A $50 USB-C cable tester revealed which of my cables were actually useless. I happily got rid of them and haven't looked back.
USB-C has been one of the best innovations for convenience and compatibility, but it also means that my bag of cables and plugs is now a tangled mess of confusion. I don’t know which ones are for data, which are for charging, or how fast each one is. When I need a cable, I have to pick one and try it out to see—not exactly quick and easy.
So I finally bit the bullet and bought a USB cable tester to see what all of my USB-C cables are good for. I went in expecting a few to be bad (and therefore could be tossed guilt-free) with the rest being fast and safe.
But the testing process also helped me discover that my charging habits were inefficient, and that I could be moving data around much faster if I just used the right USB-C cable for the job.
