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If you’re looking for a high-quality USB-C cable that will give you excellent performance, it’s hard to beat Cable Matters 6-foot USB-C cable. The cable can do it all and do it all well (well, almost) from charging at up to 100 watts, transferring data from your USB 3.1 SSD, or running a monitor. The only area where it doesn’t excel is in Thunderbolt performance, which is limited to 20Gbps. That’s not a ding in our book because that’s the tradeoff of a 6-foot cable. To hit 40Gbps, you’d have to step down to a shorter cable. We then looked at how fast the cable would charge and transfer data, and whether it supported an alternate mode to run a monitor, using real-world hardware. Some USB-C cables feature a chip or e-Marker that contains information the device reads. This two meter cable’s e-Marker is incorrect. In the end, Apple’s USB-C Charge Cable won us over and is actually our recommended cable for those who want a big name on the box and intend to use it for mostly charging. When we say the box, we mean it, because Apple oddly doesn’t include any branding on the cable itself, which is a mistake because you just might mix it up with a lousy cable.
We didn’t test the temperature of each cable’s housing, but we did test the cheapest cable by running it at 5 amps and 20 volts for an hour. The housing heated up by 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and the cable itself became relatively warm (see the thermal image below). Not ideal, but it did this without failure. We subjected other cables to two-hour loads without failure, as well. Obviously, as a charge cable it’s terrible for data transfer and can’t drive Thunderbolt devices nor your monitor, but as a charging cable it’s excellent.This heavy-duty braided option is a good choice for taking advantage of the most modern charging standards
For charging speeds we recorded the maximum wattage at which the cable could charge an Asus ROG Strix 15 gaming laptop over its USB-C port using USB-Power Delivery with an Aukey 100 watt USB-PD charger as the source while the laptop was under load.USB-PD today is limited to 100 watts (with a 240-watt spec on the way). Any USB-C to USB-C cable should handle 3 ampsat 20 volts, or 60 watts.All of the USB-C to USB-C cables fell into the standard 60-watt or 100-watt camps. You’d think you could tell whether a cable is USB-C 2.0 cable by looking at the wires in the connector but that’s not the case. Some cables use connectors with pins that aren’t hooked up to anything.
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In the end though, it’s what’s inside a cable that matters the most and the Apple USB-C cable has top-notch wiring materials that can deliver the most power to your laptop, phone, or tablet. Want to charge your laptop at 100 watts all day? That shouldn’t be a problem for the Apple USB-C Charge Cable. Physically, the cable is a flat design with a rubbery outer sheath. The strain relief where the cable connects to the housing is minimal, as well, which makes us question its durability over time.
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