All cables are not created equal: some will charge most efficiently, others might just fry your battery. Google Chromebook engineer and Caped Cable Crusader Benson Leung has been testing USB-C cables off Amazon, and it’s not just the no-brand products that have been failing.


Leung’s campaign mostly consists of ordering USB-C cables off Amazon, testing them to see if they meet the minimum standards or if they’re just knock-offs, and then leaving Amazon reviews. Cables and chargers fail in all sorts of different ways, although incorrect resistors seem to be a common problem that Leung’s been finding.

Although the bulk of problematic adapters are coming from no-brand acccessory resellers, there’s one particularly interesting failure: Leung has called out the OnePlus USB-C cable and adapter. They’ll work just fine if you only ever use them with OnePlus devices, but if you ever get crazy and try and use that USB-C cable to charge another USB-C device—say, a Nexus 6P—you might damage your shiny gizmo.


[Google+]