I'm a USB-C Maximalist

technology travel usb-c · 5 comments · 650 words · Viewed ~8,051 times

---

My wife and I recently went on a 7 week holiday around Europe. Although we each took a massive backpack, we wanted to travel fairly lightly. I took a single universal power brick. This little unit was all I needed to charge my various gadgets.

It has a hefty USB-C PD (Power Delivery) port for rapid charging of my phone and laptop. Two other USB-C ports for my other gadgets. And a couple of legacy USB-A ports which were redundant. The pass through was useful for using the same socket as the hotel's TV / lamp / coffee maker.

Wherever we were in the world, I was 100% confident that I would be able to buy a replacement charger if I needed it. USB-C cables are everywhere too. What are the chances that I could find the exact charger needed for a GameBoy Colour? Or the puck for last year's Pixel watch? Or the weird barrel jack for an HP laptop?

No. One charger. One cable. One standard.

Here's everything I took which needed to be recharged.

• Phone

  • A Pixel 8 Pro (running GrapheneOS). It also has the ability to act as a power source and recharge other devices.

• Laptop

  • A Chuwi MiniBook. Small, light, decent battery.

• eReader

  • A no-name eInk device. I read a lot on holiday.

• Watch

  • A cheap but capable smartwatch. No magnetic charging dongle - just shove the cable into the body.

• Toothbrush

  • Again, a cheap and unbranded device. And, again, no charging dock - the bottom has a protected USB socket.

• Tracker

  • What if someone steals my bag? Hopefully the PebbleBee "Find My" device will help me recover it.

• Battery

  • Most trains, trams, and buses have USB power supplies. But sometimes you want your own hefty store of electrons. This one accepts PD charging and also outputs PD.

• Headphones

  • Some cute ear-cuff headphones. I feel a bit guilty about including these, because it is their case which has the USB-C port rather than the cans themselves.

• Bug Bite Zapper

  • This is a bit of a cheat. It uses my phone's USB port to heat up.

I probably could have gotten away with a single-port charger. The phone needs recharging every night, but most of the other devices can go days or weeks without being topped up.

As we were travelling light(ish) I didn't bother bringing the Nintendo Switch. We were in a major cities, so no need for our USB-C powered walkie-talkies. We were out sightseeing most days, so I didn't take the USB-C to HDMI adaptor which would have let us connect the laptop and phones to a hotel TV. Perhaps in the hotter countries I could have done with the USB-C neck cooler - instead I purchased a cheap USB-C rechargeable fan. Rather than bring a beard trimmer, I went to local barbers. If anything needed AA batteries, well, I could have used these rechargeable batteries.

I know there are some problems with USB-C. But the benefits far outweigh the glitches. Using my USB-C cable tester, I can be sure all the cables I have can deliver the amount of power my devices need.

There's simply no point buying any electrical gadget which uses a proprietary charging port.

You can read all my USB-C posts and all my gadget reviews.

What electrical items do you travel with which don't use the one-true-connector?

---

Share this post on…