My new toy is a USB-C cable with a built-in power meter

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

I thought I would introduce you to another intriguingusb-c trend, while I wait for the DeWalt power tool batteries to be turned into a powerful laptop charger. You can now buy $20 cables that come with their own wattage meter, which will let you see how fast they are charging your devices.

I bought mine a month ago, but so far, I'm impressed. For the past couple of days, I've plugged it into everything to see how much it draws: 18W for my V2 Nintendo Switch, 30-31W for my DJI Mini 2 drone, 2.5-3W for one of my PS5's. Or, trickle-charging the Wyze Buds Pro.

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

On Amazon, the cables are mostly sold by brands like WOTOBEUS, URVNS, and CHIP OFY. I haven't tested it yet, but it feels like a reasonable amount of strain relief, thanks to the metal head and braided cable.

I tested its ability to measure power, plugging it into every device in my family's collection, including an array of chargers. I used a Kill-A-Watt and a separate power meter as the baseline to check its accuracy and whether it could charge my devices properly.

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

It was right on the money in most cases.

• It only shows watts, not volts and amps. It’s a handy shortcut, but you can learn more from standalone USB-C testers that cost as little as $11 or $17 now.
• You’ve gotta plug the screen end into the thing you’re charging if you want a measurement. It’ll still charge the other way, but the meter isn’t bidirectional.
• For some reason, a few combinations of cable and charger had wacky results: the 14-inch MacBook Pro wouldn’t charge at all from my 100W HyperJuice USB-C battery pack when using this cable, even though it charged just fine if I swapped out the battery for an adapter or this cable for a different cable.
• The DJI Mini 2 also wouldn’t charge at full speed with this cable and one of my four USB-C adapters, even though it worked fine with the other three adapters and my 100W battery.
• My cheapo USB-C to Lightning adapter didn’t work with this cable, so I wasn’t able to test it with an iPhone. But I had no such trouble with one of the standalone USB-C testers and an official Apple USB-C to Lightning charge cable.

This cable is only suitable for high-speed charging and not a high-speed data cable. The transfer rate is 480 Mbps, which is far less than the 5Gbps or 10Gbps you can get with the newer version of the internet. In 17 seconds, I was able to transfer a 5gigabyte file from an external hard drive to my PC. The charge cable took a full two minutes longer to complete the task, and it was only 40MB.

That seems to be a limitation of these early cables, as all of them advertise that low speed, even the new j5create one that adds some other handy features. The power meter I bought several years ago lets me transfer data at full speed.

I didn't have a nice, long charge cable that was capable of both 100W charging and bothusb 3 data rates, so I appreciate not needing to keep track of a meter. I just use it for charging and connecting a different cable to my computer. If you're really a fan of the device, I'd suggest you pick a stand alone meter.