We’ve seen this before. Cast your mind back to HDMI. When it arrived in the early 2000s, it was a genuine breakthrough — one cable for audio and video, replacing the tangle of component cables behind your television. The idea was clean, elegant. Then the versions started multiplying. HDMI 1.0. Then 1.3. Then 1.4, which brought 3D and Audio Return Channel. Then 2.0, because 4K was coming. Then 2.0a and 2.0b, because HDR wasn’t sorted the first time. Then there’s 2.1, which added 8K and higher refresh rates for gaming, and then sub-versions within 2.1 itself — 2.1a, 2.1b — each with slightly different capabilities that the cable packaging would not always bother to mention.

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At some point, buying an HDMI cable became an exercise in anxiety. The cable looked identical whether it was HDMI 1.4 or 2.1. Manufacturers printed “High Speed” on the box without anyone agreeing on what that phrase actually meant. You would get home, plug it in, and discover your shiny new television was not doing what it was supposed to, because the cable was a version behind. HDMI promised simplicity. It delivered a new kind of complexity.

USB-C is doing something remarkably similar. Because the fine print, as it always is with technology, is where the inconvenient truth lives. Not all USB-C cables are equal. Not even close. Here’s a snapshot of what we’re looking at. There’s USB 2.0 Type-C which is rated up to 480Mbps speeds and can charge smartphones as well as tablets, and work well enough for transferring small file bundles — this will have trouble charging your laptop, for instance. The next in line is the USB 3.0 Type-C cable, rated at 5Gbps, which works well for external hard drives and SSDs, as well as powering laptops. There is the USB 3.1 Type-C cable that’s rated at 10Gbps, meant for high speed 4K video and audio transfer, and therefore must be used for external monitors for instance — a 5Gbps cable wouldn’t do this.

It’s still not done. Next in the hierarchy (and the flagship for now) is the USB 3.2 Type-C cable, which in the Gen2 iteration, handles up to 20Gbps transfer bandwidth, and this is the cable that any workflows involving video editing, 3D rendering or any data intensive transfers, must use. A USB-C cable that came bundled with your budget smartphone may or may not charge your laptop. Some cables support USB 3.2 speeds, while some are stuck at USB 2.0. Some carry a video signal, but most do not. Some can handle 140-watts of power delivery, others peak out at around 60-watts.

Same connector. Vastly different capabilities.

There is also the cable certification problem. The USB Implementers Forum introduced certification programmes—multiple iterations between 2019 and 2024, focusing on power rating logos and power range aspects. There are certified cables and many, many uncertified ones. Walk into any electronics shop or scroll through any e-commerce platform, and the ratio of uncertified to certified is absolutely not reassuring.

This is a peculiarly human story, one of habits and trends, more than being a technology one. The HDMI mess was not secret knowledge, yet we didn’t learn. The trajectory rhymes so closely with HDMI’s trajectory that you wonder whether some degree of connector chaos is simply inevitable. The USB-C connector itself is not the limitation or complication. The spec, in its fullest form, is genuinely impressive. I say this, writing on an Apple Mac Studio connected to a Studio Display via the Thunderbolt 5 cable that’s rated at 96-watt of host charging, vert relevant if you’re to connect this with a MacBook.

The only way around for now is to read the specs carefully before buying a USB-C cable. It is a maze that isn’t easily navigable, but we have little choice but to get it right.

Vishal Mathur is the Technology Editor at HT. Tech Tonic is a weekly column that looks at the impact of personal technology on the way we live, and vice versa. The views expressed are personal.