purchased too many cables and chargers so whatever room I was in, I would always have a charger.

Then I bought my new phone. It had a USB-C port. Suddenly, I could no longer just plug in the phone to recharge it. I had to have a separate set of cables. I bought a few alternative heads that plugged on the end on the cable but those had a habit of getting lost.

Sure, being able to plug the cable in either way up is nice, but I'd replace it for a Micro USB port in an instant.

I have two complaints about USB-C:

1) The lack of durability and ruggedness. It's very easy to crush the end of a USB cable inside your laptop, or damage the USB port on the laptop's motherboard.

2) The tight tolerances that make it hard to get a good connection. Plugging a high-bandwidth device like a USB-C hub into a laptop is always a roll of the dice. Sometimes I have to unplug and replug several times, meanwhile MacOS is struggling to catch up as external monitors and/or power suddenly disappear and reappear.

One point I haven't seen mentioned: When traveling, a good USB-C cable is a godsend - forget carrying 5 different chargers for 5 different devices, now it's just one for all the devices. It makes it sooo much easier, it's incredible. Gone are the days of cables hanging out of the backpack, searching for the right cable for the Powerbank for the headphones/phone/switch/whatever on the plane.

Well, yes. Fully at questioning stage. Ports on back of two winX laptops (as opposed to the side) - seems to run USB-C to display adapter just fine. But plug and actual USB cable into it - results vary. Ports on the side - run USB things just fine ... Am I right in thinking the operation of the usb port got overloaded - in that usbCPort != otherUSBCPort - bleugh.

Missing error correction is what drives me nuts.

Backing up 2TB of data to a USB drive shouldn't give a bit error after transferring 1TB successfully.

Well I actually really love it… I’m an amateur with electronics but my latest designs using USB-C has made it possible to have a string of multi color leds connected and not worry about whether the port is for input or output which IMO is totally cool from a setup… in this way I’m using usb wires but it’s not a serial connection…

It's an improvement over a world of micro and mini USB, DisplayPort + HDMI, and proprietary chargers. The eleven different types of cables with no consistent labeling is a drag. I think with better software on the devices and some sane labeling, we're not that far off.

I certainly do.

I've had to put labels on cables, because I now have amassed so many, it's impossible to tell which one:

- provides power (and nothing else) to my portable monitor

- charges my phone and does USB data sync

- charges my wireless headphones (doesn't power monitor, doesn't do USB sync)

I never had these issues with Micro - USB.

I would prefer a new version of USB that guarantees total compatibility with all devices. It's very annoying to realize that your charging USB-C cable is not capable of 10Gbps, or that your 10Gbps cable cannot support 100W charging.

I feel the irritations, but for the most part, I find the right cable and device combos and then I'm good to go. It's still a vast improvement over the previous status quo of micro-USB charging and many more cable types.

USB-C for monitors is a joke. The connection is so fragile, it constantly drops out of the monitor, or gets knocked out of my desktop. I'll take HDMI or DisplayPort over that any day.

It was an improvement, but until it does away with the fiddly, breakable tabs and introduces magsafe-type coupling, it isn't what it should be.

There are adapters, but it needs to be standard.

It'd be great if the spec mandates some color coding.

There are improvements, many, in terms of power and the fact that it can be inserted either way... but dongles and adapters for USB-A devices is a PITA.

My favorite thing is a wireless charger with a usb-c port that cannot be powered by a usb-c brick. It was the expesive option too.

I've never seen USB-C cable or device.

I mostly treat it as "finally less chargers to carry". Does that quite well, don't really need more.

It's reversible, which is great.

USB-o will be an improvement... the ROUND USB Connector....

It’s symmetrical. Enough of an upgrade for me.

The standard is a mess. I love the connector.

Long live 2015 Macbook Pro!

I've never had a problem with USB-C other than using very cheap cables that break.

I thought I read Apple invented USB-C then abandoned it for the lightning connector and made the USB-C IP freely available to everyone.

Now you can see why.

You didn't even mention the physical fragilities. The cables don't last, but the connectors on cheap laptops/electronics REALLY don't last. The thin pcb inside always cracks or shorts or gets covered with goo. Once it gets jiggly, something shorts and blows up the USB chips inside.

They need a USB-D that is more Lightning-like.