Google engineer Benson Leung has been on a mission to prove that all USB-C cables are not created equal, and that mission appears to have ended — or at least climaxed — with one cable totally frying his computer. Leung has been testing USB-C cables and posting reviews of them on Amazon for a few months now, and the most recent cable he tested, made by SurjTech, turned out to be “completely miswired” — something he didn’t realize until after it “managed to destroy my test equipment,” he says, including a Chromebook Pixel. Here’s his explanation of what went wrong: “The GND pin on the Type-A plug is tied to the Vbus pins on the Type-C plug. The Vbus pin on the Type-A plug is tied to GND on the Type-C plug. This is a total recipe for disaster, and I have three pieces of electronics dead to show for it.”
A Google engineer sacrificed his Chromebook Pixel to test USB-C cables
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Leung warns that his USB-C cable reviews are “going to slow down a little bit” because of this incident. “Needless to say,” he writes, “I am very unhappy, and this is going to affect how quickly I get through cables and other accessories in the short term since my computer is dead.” If you’re planning to buy a USB-C cable, Leung’s existing reviews are still one of the best resources around. And given that smartphones and laptops are quickly switching over to the new standard, chances are a lot of people are going to be in the market for an extra cable sometime soon.
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