I don't know why they still aren't printing this info onto the cable itself. When you pull something out of the box of very important cables, it's a lottery what speed/power you get.
this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
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Supposedly new color-coding and informational text standards are about to be implemented and in production very soon.
It's good to have it printed on the cable.
But also in the OP:
Some of the high-spec cables I bought are duff.
They can print whatever they want on these cables. So it's still a good idea to test them.
Because it ruins the beautiful cable design!
Honestly I'm half mocking it but I also think it's true. I genuinely enjoy having a pretty cable, and having text printed on it like they do on CAT cables would make it uglier. It's a legitimate reason.
I think marked USB cables should be available, and I'd like to have some marked and some not in my collection. It's definitely not cool that basically none are marked today.
Edit: genuinely didn't expect to be downvoted for this. Could anyone explain why the downvote? Do you just not think electronics should be pretty?
All the relevant info on this tester could probably pretty easily be printed onto the connector head. Then you can have your label and your pretty cable too.
Do you mean printed on the outside metal bit of the connector? I can think of a few issues with that, but you're right, it might be an option.
If you mean and other part of the cable, then it's still going to ruin the aesthetic.
The potential issues:
- Durability of the printed text
- Legibility
- The process for printing on metal might be expensive? Would have to check. Cables are supposed to be inexpensive to produce.
- Nitpicky but: the text printed on the connector head might still ruin the aesthetics in promotional material.
To illustrate, this is the one I use to charge my phone. Don't mind the dog bite marks.
The plastic grip head bit there already tells me it's rated for 60w (I assume that's what 60W means on this?) , but that's a quite large design for relatively little information. I think that could be easily pared down and given smaller text to fit much more in there. We can't make it too small if we still want to engrave it like this but I think we can condense the important information so long as we're careful about how we present it. Now using the OP's tool as an example, I think that
USB4-G3 TBT4
40Gbps [10-20ns]
20V/5A
would probably fit on the grip head on my cable in the same orientation as the 60w that is there now.
Laser etching the actual connector part is another idea that I didn't even think about until you said something, I think that might also be neat but probably wouldn't be as durable? But if you really need a cable to look a specific way when plugged in that's an unobtrusive way to still label it.
We could also go the USB3.0 route and start coloring the connector heads based on properties. Different color stripes encircling the connector that mean different things would work so long as we don't have to wrap too many of them in there. 2-3 colors max.
(Upvoted you for making good, smart conversation :))
That cable looks great, and the stylized 60W is really nice. It's still a stylistic choice that affects the aesthetics of the cable, and wouldn't fit every design.
I can't imagine fitting all of that text and still looking attractive:
USB4-G3 TBT4
40Gbps [10-20ns]
20V/5A
Do you need such a specialized device for that or could that be tested via some software on a computer/phone as well?
You need a specialised device. I couldn't find any software which could read this from an Android phone or Linux machine.
Take this with a grain of salt.
I think if your device has the right hardware and the right application with the right low-level access, it can tell you most of these things. But a dedicated tester can tell you more.
You could just use the cable and see if it charges or transfers data at the speed your devices are supposed to but then you don't know if its the devices or the cable causing the bottleneck until you try more cables
I got a cheap aliexpress board with LEDs that does this, at least the main protocols.
It’s definitely one of these things that make me wonder if I’m being too consumeristic. It’s nice to have a cable tester but I don’t really need one. Maybe if I had a shop that sold cables. But then again I can test my stuff “objectively”, possibly minimizing throwing out working cables. Idk
I'm a big fan of the BLE caberqu, it does a bit more than the treedix tester and has an app to save and export cable reports.
EDIT: here's the link https://caberqu.com/home/39-ble-caberqu-0611816327412.html
I was going to buy one of these but it’s on back order and I didn’t see an estimated date for stock. Looks neat though. Wish I caught it on kickstarter.
Peter, the founder of caberQU here. I just made an account to say thank you for mentioning this, I've updated it to specify the shipping date (right now this still is in August)!
Ughhhh. I suppose I can wait till August. Do you ship to the US?
Welcome to the club.
Tree Dicks eh?