Try shopping for a USB-C cable and you can’t help but notice the disparities in cable pricing and performance claims. They’re just cables, right? How can they really be that different?
At PCWorld we’ve used our share of USB-C cables and can say with total confidence that, indeed, clear differences exist. Perhaps that’s in the construction quality among cables, or their relative performance, whether you’re talking about charging or transferring data.
Belkin BoostCharge 240-watt charging cable
Anker New Nylon Series 3 USB-C to USB-C 2-pack
Our hands-on evaluation of numerous cables — ranging from the biggest, most-recognizable brand names to the cheapest of the cheap — reveals some clear winners.
For these USB-C cable reviews, we don’t trawl consumer reviews like some “reviewers” — we purchase the cables retail and test each one personally, examining how they are physically wired, the resistance, and the accuracy of the embedded eMarker (if it has one). We performance test them on their claims, be it charge rate, transfer rate, or display support.
Our picks of the best USB-C cables below are separated into two groups: those cables that are best for charging, and those best for both charging and fast data transfer.
Ever since Apple stopped selling our top big-brand cable for charging, we’ve been looking for a suitable replacement and we may have finally found it with Belkin’s BoostCharge 240-watt charging cable.
This 6.6-foot, or 2-meter, cable supports the highest USB Power Delivery charge rate, comes from a recognized big-brand, and is a good $10 less than what Apple charges for similar cable specs.
The good news is that the Belkin BoostCharge 240-watt charging cable is a worthy alternative to Apple’s offering.
Internally, the cable is just about on par with the Apple cable for cable resistance. That’s a good thing because Apple’s cables are actually internally constructed quite well in our experience. It’s the outside of Apple cables that has a reputation for falling apart and fraying.
The BoostCharge gives us more confidence than Apple with its pleasant braiding, beefy overmolding and Belkin’s boast that the cable has been tested to more than 30,000 bends.
The BoostCharge also features dual eMarker chips, which support over-temperature protection. With 240-watt charge rates, that last feature is particularly important as the BoostCharge can detect if it’s overheating and signal the devices to pause until it has cooled down enough.
The biggest bummer is the lack of wiring to support video output or actual high-speed data transfers. The BoostCharge is basically a plain-Jane charging cable supporting 480MBps transfer rates (vs. 10Gbps or 20Gbps).
That’s fine though, because most people are simply charging a laptop, tablet, or phone, and don’t need all of those features nor the bulk (data cables tend to be much thicker due to the extra wiring). We actually recommend that most people buy a basic charging cable for the daily abuse of plugging and unplugging devices, and, if necessary, reserving a shorter and higher-capability cable strictly for transferring chores. This should make the pricier fast data and video cable last far longer.
