USB Cable Tester—Game Changer
David Shriver made a post on Linked In a few weeks ago about a USB tester. As a geek, I love test equipment, so I thought this was cool and went ahead and bought one. I couldn’t find the model that he had recommended, but I found a Treedix USB Cable Tester for about $45. I bought one, and it’s been an education and a game changer (paid affiliate link here if you want one). I knew there was different levels of USB performance, and have had a few problems before with higher charging rates and things like video over USB -C, but it was always a mystery, especially once the cable gets thrown in a bin.
The basic test is pretty useful:
It tests USB Type-C, Micro B2.0, Micro B3.0, Mini-B and Lightning.
There are more sophisticated test results as well:
I went through my USB cable bin and tested anything that looked like decent/robust cable construction, and was pretty good at guessing which were higher performance, but there were some surprises. I ended up labelling and separating out anything that tested out to higher than USB 2.
For me, it was a worthy investment and I learned a lot. Paid affiliate link here if you want to get one for yourself!