A cable with a USB-C plug at one or both ends often reveals little about what it’s capable of doing. Despite guidelines for labeling set by the USB-IF (the USB trade group) and Intel’s Thunderbolt ...

The USB-C format offers ever-growing capabilities in audio, video, and data transfer, as well as device charging. But not ...

USB ports have quietly turned into the default power outlet for phones, laptops, headphones, and even monitors, but the wattage behind that familiar rectangle is far from uniform. Depending on the ...

USB-C cables look identical, but this one difference changes everything ...

Have you ever wondered whether your USB ports are really delivering maximum power? There are several ways to find out. Windows offers you built-in functions to check the performance of your USB ports.

Over the last few years, the USB Type-C® with Power Delivery (PD) standard has been adopted in a wide variety of electronics. This adoption has been driven by benefits such as a unified port (reducing ...

As new USB standards catch on, choices for cables' data rates and power levels will be less confusing, the USB industry group predicts. Stephen Shankland worked at CNET from 1998 to 2024 and wrote ...

Powering external devices directly from a PC’s I/O ports has been a thing long before USB was even a twinkle in an engineer’s eye. Some of us may remember the all too common PS/2 pass-through leads ...

USB-C cables and connectors: these are controversial topics, and rightfully so – I don’t want to pull any punches. I will also show you that things don’t have to be that bad for you, as long as you’re ...