What's USB Type C?

The USB connection has taken on various forms over the years. The rectangular port you’re most familiar is called USB Type-A. The blocky, almost square port used in many large peripherals like printers is USB Type-B. And now Type-C has emerged to save the day since it is equipped with the functions equipped by the existing two versions and something new. Following we’ll first see the difference among them and then the outstanding features of Type-C as well as its drawbacks.

First let’s give a close look at these three USB versions.

USB Type-A

Type-A is the long-known classic USB plug. The chunky rectangular plug was the original design and it remains the standard plug for use at the host end of the USB cable.

Now Type-A has gone through a number of changes to accommodate different versions of USB, with more pins added to allow for the faster speeds of USB 3.0 for instance. However the fundamental design of the plug has remained the same, with the new connections incorporated in such a way that all USB Type-A plugs and sockets are compatible no matter which version of USB they use.

It’s not always the case that whatever you plug in will work, as the newer standards of USB also deliver more power, which may be required by whatever device you’re plugging in, but for the most part they’re completely interchangeable.

USB Type-B

Although there are some uses for Type-A to Type-A USB cables, typically the other end of a USB cable uses a Type-B connector. This denotes the device attached at this end as being the client and because these types of device can vary so much we see much more variation in plug/socket types used.

The original type-B plug is the odd tall plug with the sloping top corners that you typically find on printers. This was extended for the USB 3.0 standard to include an extra bump for some new connections.

The classic mini-USB and micro-USB are also variations of Type-B, along with the clunky micro-USB 3.0, which uses a normal micro-USB connection with an extra plug that carries more power connections.

USB Type-C

When it comes to USB Type-C, there are three things we need to know.

First of all, the Type-C connector is small. Where Type-A and Type-B have had to work within the framework of being backwards compatible. Type-C is designed to be small enough to not need any mini or micro variants. That means no more confusion about which cable you will need. The Type-C connector is small enough for a smart phone but powerful enough for a PC or even a server.

Second, the Type-C connector has been rated at up to 100W, which means it can be used to charge not only smartphones, it can also be used to power lots of other devices that would previously need an extra power supply. In the future your printer might only need one cable—a USB Type-C cable that provides both power and the data connection.

Thirdly the Type-C cable is reversible. That means you no longer have to get the plug the right way round. No more trying to plug in a cable, finding you got it the wrong way around, trying again and then realizing that you had it right the first time. Instead, it’ll work whichever direction you try. So the days of flipping your USB cable three times before inserting it correctly may finally be ended.

Concerns About Type-C

Although the features are small, compact, reversible, the USB Type-C is widely worried to be too fragile with a hollow plug and a delicate tab in the socket. We’ll have to wait a little longer to see how well Type-C accessories hold up to wear and tear over a year or more, especially when it is compared with Apple’s Lightning which tends to be far more resilient by using a sturdy thick metal plug.

Closing Thoughts on USB-C

Nevertheless, worries aside, Type-C indeed equips everything we love about USB and makes it even better. It eliminates pain points like figuring out which end goes where, and provides a universal size that will be compatible with both mobiles and desktop-class devices. Best USB cables usually comes with best chargers. In this case, Zendure X6 would be a perfect choice.

As we said before USB-C Power Delivery technology allows devices to be charged at speeds previously unimagined in USB power supplies. X6 from Zendure provides up to 45W PD output, which means some of your favorite gadgets get the same or even better performance from X6 that you’d expect from their native chargers. Have a try on this the newest product of Zendure which is currently on a crowd-funding platform——Indiegogo. You won’t regret it.