15 Best USB-C Cables (2024): For iPhones, Android Phones, Tablets, and Laptops

With assorted standards and charging technologies astatine work, it is overmuch harder than it should beryllium to enactment retired what a cablegram tin do. There are a fewer things worthy knowing erstwhile shopping.

USB Standards: The Universal Serial Bus (USB) modular dates to 1996 but has seen galore caller standards, revisions, and connector types successful the years since. Instead of moving done each of them here, we effort to item what matters.

Connectors: While USB-C is mercifully becoming a modular transportation type, you privation cables with connectors that acceptable your existing devices. Today, that inactive mightiness mean USB-A, Lightning, oregon adjacent MicroUSB. Remember that the capabilities of immoderate cablegram are constricted to its oldest transportation type.

Data: The information transportation velocity is ever successful megabits per 2nd (Mbps) oregon gigabits per 2nd (Gbps). You'll cognize the velocity a cablegram should beryllium susceptible of by the standard:

• USB 2.0 supports 480 Mbps
• USB 3.0 supports 5 Gbps
• USB 3.1 supports 10 Gbps
• USB 3.2 Gen 1 supports 5 Gbps
• USB 3.2 Gen 2 supports 10 Gbps
• USB 3.2 Gen 3 supports 20 Gbps
• USB 4.0 supports 40 Gbps

Power: While cablegram manufacturers ever database the maximum charging rate, your instrumentality volition find however overmuch powerfulness to draw, truthful it's important to cognize what standards it supports and harvester your cablegram with the close powerfulness adapter. The charging complaint of a cablegram is measured successful watts (W). Sometimes manufacturers volition database specifications connected the cablegram successful tiny print. If there’s nary W listed, you tin cipher it by multiplying the voltage (V) and the existent (A), assuming they are listed.

Basic USB-C cables are passive and tin lone transportation up to 60 watts. Cables that tin transportation 100 watts oregon more, sometimes described arsenic active, indispensable incorporate e-marker chips that place the cablegram and its capabilities.

The Power Delivery (PD) modular is arsenic adjacent arsenic we person to a communal standard. A fewer manufacturers, similar OnePlus, Oppo, and Xiaomi, inactive person proprietary charging standards. Then there's Qualcomm’s Quick Charge (QC) standard, which was the astir fashionable for phones for galore years, though Quick Charge 4+ supports PD. Even PD has a variant called Programmable Power Supply (PPS), which is portion of the USB PD 3.0 standard. PPS allows for real-time adjustments to maximize ratio and complaint phones similar Samsung's Galaxy S22 range astatine up to 45 watts alternatively of the accustomed 18. The latest summation to PD is Extended Power Range (EPR), which allows USB-C cables to transportation up to 240 watts (they utilized to beryllium constricted to 100 watts).

Thunderbolt was a proprietary interface developed by Intel and Apple, but it's present unfastened for royalty-free usage (still certified by Intel). With Thunderbolt 3, the modular adopted the USB-C connector and is susceptible of information transportation speeds up to 40 Gbps and tin present 100 watts of powerfulness utilizing the PD standard. Thunderbolt 4 brings assorted improvements mostly related to the video awesome (support for 2 4K displays oregon an 8K display). It besides supports the USB 4 modular and is backward compatible with erstwhile standards.

Cable Certification: There are a fewer types of cablegram certification. When a cablegram is certified, that usually means it was independently tested and conforms to circumstantial standards. It gives you, arsenic a buyer, bid of caput that your cablegram performs arsenic the shaper claims. Certification tin beryllium expensive, truthful galore cablegram manufacturers shun it, but that doesn’t needfully mean their cables are mediocre quality. The USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) is simply a non-profit enactment dedicated to advancing USB technology. Run by members similar Apple, Google, HP, Microsoft, and Intel, it sets specifications and offers certification. If a cablegram is certified by the USB-IF, it has been tested to guarantee it complies with its standards. Apple has its ain Made for iPhone (MFi) certification for Lightning cables. Intel certifies Thunderbolt cables. Certified cables usually person the applicable logo connected the connector. (For example, Thunderbolt cables person a lightning bolt.)