Is USB Type-C ACTUALLY Stronger?? Durability Test
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,371 words · ~6 min read
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maybe the problem is that you guys are the type of people who believe
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everything you read on the internet because whenever I've ranted usually
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frothing at the mouth about what a terrible connector USB microbe is I have
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gotten a lot of push back from the community defending it you guys point
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out words you've read like that it's rated to 10,000 insertions and
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extractions which is 5,000 more than any
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of the USB Mini that preceded it and
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that it was specifically redesigned to
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wear out the cable rather than the device so your fancy th000 smartphone
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doesn't turn into a fancy th000 paper
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weight but me I think that microbe especially the
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USB 3 variant that showed up briefly on
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Samsung phones isn't that durable I
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think this whole thing is a lie propagated by big USB I think in the
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real world micr B breakes before it's
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been inserted 10,000 times and I am
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going to blow this thing wide
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open browse privately and securely with
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tunnel bear the simple VPN app try tunnel bear for free at the link in the
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video description much like the prenatal
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development of my children this video has been 9 months in the making let's
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just hope it turns out a little better so in order to conduct my test I asked
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Samsung to send me their older portable SSD T1 to which they said no s well
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first they said yeah sure no problem then they said oh sorry we can't do that
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so I actually had to buy one of these and it wasn't hard to find a brand new
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one but I did brand new sealed this is
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basically a similar idea but it uses a USB 3 micro connector then because micro
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b is actually designed to wear out the cable first rather than the connector on
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the device I wanted to make sure that In fairness I was sourcing two brand new
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cables so I've got a brand new micro b cable and a brand new type-c cable the
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methodology here is I'm going to take these two SSD
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this one is brand new never used too by the way I'm going to unplug and plug
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back in let's say you know 50 to 100 times at a time and then I'm going to
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check them again and see if they work
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until one of them dies so that's how it
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all started in August 2016 I set out on
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the expedition of a lifetime I began
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with sets of 50 insertions making entries in my journal between each set
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by the first 100 insertions both connectors had lost their like new
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stiffness by 250 even ignoring the
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orientation agnosticism USBC more
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forgiving positioning and lower mating
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Force were making the repetitions much faster and by 500 micro b was actually
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the one that felt closer to its original
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state with type c being looser but n Nei
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connector was showing any signs of giving up the ghost and I have to say
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the tedium of the journey began to take its toll but I
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persevered until a thousand insertions
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by this stage USBC noticeably looser feel made it a welcome break from the
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micro b connector that seemed to be
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grabbing more stickly than ever before
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and I began to think that maybe my bad experiences with it had less to do with
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raw cycle durability and more to do with
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everyday wear like sitting plugged in for an extended period or getting
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wiggled back and forth while being moved around so with that in mind and totally
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not because I just got busy and forgot
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the devices sat connected but untouched
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for six long hard throbbing months but
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then we hired someone who isn't me to
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pick up the torch and insert like he'd never inserted before James still took
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another 3 months to get to the big finish but he gets full marks for
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creativity he used the yatsi grip the double hander and the old pulling a
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carrot out of the ground technique logging his observations along the way
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as well so by 2500 insertions micro b actually needed
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a little Coke to get it in there by 3200
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it had actually learned to loosen up and relax for a less friction full
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experience by 4500 type C's tight fit
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had noticeably loosened while micro b had reached a state of downright
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slipperiness by 6,000 insertions we made
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the observations that b was more difficult to insert than C but seemed to
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be more engaged during the experience and that the manh hours were beginning
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to make this one of the most expensive videos we had ever made with no end in
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sight a 10,000 insertion rating
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theoretically means at least 10,000 I
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mean it could go to 50,000 for all we know James begged me to allow him to
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build a machine to do this for him but I
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bravely told him no because that would remove the imperfect human element of
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our test so his journey continued unabated until
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one day long after all hope for Humanity
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had drained from his heart James inserted the micro be for the
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8,000th time and nothing happened the
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machine didn't recognize the device
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anymore so then after 8,000 insertions
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the USB type-c drive is working
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perfectly with a connection feel that I would actually go as far as to still
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trust but the micro b is toast at only
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80% of what it was theoretically rated
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for and we tried a brand new cable to
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see if per the spec it was actually the cable that died first the cable is
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mangled but still works leading us to the conclusion then this is a sample
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size of one so apart from knowing the approximate number of insertions
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somewhere between 7900 and 8,000 that it
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lasted before breaking it's really not any more meaningful than someone else's
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anecdotal evidence that their connector failed we haven't demonstrated
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conclusively that microbe is overrated but I feel like what we have added some
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strength to is that on top of its reversibility extra pins for added
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functionality and yes excellent
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durability type c is truly a worthy rep
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25 bucks in service credit or to towards a new device so thanks to Samsung for
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providing at least one of the drives we used for our testing actually the
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surviving one the other one we had to buy thanks to you guys for watching if
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you dislike this video you know what to do but if you liked it hit that like button get subscribed maybe check out
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where to buy the stuff we featured this is Samsung's portable SSD T3 at the link
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in the video description also down there is our uh merch store which has cool
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