I'm a USB-C Maximalist

I’m a USB-C Maximalist – Terence Eden’s Blog

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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?

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I'm a USB-C Maximalist

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