Testing by MyBroadband revealed that expensive and cheap USB Type-C cables had a similar performance. The Wavlink USB-C hub cable, however, easily outperformed the rest.

MyBroadband tested ten USB-C cables in this experiment. We purchased many of them from a local store, while others were lying around in the office.

We tested the charging capabilities and file transfer rates in three tests.

While the resistance of a cable may not always have a direct influence on device charging speed with modern chargers and charging protocols, it is still an indication of the conductor thickness and quality of a USB cable.

The resistance of a cable will also vary with the length, where longer cables have more resistance.

Higher resistance in a charging cable will translate to slower charging or more power lost to heat in the cable when charging at similar power levels.

A resistance of less than 0.25Ω is generally acceptable for a USB charging cable.

At a charging current of 3A that many modern chargers can provide, a 0.25Ω cable resistance will equate to a voltage drop of 0.75V at the device.

Considering that the normal USB charging voltage is 5V, this equates to a voltage drop of 15%. Of the 15W coming out of your charger, 2.25W will be lost as heat in the cable.

The resistance becomes less of an issue at higher charging voltages used by Quick Charge modes.

All ten cables passed this test with reasonable resistance. The cable with the least resistance was one included with a Huawei P40 Lite, while the worst was one of the cheap cables we bought.

All the cables we tested supported QC2.0 up to 12V and QC3.0 up to 20V, as supported by the 33W Xiaomi charging brick we used as a source.

Quick Charge uses the data lines in the USB cable to establish communication between the source and load devices to adjust voltage levels as necessary.

All the cables working with QC bode well for the file transfer tests, and all the cables also worked well for data transfer.

Most cables took between 142s and 166s to transfer a 5GB file to the phone. There was, however, one exception.

The USB-C cable included with a Wavlink hub stood out with a transfer time of 34s.

This testing revealed that the mass production of USB-C cables had reached a point where even the cheapest cables are well within spec for most use cases.

While charge-only USB-C cables do still exist, these are becoming a rarity. Most of the cables you can buy in a store should serve your purposes. Unless you have an iPhone, of course.

The table below provides an overview of the USB-C cable test results.

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