If you’re like me, you have dozens of USB-A and USB-C cables. There are all of various quality, but I have no idea the history of each one. A lot of them came with other products and are total unknown quantity anyway.

Is there a tool to quickly test how good each cable is? Either a software or a hardware tool. Ideally it’d be nice to see something that can measure the power as well. Some charging cables are capable of fast charging, and some are not.

  • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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    4 months ago

    There’s some hardware tools on amazon that will test the power capacity, but I’m not sure about speed. Some check the characteristics of the cable, so it would stand to reason that if those characteristics are within spec, then it should perform as expected.

    Something like this does A and C: https://www.amazon.com/Eversame-Multimeter-Voltmeter-Indicator-DC3-6-30V/dp/B07JYVPLLJ

    Not sure how good / reliable / accurate they are. I’ve seen some homemade projects which aim to do similar, but if you’re like me and not great with a soldering iron, you might need to make due with something from Amazon lol.

    The sad fact is USB-C cables are just a confusing mess of optional features. I tend to just buy ones that are rated for 100W power delivery and have video support. Those tend to cover all my bases.