It’s almost a year ago we told you how the next generation of USB-C cables would almost double the amount of power they can carry, to 240 W, enough to let you drop the proprietary power block to all but the most state-of-the-art gaming laptops. Now we see the first signs of life: The first USB-C 2.1 cables have damaged the cover with up to 240 W power and up to 40 Gbps data. They are from a Dutch manufacturer called Club3D (via Toms hardware), which does not sell cables on its website, nor do they appear to be in stock at retailers yet.
Not that you necessarily want to buy one yet, of course! There are no gadgets designed to use 240W USB-C power yet, nor are there any 240W USB-C chargers, so these cables will not offer you anything new until the chicken-and-egg problem is solved.
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But that’s not the only caveat you need to be aware of. As we feared last September, when the USB Implementers Forum released its guidelines for USB-C 2.1 branding, it seems that manufacturers are still free to mix and match what options you actually get from a cable.
Club3D not only has a one meter cable with the holy grail of 8K / 60 video, 40 Gbps data and 240 W power, but it also has a two meter cable with only half the data rate. And – get this – there’s a third two meter cable that carries only a measly 480 Mbps of data. (It gets stuck at USB 2.0 speeds for some reason.)
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Fortunately, it looks like these cables will be clearly marked to tell you what features they actually have – thanks USB-IF for the labels! Hopefully other cable manufacturers will follow suit. And it’s good to know that a 240W cable can extend to at least six and a half feet long, though hopefully we’ll look even further as well. While 240W may sound like a lot of watts, a typical household outlet can emit thousands.