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Is there a way to test the data transfer speed of USB cables? (self.asklemmy)

submitted 4 months ago by gedaliyah to c/asklemmy

15 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] Windex007 3 points 4 months ago (3 children)

I wtf'd that you could do 100W w/ USB... Then I can see that new specs are to allow 240W.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

Yeah, that's pretty recent. All my chargers are 100W or less. I think the 240W is achieved by increasing the voltage to 48v and keeping the current maximum to 5A.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

5 USB cables could power my heater :/

[–] raldone01 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Well you can power things like egpus, monitors and gaming laptops soon. Very neat actually.