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…
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.
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.
Best USB-C cable for charging Belkin BoostCharge 240-watt charging cable Pros 240W charging rate Quality braiding and overmolding Big-name brand Cons Lacks support for high-speed data transfers Pricier than others Price When Reviewed: $19.99 Best Prices Today: Retailer Price $20.95 $24.99 $26.99 Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide 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.
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